By Michael Karadjis

Time and time again, we have been told that ‘the Global South’ – ie, the developing world consisting largely of former colonies – does not support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s barbaric colonial invasion, or is even supportive of Russia. According to this rendition of reality, support for Ukraine is entirely a project of the imperial West, and this very fact is all the more reason that former colonies of western imperialist states do not want to be on the side of their former colonial masters.

Quite apart from the problematic mathematics involved – 140 countries voted to condemn the Russian invasion, the vast majority of which are in the Global South, and only 5 voted against – there is a more significant problem here: the conflation of ruling classes, governments and often dictatorships with the people of these countries, as if people being gunned down by some regime of exploiters would automatically have the same opinions as their oppressors, because they’re all ‘Global Southerners’. While such a boringly pedestrian assumption is normal in mainstream mass media and bourgeois political discourse, it ought to be second nature to anyone proclaiming some kind of socialist or even vaguely left or progressive ideology that such discourse is inconceivable nonsense.

“Only white nations are supporting Ukraine, the black and brown peoples of the world refuse to support ‘NATO’s war’ against Russia” I have been informed by western leftists, assuming to be speaking on behalf of several billion people in several continents, when in fact only speaking on behalf of their torturers.

This essay will first look at the facts of who voted what and why, and will note the largely sub-imperial nature of major states which either abstained on voting to condemn Russia, or formally voted to condemn but were in other respects pro-Russian in practice; and then will compare this to the overwhelmingly anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian views of their populations, belying the claims that these abstentions were “reflective” of alleged “anti-colonial” views among the peoples of the South. This will be done via examining a variety of surveys of popular opinion. While it is difficult to vouch for the validity and reliability of these surveys without much deeper research, nevertheless their variety itself, together with the largely similar results, suggests somewhat tentative conclusions can be drawn.

First, the facts

Before we look at what people actually think, let’s first establish the facts regarding the votes of these countries and the views of the governments and ruling elites, because the assertions are not even borne out on this level.

Like most myths, these assertions are based on bits and pieces of truths and half-truths. Both the UN General Assembly vote to condemn the Russian invasion in March, and the more recent one to condemn Russia’s outright theft of a fifth of Ukraine, were supported by over 140 countries and opposed by 5, while some 35 countries in each case abstained. Since nearly all the 30 or so ‘white’ nations of the Global North (European countries, North America, Australasia) voted to condemn, it means all of those who abstained were from the Global South – even if they were vastly outnumbered by the overwhelming majority of South countries who voted to condemn. Of the 5 who voted against both times, two were ‘white’ Global North countries – Russia and Belarus, of course – while 3 were from the South: Assad’s genocide-regime in Syria, which relies on Putin for its existence, the grotesque ‘Juche’ regime in North Korea, and, the first time, the extremely repressive dictatorship in Eritrea, and second time, Ortega’s turncoat regime in Nicaragua.

In other words, even just on this basis, we can say that, within the Global South, over 100 nations condemned the invasion and annexations, while three supported them.

However, it is also more complicated than that, because the reasons that countries vote in favour or abstain can have many dimensions; while, as we will see, some of those which abstained, such as Modi’s regime in India, did so because they actually sympathise with Moscow, many others may have had no such sympathy, but for diplomatic or economic reasons – associated with being relatively poor – felt they could not openly vote to condemn Russia, often due to some important economic relationship with Russia, or with China.

Meanwhile, the other core of truth is that it has only been western countries that have sent arms to Ukraine, and have activated economic sanctions on Russia, despite the overwhelming votes to condemn Russia’s invasion. However, this is hardly surprising for many reasons: the major arms suppliers (and producers) in any conflict are richer countries (western countries and Russia), and are wealthy enough to provide large quantities. It is also only countries of the Global North who can afford the pain to themselves of sanctions on a large country such as Russia, whereas in the South imposing sanctions would often mean impossible pain, especially given the importance of Russia in the global food, fertiliser and energy markets; while also endangering economic links and projects which they have built up with Russia, just as they have with the US and western countries; finally, the Ukraine war is in Europe, so it is logical that European nations have more of a direct stake than others, in the same way that African nations all opposed the Apartheid regime in South Africa and all Arab states give official support to Palestine.

The ambivalent sub-imperialist belt

While, as we will see, some abstaining countries are simple Russian neo-colonies under forms of violent occupation (eg, Mali, Central African Republic), there is a bloc of relatively powerful states that either abstained on all votes (China, India, Iran, South Africa), abstained on some votes (Brazil, United Arab Emirates, both in Security Council votes), or officially voted to condemn to satisfy their Washington connections, but in practice have acted in every possible way to demonstrate the importance they place upon their ties with Moscow and lack of commitment to their votes (Israel, Saudi Arabia and to some extent Turkey).

_{Putin with Saudi BFF Mohammed bin Salman: destroyer of Yemen laughs with destroyer of Syria and Ukraine}

With the exception of Turkey, which has supplied Bakhtiar drones to Ukraine, none of the other “US allies” in the Middle East (Israel, UAE, Saudis) have either helped supply Ukraine with arms, or imposed sanctions on Russia. After the West imposed oil sanctions on Russia, driving the price of oil through the roof, the US aimed to get its Saudi and Gulf allies to increase oil supply to stabilise prices; at the time, Saudi and Emirati leaders reportedly “declined U.S. requests to speak to Mr. Biden.” Following Biden’s low-key July visit to Saudi Arabia in the hope of getting the Saudis on board, they responded in October by leading OPEC into cutting oil production by 2m barrels a day, keeping prices high to their own, and Russia’s, benefit. To double the insult, the Saudis rounded out the year with the lavish welcome to China’s Xi Jinping in December, signing a “strategic partnership.” As for Turkey, “not joining sanctions to keep diplomacy open” apparently includes agreeing to Russia’s plan to turn Turkey into a Russian gas hub, while blocking the NATO membership applications of Sweden and Finland.

In Israel’s case, former (and again current) far-right leader Benjamin Netanyahu long cultivated close ties with Putin, so not surprisingly, his equally ultra-rightist successor, prime minister Naftali Bennett, was the first “world leader” to make a high level visit to Moscow to meet Putin soon after the invasion. Bennett’s first statement affirmed Ukraine’s right to sovereignty, but made no mention of Russia. Following US pressure, foreign minister and more “centrist” Zionist Yair Lapid issued the official, half-hearted condemnation, but Bennett refused to mention Putin or Russia in subsequent statements, and issued a demand that his ministers say nothing; rejected Ukraine’s calls for arms, and promised to block any attempt by Baltic states to send Israeli-made arms to Ukraine. His equally fascistic minister Avigdor Lieberman later refused to condemn Russia following the Bucha massacre, claiming “I support first of all Israeli interests.” Israel also blocked the US from providing Israeli ‘iron dome’ missile-shield technology to Ukraine, as Russian missiles obliterate Ukraine. After Israel’s refusal of a US request to co-sponsor a UN Security Council move to put a motion to condemn Russia to the General Assembly caused rebuke from Washington, Israel voted in favour at the General Assembly, Bennett explaining that Russia understood Israel’s forced stand, and Russia affirmed this would not affect cooperation in Syria. When Lapid replaced Bennet as prime minister late in the year, he was more openly critical of Russia, but refused to supply weaponry. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s far-right Likud opposition spent the year criticising the government for saying anything at all, and in its first statement, the new Netanyahu government promises to “speak less in public” about Ukraine.

These are not countries that have the excuse of being poor and hence having little bargaining power – Israel is an unquestionably ‘Northern’ economy, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are oil superpowers, and Turkey is a member of the OECD, and, for that matter, of NATO. Their actions are clearly choices: does this mean Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey are an ‘anti-colonial’ vanguard? Alongside, within Europe itself, the far-right regime of Orban in Hungary, Putin’s best friend in NATO, which almost alone in Europe stands against sanctions on Russia and arms to Ukraine? And when we add other countries ruled by far-right reactionaries like Modi in India and Bolsonaro in Brazil, who are allied both to the US and to Putin’s Russia, we further see the problem with the alleged ‘anti-imperialist’ explanation for going soft on Russia.

We often hear that, despite the numbers in the UN votes, “the majority of the world” abstained and hence refused to condemn Moscow, because between them, China and India, make up two fifths of the world, so when we add other large abstaining countries such as Iran and Pakistan, as well as Brazil which, despite voting to condemn, has rejected sanctions while Bolsonaro declared his “deep solidarity” with Russia in Moscow on the eve of the invasion, we are covering more than half the world’s population.

But that’s where the nonsense peaks: as the mullah regime in Iran guns down hundreds of women and young people demonstrating against tyranny in the streets every day, we are asked to assume that those being shot, tortured, brutally oppressed, have the same opinion on Ukraine as the regime killing them. That Iranian Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis and other oppressed minorities have the same view as their oppressors. That the Muslim population of Gujarat must have the same view as Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist regime, where Modi himself was involved in the huge pogrom in that state back in 2002. That oppressed Indian women, Dalits and minorities all agree with the BJP’s votes in the UN, alongside the world’s largest population living in absolute poverty – yes, of course, they all must agree with the Indian petty-bourgeoisie aggressively proclaiming its pro-Moscow views on the Internet. That the millions in Xinjiang suffering under China’s regime of forced assimilation and cultural genocide must all agree with the regime imposing this upon them, alongside the hundreds of millions of China’s insecure ‘floating population’ of exploited workers, they of course must agree with their exploiters.

The sheer idiocy of such assumptions should stare anyone in the face. That such class-free analysis could ever be considered by anyone claiming left-wing or socialist politics simply underlines the ideological bankruptcy of much of the Old Left (ie, the degeneration of what was once the ‘New Left’).

Rather, what these countries and governments have in common – China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel – is their sub-imperialist (or in some cases arguably imperialist) nature. Far from their positions on the war reflecting any “anti-colonial” consciousness of their people (or reflecting their oppressed and exploited peoples at all), they rather reflect the geopolitical positioning, their global bargaining position, between US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialism, taking advantage of the war to assert their own sub-imperial interests, regional influence and conquests, and oppressive rule over internal and local colonies.

Yes: there is western hypocrisy! Yes, the world’s peoples remember colonialism!

OK, but are not some of the points being made valid in themselves? Of course, it is true that the western imperialist powers supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian occupation are hypocritical. None have the same view regarding Israel’s decades-long brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine, and the Golan, and its massive violation of the most elementary human rights of the Palestinians. While some European governments might offer more criticism compared to the unconditional and uncritical support for Israel by the US, there is never a hint of sanctions or breaking ties. We can name any number of other examples, such as Saudi Arabia’s monstrous bombing of Yemen, where western reactions can similarly range from condemnation to support, but even in the cases most condemned, there are no penalties.

The same goes for Russia’s previous actions: neither Putin’s slaughter of the Chechens, the horrific bombing of hospitals, schools, markets in Syria on behalf of Assad’s genocide regime, nor the 2014 annexation of Crimea, evoked the kind of reaction we see now in Ukraine.

Then there are conflicts in which huge numbers of people are killed, such as the two-year genocidal assault on Tigray by Ethiopia and Eritrea, killing 600,000 people, which both western governments and media treat with complete indifference. Not surprisingly, many Africans would have been offended when French minister of state, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, demanded “solidarity from Africa” because of Russia’s “existential threat” to Europe.

And of course, there is the vastly different treatment of millions of Ukrainian refugees in Europe compared to that of refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa. 

In this sense we can say the Ukrainians are ‘lucky’ (if such a term can be used for a people being invaded and bombed) compared to others in terms of western support. Western powers act based on their own interests, just as Russia does, and this may rarely coincide with the interests of justice. It is not the fault of Ukrainian men, women and children getting bombed and killed in apartment blocks that the West is more supportive of them than of other struggles. They have a right to resist and to get aid from wherever its offered, as do all peoples fighting liberation and resistance wars.

But the argument that rejection of western hypocrisy is the reason for the ambivalent stance of many governments in the Global South is very problematic. Many of these ambivalent governments are violently oppressive, and don’t really care less about western hypocrisy or alleged ‘principles’; they are often leaders in hypocrisy themselves. In fact, often it is the very beneficiaries of western hypocrisy – such as those just mentioned above, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia – which either abstained, rejected western sanctions or otherwise carried out actions that benefited Russia in practice; they have good relations with both imperialist blocs. As for the contention that their stance is a reflection of ‘anti-imperialist’ views among the people they oppress, there is little or no correspondence with popular opinion as will be demonstrated below.

A similar contention is that the ambivalent views of some South governments reflect anti-colonial sentiment: the western governments now supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian colonialism were previously the colonialists ruling over the peoples of the South. In itself, this could lead to sympathy for Ukrainians fighting the same anti-colonial fight they once did; but since Russian colonialism expanded across northern Eurasia, not in Africa, southern Asia or Latin America where other colonial rulers were, it may not be so obvious the southern peoples. But again, the idea that many of these reactionary, violent and pro-imperialist regimes are expressing anti-colonial principles is laughable.

What about the people of the South?

The idea that the views and UN votes of the collection of thuggish reactionary regimes listed above represent the views of the people they oppress is unlikely by definition, at least for anyone who understands the concept of class analysis. What is the evidence of any correspondence between the policies of this minority of southern governments and the alleged “anti-colonial” views of their people, which are allegedly expressed via supporting Russia’s colonial invasion of Ukraine?

Brazil

An interesting place to start may be Brazil; since both the outgoing, far-right Bolsonaro regime, and the incoming, soft-left, Lula administration, have been very partial to Putin and Russia’s viewpoint. Bolsonaro was always strongly allied to Putin (and to Trump), seeing both an ideological ally and an important trading partner. On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Bolsonaro turned up in Moscow to declare his “deep solidarity” with Russia! While his government went through the motions of voting to condemn the invasion in the General Assembly, Bolsonaro himself blasted that stand, and claimed Ukrainians “trusted a comedian with the fate of a nation.” Later, Brazil abstained in the UN Security Council vote in September to condemn the annexations. Meanwhile, as the West sanctioned Russia, Brazil-Russia trade ballooned. As for Lula, he criticised Russia’s invasion but claimed Ukraine was “as responsible” as Russia and had not tried enough to negotiate with the aggressor.

Yet, according to ‘Morning Consult’, “the share of Brazilian adults with a favorable view of Russia has plunged from 38% to 13% since the day before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, while the share with an unfavorable view has surged from 28% to 59%.” Meanwhile, 62 percent of Brazilians say they side with Ukraine, compared to only 6 percent who side with Russia. What this suggests is quite the opposite of “pressure from the masses” – both Bolsonaro and Lula, with differing ideological emphases, represent the views of the sub-imperialist BRICS ruling elite and the way it positions itself in the world, not at all the views of the Brazilian masses. As the 9th most unequal country on Earth according to 2023 Gini Index rankings, why would anyone expect the poverty-stricken masse or the Indigenous being destroyed in the Amazon to hold the same views as the elite?

There’s good reason to believe that this is the case throughout Latin America, “despite” (due to?) the strong anti-imperialist traditions throughout the region. Favourable views of Russia are higher in Mexico than in Brazil, yet a late February poll in Mexico showed that only 20 percent of Mexicans had a favourable view of Putin, and 60 percent an unfavourable view.

_{Putin and recently defeated Brazilian far-right co-thinker Jair Bolsonaro: Real men like us won’t allow the “the gays” and “liberals” to prevent us from destroying Ukraine and the Amazon}

Southern Africa

From Brazil, we may jump to another BRICS stalwart which has abstained on the UN resolutions condemning Russia, namely South Africa. In explaining South Africa’s vote, almost every media article in the world has pointed to the “traditional ties” between the African National Congress, which led the fight against Apartheid, and the Soviet Union, pointing to Soviet support for the struggle. Perhaps the government’s vote reflects this popular love for Moscow due to this historic struggle? As if Putin’s Russia were the Soviet Union; Putin doesn’t think so. Ukraine, of course, was also in the Soviet Union.

But here’s the thing: according to a Gallup survey of Africans in 24 countries on their attitude to Russia conducted in 2021 (before the invasion), only 30 percent of South Africans had a positive view of Russia, the second lowest on the continent (the lowest was in Zambia). Even more interesting is the fact that the countries where people recorded lower support for the Russian leadership were mostly in the southern African region, eg, Tanzania (32%), Zimbabwe (39%), Namibia (40%), Mozambique (41%) – ie all countries which abstained, and are ruled by regimes associated with the Soviet-backed anti-colonial struggles in the 1970s and 1980s, connected to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Hence, where we may expect to see the highest support for Russia based on this ‘anti-colonial’ discourse, we see the lowest – by way of contrast, support for the Russian leadership in 2021 was largely between 50-70% throughout west Africa.     

Bear in mind that all these figures, high and low, were from 2021; drastic drops in support for Russia have been recorded in every part of the world since February 2022. Keep this in mind if 30 percent still sounds high. Also worth keeping in mind is that while approval of the Russian government was on average higher in Africa (42%) than globally (33%), this was nevertheless “lower than the approval ratings of the leadership of the U.S. (60%), China (52%) and Germany (49%)” – not sure how we fit the square “anti-imperialist” peg into this round hole! Also notable is that even the 42% average approval for Russia in 2021 was drastically down from 57% in 2011, in the decade since Russia’s global imperialist adventures have become more pronounced; we can be certain that 2022 has not helped.

This data also means that, despite the higher African average, the 30 percent approval in South Africa is below the 33 percent global average.

Therefore, we would probably need to draw the same conclusion about South Africa as about Brazil: far from representing the “anti-colonial” and “anti-apartheid” memories of the masses, the ANC government’s vote represents, once again, the views of the sub-imperialist BRICS ruling elite and the way it positions itself in the world. The working classes and the poor in all these countries where the regimes are now close to Russia – South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique etc – are brutally exploited by the capitalist classes that arose out of the ANC, ZANU-PF, Frelimo, SWAPO, the MPLA etc. In fact, South Africa is the most unequal country on Earth, based on 2023 Gini Index rankings, and Namibia, Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe are all in the top 15 most unequal (BRICS partner Brazil is number 9).

It is therefore hardly surprising that that many people in these countries share little in terms of views with the sub-imperialist South African or the other neo-colonial regimes tied to South African, Russian, Chinese – and western – imperialism. 

Western and northern Africa

What about the higher approval of the Russian leadership in western Africa? According to Eric Draitser, Russia gained support in parts of West Africa by moving in the last few years and ousting French imperialism from its dominant role there. This may well be true. According to the Gallup survey, 84 percent of people in Mali had confidence in Russia in 2021; while popular surveys under military dictatorships are highly suspect, it is quite possible that the figure was in fact at the higher end, perhaps like the more realistic 50-70 percent area (as in Guinea, Cameroon, Congo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso etc). Did Mali’s abstention, and those of the Central African Republic (CAR), and of a couple of other west African states (Guinea, Togo), represent the vanguard of anti-colonialism and this great surge of support for Russia replacing France?

The problem with one imperialist country replacing another is that initial welcome can easily become its opposite when the new power acts the same or worse. In the case of Mali and Central African Republic (CAR) in particular, the fact that this survey was before 2022 not only concerns the global crash in support for Russia following its invasion; it also concerns the Russian-backed dictatorships showing their horrifically brutal fangs in 2022.

Last November, the ‘All Eyes on Wagner’ group linked the Russian Wagner paramilitary force operating in Mali to at least 23 incidents of human rights abuse since the 2020 coup, but the biggest massacres took place in March 2022, when the Malian military, backed by Wagner, executed some 300 civilians in small groups over several days in the town of Moura.

Similarly, in the Central African Republic (CAR), Wagner mercenaries “enlisted to counter rebels since 2018 have abducted, tortured and killed people on an ‘unabated and unpunished’ basis,” according to a UN report, which also claimed a Russian company linked to Wagner “secured gold and diamond mining licenses.” But once again, it was in March 2022 when the brutality hit a peak, when Wagner mercenaries in the CAR carried out a series of massacres around the site of a gold mine in the Andaha region, killing more than 100 gold miners from Sudan, Chad, Niger and CAR.

Wagner began operating in Africa in 2017, invited initially by Sudanese tyrant Omar al-Bashir, who told Putin that Sudan was Russia’s “key to Africa”.  In Sudan, Wagner secured gold mining concessions, and this lucrative business then spread to other countries of the region. This led to fierce competition with French imperialism in west Africa, but Russia’s need for gold greatly increased following its invasion of Ukraine and imposition of western sanctions, a likely factor in the upturn on violent repression.

One wonders what the slaughtered villagers and gold-miners would think of the assertions floating around the western left that the abstention votes in the UN by their ruling Russian-backed dictators in Mali, CAR and Sudan represented their “anti-colonial” views, or simply the views of these dictators ruling Russian neo-colonies via the Nazi-linked Wagner plunderers and killers?

Meanwhile, another government which has twice abstained on these UN votes is that of Ethiopia, which has been waging a genocidal war against the people of Tigray for two years, killing some 600,000 people, a horrific crime ignored by the world. If its abstention also signifies a pro-Russian orientation, is it really the voice of anti-colonial liberation? When the regime also has “seemingly unconditional American praise and support”? Did someone ask if its victims got a vote on their killers’ UN vote? And its ally, the Eritrean dictatorship, which the Ethiopian regime invited into its country help it kill its own Tigrayan citizens because it knew it would do so with a vengeance, is the only African state to actually vote against the UN resolution in February; hardly surprising that the only country declaring itself 100 percent in the Russian camp is widely regarded as one of the world’s worst dictatorships, a one-man dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerki, “subjecting its population to widespread forced labor and conscription … with no legislature, no independent civil society organizations or media outlets, and no independent judiciary,” where elections have never been held since independence in 1993. 

In fact, while it may be drawing a slightly long bow, the claim in this Conversation article – that the minority of African states that abstained from condemning the Russian invasion or annexations are largely dictatorships (with the exception of South Africa), ie, the regimes most removed from any popular pressure, and vice versa – is not so far from the truth. Certainly there are exceptions – Egypt’s bloody al-Sisi dictatorship voted with the majority, but in fact it falls into the same camp as its Saudi and Emirati allies, ie, making the “correct” vote by Washington while doing everything to maintain its ties to Moscow; indeed, the long-planned construction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant by Russia got underway in July.

India

As we know, Modi’s India, which has close ties to both Putin’s Russia and to the US – seeing its main rival to be China – abstained on the UN resolutions and has maintained strong ties with Russia. For Modi, this is not only about traditional Russia-India ties, playing Russia against China and, once again, the global positioning of a BRICS sub-imperialist bourgeoisie, but also – as with Bolsonaro in Brazil – deeply ideological, Modi’s Hindu-supremacist BJP being strongly aligned with Putin’s far-right international.

_{Putin hugs with far-right chauvinist Indian co-thinker Narendra Modi: friendly cooperation in empire-building; that “war on terror” stuff George Bush came up with been real useful along the way.}

This ideological commitment to Russia is more entrenched the further to the right one goes. Shortly after the invasion was launched, members of extreme-right Hindu Sena demontsrated in support of Putin and the invasion. Demonstrators held signs reading “Russia, you fight, we are with you” and some called for an “undivided Russia.” Hindu Sena president Vishnu Gupta even advocated that India put “boots on the ground” to support Russia. Indeed, the concept of ‘Akhand Bharat’, “which envisions the entire Indian subcontinent, stretching from Afghanistan to Myanmar, as belonging to a single, “undivided” nation with India at its core,” is supported by many on the Hindu-chauvinist far-right, strongly reminiscent of the Putinite and Duginite views that former parts of the Russian Empire all belong to Russia.

As the head of a Hindu-supremacist regime that has engaged in open violence against Indian Muslims, and of a deeply socially-chauvinist regime in a country where billionaires today grow on trees while India boasts the greatest number of absolute poor in the world, it is surely extraordinary that many “leftists” and even “socialists” would claim that Modi’s pro-Putin politics is somehow representative of the anti-colonial traditions of Modi’s brutally oppressed and impoverished subjects. “Most of the world” abstained, we hear, not just from common clueless liberals, but from those professing a class analysis, because between them India and China already make up two-fifths of the world!

It is somewhat difficult to discern Indian views on the conflict, and in such a large and diverse country the likelihood of polls capturing much of value is small. From what we have though, an Ipsos poll conducted in May found that, on the one hand, 6 in 10 Indians supported India maintaining relations with Russia and opposed India imposing economic sanctions, yet the same poll found that 77% of Indians believed that the economic sanctions imposed by others were “an effective tactic for stopping the war” and 7 in 10 believe “doing nothing in Ukraine will embolden Russia to take the war to the rest of Europe and Asia.” In a Blackbox Research survey in March, only four per cent of Indian respondents said they had a positive image of Moscow (and only eight per cent in China), and 91 percent in India said they supported or sympathised with Ukraine (compared to an also surprisingly high 71 percent in China). Some 60 percent of Indians blamed Russia for the conflict, though only 10 percent in China did.

While difficult to know what all these polls prove, at face value they suggest that, despite some ambivalence, overall Indian people are more critical of Russia and sympathetic to Ukraine than the Modi regime. Where support for Russia and the government’s position seems apparently strong is on social media, probably representing largely upper middle class Indian views. It is interesting to see what their views are based on; but from this analysis, “anti-colonialist consciousness” does not even get a mention. Rather, it is all about the “historic ties” between India and Russia (ie, blatant geopolitics), the fact that Russia is India’s major arms supplier, and in order to stop Russia from bending too far towards China, which India sees as its chief sub-imperial rival, despite both being part of the ‘BRICS’ framework. And all those masses of advanced weaponry that India buys from Russia are not aimed at fighting … British colonialism, but China, Pakistan, the occupied Kashmiris and so on.

How ironic that India’s pro-Russian position on the war could be considered part of an “anti-colonial” or “anti-imperialist” position when the Russian weaponry, if aimed at China, is done so within the framework of India’s anti-China ‘Quad’ alliance with the US, Australia and Japan.

China

As noted above, “between them India and China already make up two-fifths of the world” is a hipster-leftist meme that implies the abstentions of the BJP and CCP regimes represent their entire exploited and oppressed populations. 

As with India, we don’t want to put too much store in surveys of relatively small numbers of people in a country of 1.4 billion; and in the case of China, discerning popular views is made more difficult by the almost total monopoly on media – including social media – by the regime; aside from North Korea, few countries in the world are as effective at suppressing independent social media as is China.

The Blackbox survey cited above for India also contains some alleged views from China. The survey found that a mere 8 percent of respondents had a positive image of Moscow, and a surprisingly high 71 percent in China said they supported or sympathised with Ukraine; on the other hand, only 10 percent of Chinese respondents blamed Russia for the conflict, dramatically lower than in India. What to make of this contradiction is unclear, especially given the context noted above, but we can make some general points.

Firstly, would it be logical to assume that the colonised Tibetan masses, or the largely Muslim, Turkic Uyghur, population of Xin Jiang, where a million people are subject to internment in forced assimilation facilities are likely to hold similar views to the Han-chauvinist regime? In a country which now boasts 1185 billionaires, more than the US, where “the net worth of the 153 members of China’s Parliament and its advisory body that it deems ‘super rich’ amounts to $650 billion,” how likely is it that the brutally exploited, permanently insecure, floating population of rural-to-urban-to-rural migrant workers – one fifth of China’s population upon whose backs China’s “miracle” has been built – would tend to agree with their exploiters? Or that the CCP bureaucracy would “reflect” their views?

Secondly, does anyone really believe that China’s policy – on one hand, abstaining in UN votes and blaming ‘NATO’, on the other, continually sending pointed signals that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine, must be respected” – “reflects” anything other than the policy of an assertive new imperialist power? In his first trip abroad after the pandemic, to Kazakistan – a former Soviet republic with a large Russian minority – Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered “strong support to Kazakhstan in protecting its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Despite the Russian ‘alliance’, Russia is inevitably also an imperialist rival, and China prefers Russia in the position of vassal rather than equal, a position Putin has offered up on a plate with his disastrous Ukraine invasion. Kazakistan and the other central Asian states now see China, rather than Russia, as their key security guarantor. Xi’s major coup, the lavish state visit to Saudi Arabia in December, during which the two countries signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” and Chinese and Saudi firms signed 34 investment deals, represented a major move into traditional American and more recently Russian territory; China was confident enough to declare itself in support of mainstream Gulf Arab positions as against both Israeli and Iranian positions, while expecting no issues with its strong relations with both those states as well.  Xi declared the visit a “defining event in the history of Chinese-Arab relations.” Meanwhile, with Putin’s invasion leading to the rupture of the enormous Russian-German economic relationship and the collapse of Nordstream, Germany opened the way for a major Chinese shipping group to buy a large stake in the strategic port of Hamburg.

It would be foolhardy to confuse the clear and assertive policy choices of a rising imperialist power with some kind of ‘anti-colonial’ consciousness of ‘a fifth of the world’s population’.

_{Xi Jinping and MBS: Strategic partnership for anti-imperialism … err …}

Iran

The mullah regime in Iran has, like China, consistently abstained on UN resolutions condemning Russia, while at the same time holding back from support for the invasion, which goes against Iran’s dogma of allegedly being against invasions (after its experience of being invaded by Iraq), especially when involving “great powers”, due to its own experience of being sanctioned by the US. We can leave aside the obvious hypocrisy here – ie, Iran’s massive interventions in Iraq and especially Syria, bolstering Assad’s genocide regime – because that is “explained” as “defending Syria,” whereas a blatant invasion cannot be explained away like that.

Unlike China, however, Iran has become more directly involved on Russia’s side in killing Ukrainian civilians with its supply of killer-drones to Russia.

Can Iran’s position be explained as a reflection of the “anti-imperialist consciousness” of the Iranian masses, due to decades of US bullying? In other words, does the position of the blood-drenched mullocracy “reflect” the views of ordinary Iranian people, such as the youth and women who have been out in the streets for months protesting the reactionary dictatorship, and who the regime has been gunning down and hanging? How likely is such an idea, at least to anyone with an inkling of class analysis?

Not much, it seems. According to a poll of 1014 people in June-July by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and IranPoll, since the onset of Russia’s invasion, favourable views of Russia have dropped from a slight majority of 56% to a minority of 40%, while unfavouable views of Russia have surged from 42% to 57%, including 32% who now hold “a very unfavorable view.” This should not be seen as contradicting the fact that the vast majority still hold a highly unfavourable view of the US. While 28% chose an overriding statement that Russia had acted in legitimate self-defence, double that number, a clear majority of 55%, chose a statement that Russia is violating the principle that no country should invade another.  Specifically on who was to blame for the war, Russia and the West came out about equally, while very few blamed Ukraine.

Iran’s intervention via killer-drones thus goes against the mass of Iranian opinion, and has even led to high-level criticism, with thirty-five former Iranian diplomats issuing a call for Iran to declare neutrality, and strongly criticising this intervention. Iran itself claims the drones Russia is using were sent before the war began, and claims it has sent no new drones since – whatever the truth, it indicates how embarrassing Iran’s actual position is.

Far from representing “popular anti-imperialist opinion,” Iran’s pro-Russia intervention is a high-risk strategy adopted by a sub-imperial power. Like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and Argentina, Iran is a BRICS candidate state, and it operates within this framework of sub-imperial rivalry. Iran hopes to swing Russia to its side in its shadow war with Israel in Syria; for years now, Russia, which operates Assad’s anti-aircraft system, has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah positions as long as it avoids hitting the Syrian regime. Russia, for its part, in accepting Iranian drones, risks moving Israel to a pro-Ukrainian position.

Yet, to date, neither change has occurred. On the contrary, citing its Ukraine military needs, Russia withdrew its S-300 anti-aircraft system from Syria in August, seemingly leaving the field even more open to Israeli bombs, while also reportedly demanding Iranian forces leave western Syria (ie, the side closer to Israel). However, Israeli bombing has markedly declined in recent months, since the signing of its Mediterranean gas demarcation agreement with a Lebanese government which includes Hezbollah. And there are no signs yet of a change in the Israeli position, with Israel abstaining on a UN resolution calling for Russian reparations to Ukraine, and Ukraine voting in support of anti-Israel and pro-Palestine UN resolutions countless recent times.

Whatever the case with this interesting sub-imperial geopolitical positioning, it is clearly unrelated to the views of the Iranian regimes enemies, ie, its people, those being gunned down in the streets.

_{Iranian & Turkish despots Khameini & Erdogan with Putin: still more strategic alliances for … anti-imperialism!}

Palestine

One country where we might expect the pervasive hypocrisy of western governments to be so overwhelming that a majority may adopt a pro-Russian position simply out of somewhat justified spite would be Palestine. While such a position would not be justified, it would be somewhat understandable and difficult for most of the world to criticise without further engaging in rank hypocrisy. It would be even more understandable given Ukrainian president Zelensky’s sickening pro-Israeli statements, which look all the more pathetic given Israel’s steadfast refusal to lend Ukraine a hand.

So when we read that in a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in April, the high figure of 32.3 percent of Palestinians believed Russia had a right to invade, we are perhaps not surprised. However, the problem is that a greater number – 40.2% – believed    that “Russia is waging an unjust war against its neighbour.” The poll of 1014 people was conducted with Palestinians living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. In other words, although the western governments backing Ukraine with a host of advanced weaponry to resist the illegal and barbaric Russian invasion prefer to condemn every act of justified Palestinian resistance to the illegal and barbaric Israeli occupation and instead arm Israel to the teeth and give diplomatic cover to even its most flagrant violations, still the humanity of Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle shines through strongly enough for the largest part of the population to identify with another victim of a similar war of colonial dispossession and extermination. Western leftists need to remember that Palestinians are people, not just their ‘project’; they are just as capable as other people of weighing complex issues.

After all, Putin’s white nationalist regime is not exactly any great friend of the Palestinians, with Putin famously declaring “I support the struggle of Israel” during Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge blitzkrieg against Gaza, which killed over 2,300 Palestinians while some 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled. From the time Russia began terror-bombing Syrian civilians to save Assad in 2015, Putin and Israeli prime minister and Likud leader, Zionist extremist Benjamin Netanyahu, never stopped having high level meetings – Netanyahu met with Putin more than with any other world leader. In 2018, Netanyahu was one of only two world leaders standing next to Putin in Red Square commemorating the 73^rd anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany, alongside Serbia’s Alexander Vucic. Netanyahu even produced a massive billboard showing himself with Putin for the 2019 elections.

_{Putin and BFF Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu: Who else would you invite to the 60th anniversary of the Red Army’s victory than the ethnic cleanser of Palestine? Let’s shake on a little illegal occupation between friends}

Ireland

While Ireland may not be conventionally seen as part of the ‘Global South’, it is after all a former colony, for hundreds of years, of Britain – indeed the ongoing British control of Ulster can be likened to the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘republics’ carved out of Ukraine by its former colonial master.

Sinn-Fein, Ireland’s largest party, with its history of resistance to British colonialism, has declared its unequivocal support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russian colonialism at its Ard Fheis (congress) on November 5, 2022, declaring that “The Ard Fheis unequivocally condemns any form of imperialism or colonial aggression; we oppose the denial of national self-determination and all violations of national sovereignty throughout the world, without exception; ee affirm that the rule of international law must be emphasized and reinforced, respectful of the exercise of national self-determination, sovereignty and democracy in all nations.” Sinn Fein therefore demands:

• The total cessation of the war in Ukraine;
• The complete restoration of the national sovereignty of Ukraine;
• The immediate withdrawal of all Russian armed forces;
• The maintenance of all political or economic sanctions until these objectives are achieved.

Sinn Fein’s democratic vote would seem to be more representative of the views of a formerly colonised people than abstentions by Modi’s violently chauvinist regime in India, its rival Pakistan, China’s one-party state carrying out forced assimilation against a million people in its internal colony Xinjiang, the bloody Iranian mullahs currently gunning down the women-led uprising, the brutal Wagner-backed dictatorships in Mali and CAR and the like. Also worth noting that “The Ard Fheis’s keynote speaker was Omar Bargouthi, a founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which Sinn Fein supports,” in other words, Sinn Fein are consistent in their approach.

Sinn Féin also “unequivocally condemn[ed] the illegal annexation of four regions in Ukraine by Russia,” calling it a “gross violation of international law.”

Comment on global surveys

The above relies on a somewhat eclectic variety of national or supranational surveys and it is difficult to vouch for the degree of validity and reliability without significantly deeper research. However, it is difficult to find any better tentative data, and certainly none at all that suggests any groundswell of support for Russia and its invasion, in the Global South of anywhere else. Despite their significant differences, every survey indicates that majorities around the world condemn the Russian invasion, are sympathetic to Ukraine and have a rather low opinion of Russia; they also all indicate quite strongly that, whatever the situation before 2022, approval of Russia and Putin has crashed everywhere in the world since the invasion.

This is also backed up by global surveys. For example, an Open Society survey carried out in 22 countries in July and August, covering 21,000 people, two thirds of whom live in the Global South, found “strong and widespread support” for the view that peace requires Russia to “withdraw from all parts of Ukrainian territory it currently controls.” Majorities in nearly all countries held this view, the exceptions being Senegal (46 percent), India (44 percent), Indonesia (30 percent), and Serbia (12 percent). Among the countries with the strongest support for this view were Kenya (81%), Nigeria (71%), Brazil (68%), Columbia (67%) – all higher than in the US, Japan, France and Germany – and South Africa (59%). Any difference between populations of the North and South were comprehensively absent.

A partial contrast was provided by an Ipsos survey of 19,000 people in 27 countries in March and April, but this focused not so much on attitudes but on what action should be taken, with questions related to sanctions, ‘getting involved militarily’, taking some kind of unspecified ‘action’, taking Ukrainian refugees and so on. In this case, it is not surprising that the higher levels of support for some kind of action were in Europe, and to a lesser extent the US. The Ukraine war is, after all, in Europe; and western countries can obviously better afford both military support, and withstanding the impact of sanctions, than can poorer countries. However, what confuse the ‘anti-imperialist’ argument in this case was that the countries where the largest numbers were against any kind of ‘action’ or ‘interference’ included Hungary, the European state led by the intensely far-right Orban government, Israel, widely considered an extreme outpost of western imperialism, the Saudi monarchy, often considered (somewhat incorrectly) as an unreconstructed US-client regime, and Turkey, a NATO member. Indeed, the assertion that “doing nothing in Ukraine will encourage Russia to take further military action” received the lowest support among the 27 countries in Israel and Hungary, the only countries voting below 50 percent for this view (compared to 71 percent in India, for example). Reality can be rather difficult for campist “thinking.”

Sub-imperialism

I wrote above, in relation to the relatively powerful states leading the abstention or otherwise ambivalent party on Russia’s horrific imperialist war of conquest against Ukraine:

“Rather, what these countries and governments have in common – China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel – is their sub-imperialist (or in some cases arguably imperialist) nature. Far from their positions on the war reflecting any “anti-colonial” consciousness of their people (or reflecting their oppressed and exploited peoples at all), they rather reflect the geopolitical positioning, their global bargaining position, between US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialism, taking advantage of the war to assert their own sub-imperial interests, regional influence and conquests, and oppressive rule over internal and local colonies.”

Patrick Bond , Ana Garcia , Miguel Borba describe “sub-imperial” powers as “featuring the super-exploitation of their working classes, predatory relations regarding their hinterlands, and collaboration (although tensioned) with imperialism, especially as intermediaries in the transfer of both surplus labor values and “free gifts of nature” (unequal ecological exchange) from South to North.” Bond cites John Smith that “dependent economies like Brazil seek to compensate for the drain of wealth to the imperialist centres by developing their own exploitative relationships with even more underdeveloped and peripheral neighbouring economies,” and David Harvey who notes that “each developing centre of capital accumulation sought out systematic spatio-temporal fixes for its own surplus capital by defining territorial spheres of influence.”

But by attempting to carve out such “territorial spheres of influence,” their collaboration with global imperialist powers will also be punctuated by bouts of competition, as their minor exploitative aspirations sometimes come into conflict with the exploitative needs of larger global powers. This “tensioned collaboration” with imperialism was called by leading dependency theorist Ruy Mauro Marini “antagonistic cooperation.” According to Harvey, as the opening of the global market “created openings” for new large regional states “to insert themselves into the global economy.” But “they then became competitors on the world stage.” Importantly, though, becoming (partial) competitors does not make them in any sense “anti-imperialist,” but, on the contrary, these larger centers of economic and military power within the Global South have “aspirations to follow Western expansionary precedents, using instruments of (corporate-oriented) multilateral power.”

It is not surprising that a moment of global crisis such as that ushered in by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is precisely a perfect moment for a large string of sub-imperial powers to assert themselves, to position, to use the crisis to improve their bargaining position in relation to US and European imperialism – even those often most often considered “western allies” – and, at the same time, with now decrepit Russian, and also globally ascendant Chinese, imperialism; a moment when all are under pressure to do some kind of deal to get them onside.

While this is not the final word on the causes of the abstention and/or effective neutrality or even pro-Russian orientation of a large number of powerful ruling classes in the Global South, it is a far better explanation than the one which tries to claim the vast billions of people of the Global South as their “anti-colonial” project, alleging they are a multi-billion mass of group-think. In this alternative scenario, their ruling elites – those responsible for the “super-exploitation” of these working classes, and of the peoples in the “even more underdeveloped and peripheral neighbouring economies,” are merely reflecting this allegedly “anti-colonial” consciousness of those they oppress and exploit, who in turn naturally support this global stance of their oppressors and exploiters. As we have seen, this is not only inherently illogical, and in conflict with even the most basic concept of class analysis, but also at odds with most of the empirical evidence of popular opinion in the South.

by Michael Karadjis, October 2022

Interesting that in a 37-minute speech to justify Russia’s brazen annexation of four regions of Ukraine, Putin didn’t mention “Nazis” or “de-Nazification” once, these silly tropes that some gullible western lefties believed. Instead, it was all about the glories of 1000 years Imperial Russia, while appealing to the most reactionary segments of western society with a lot of mystical, religious, traditionalist nonsense like the following:

“They [ie, the western globalists] have already moved on to the radical denial of moral, religious, and family values. Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. Now I would like to return to what I said and want to address also all citizens of the country – not just the colleagues that are in the hall – but all citizens of Russia: do we want to have here, in our country, in Russia, “parent number one, parent number two and parent number three” (they have completely lost it!) instead of mother and father? Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery? Is that what we want for our country and our children? This is all unacceptable to us. We have a different future of our own. … This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people, and not only in our country but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself.”

Indeed, the West is guilty of ‘Satanism’ and all these crimes against traditional religion and morality, and therefore … Russia should annex 15 percent of Ukraine! Because these regions are allegedly populated by Russians (well, most of the population are not ethnic Russians, but the majority of the population have been violently expelled or massacred) and it is the great historic mission of the glorious Russian Nation to lead the Crusade against this moral degeneracy of western society. If Putin thus sounds like any typical far-right US Christian fundamentalist or Trumpist or 21^st century European fascist it is no accident, nor is it anything new for anyone watching: Putin has positioned his regime as head of the global far-right for many years now. Not just all this ‘moral’ bullshit, but also on the question of race, nation and ‘civilisation’; for many years he has espoused a version of ‘Great Replacement’ theory, warning the white race and European and Christian culture that it was in danger of disappearing due to immigration of lots of non-Europeans into the European heartland. No wonder he dropped the crap about fighting “Nazis” in Ukraine; while it might have fooled some lefties, his main audience were and are the western far-right, who probably found it a little confusing, especially all those Nazis everywhere in the world who have been waving the Putin flag for years.

If Putin’s hard authoritarian but ‘parliamentary’ state is still far from fascist in its rule inside Russia (as opposed to its murderous colonial rule in Donbas), Putinism is, nevertheless, fascist ideologically. That’s why it’s no surprise that Putin here quotes a genuine historical Russian fascist, Ivan Ilyin, who Putin calls a “true patriot,” with a lot of mysticism about “the spiritual strength of the Russian people.” That’s why today’s leading Russian fascist high priest, Alexander Dugin, praised Putin’s speech to the sky, proclaiming “This is a manifesto of Tradition. I can’t imagine how profound the consequences are. It was an eschatological, religious speech”

This goes together well with the glorification of The Russian Nation and Empire, the centrepiece of his speech he continually returned to. “The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia. (Applause.) For the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls.”

While we sometimes hear that Putin wants to restore the USSR, he made it abundantly clear he wanted nothing of the sort. After denouncing the ‘elites’ who dissolved it, he explained “But it doesn’t matter now. … Actually, Russia no longer needs it today; this isn’t our ambition. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who, by their culture, religion, traditions, and language, consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single country for centuries.” Of course, Putin liked the size and shape of the USSR, because it was a very large country where countless other nations and ethnicities were dominated by The Russian Nation; but that had already existed for centuries before the USSR as the Tsarist Russian Empire, Putin’s ideal, his speech full of glorification of Tsars like Catherine the Great, talk of ‘Novorossiya’, the Tsarist Empire’s name for its colonisation of Ukrainian lands, and so on. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, still contained the fiction of an equal union of republics, of peoples, in its name, and that is what Putin hates, has been railing against for years, the original sin of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in recognising the right of self-determination of Ukraine and the other subject peoples of the old Russian Empire, as Putin here denounces “the [Bolshevik] government quietly demarcated the borders of Soviet republics, acting behind the scenes after the 1917 revolution.”

It’s true that this hard right and medievalist ideological rant was peppered with nods to the western left and the former colonial world with his denunciations of western imperialism. Putin quite rightly denounces the West for “the worldwide slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India and Africa, the wars of England and France against China,” for the “exterminat[ion of] entire ethnic groups for the sake of grabbing land and resources” and so on. Yet he somehow manages to omit the fact that Tsarist Russia was in every sense a key participant in these centuries of colonial expansion, plunder and extermination; the fact that Russian colonialism expanded by land, subjugating nations and ethnicities from the Black Sea to the Caucasus, central Asia and Siberia, rather than by sea, is irrelevant. Indeed, in the 19^th century Marx and Engels considered the Russian Empire to be at the very centre of reaction in Europe. Putin does complete somersaults with reality by imagining a centuries-old ‘Russophobia’ by some imaginary collective ‘West’ (for most of these centuries Britain and France were mainly at war with each other, and with other Western states, at least one of which was always aligned with Tsarist Russia) that allegedly wanted to make Russia one of its colonies, but Russia resisted this “by creating a strong centralised state,” ie that of the Tsars.

Indeed it is only due to this Russian colonialism, carried out by this “strong centralised state,” that Ukraine (’Novorossya’) came to be under Russian control (aided in the 20^th century by Stalin’s Holodomor in the 1930s, when 4 million Ukrainians were starved to death while its borders were sealed to prevent the starving escaping); and it was only due to Russian colonisation of Crimea and dispossession of its Indigenous Tatar population, finalised once again by Stalin’s genocidal expulsion of the entire Tatar population in the 1940s, that Putin was even able to conduct the previous fake “referendum” under military occupation there in 2014.

Somehow, Putin thinks a good way to fight centuries of imperialism is to be ultra-imperialist, to invade a country and conquer great chunks of it; from the start, this war had nothing to do with NATO, with “Nazis” or any other such nonsense, but has been entirely a war of pure and simple imperialist conquest, of the Black Sea coastline with its vast natural resources and strategic position.

These new “referendums” again take place under brutal military occupation, where those who “vote” essentially have guns to their heads; when the majority of the population of Donbas have fled or been driven out and hence get no “vote” (indeed half the population was already in exile before February, having fled during Russia’s occupation of parts of Donbas in 2014-22); after the Russian military have savagely bombed the Donbas populations for months; where there was not a single instance of Donbas crowds welcoming the Russian invaders as “liberators”; where no polls over the last 8 years have ever shown significant support for joining Russia; where ethnic Russians were just over a third of the population in two of the regions, and considerably less in the other two; and and even then, there is no way of knowing what the actual votes were, even given these entirely manipulated and violent conditions – they are almost certainly pure concoctions, as are all “votes” in “referendums” and “elections” throughout the world under dictatorship, terror and occupation.

Yet some people who should know better have been giving this murderous farce and blatant land theft the benefit of the doubt. We are expected to believe that those that Russia has been bombing into oblivion for months just voted to join their torturer. No doubt, as per Putin, out of fear of the West’s Satanism and gender-bending practices

_{Cataclysmic destruction of Russian-speaking Ukrainian city Mariupol by Russian invasion; Putin claims, ironically, that his invasion aims to “liberate” these people from “genocide”.}

By Michael Karadjis

We’ve all heard it time and time again. Whether it is an argument in support of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, or just as often, opposed to it but claiming both sides are equally at fault, we hear that that “the Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.”

Here’s just one example among thousands of examples regurgitated, with never a simple fact-check, all over the left and right media: According to pro-Putin writer Max Parry, “For what the late Edward S. Herman called the ‘cruise missile Left,’ the 14,000 ethnic Russians killed in Donbass by the Ukrainian army since 2014 are ‘unworthy victims,’ as Herman and Noam Chomsky defined the notion in Manufacturing Consent.”

The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have over-reacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.  

Therefore, even many of those who oppose the Russian invasion equally oppose the Ukrainian resistance, and in particular its receipt of arms, because if Ukraine gets the upper hand, it will just continue to do to the “ethnic Russians” what it was previously doing, the same as what Russia is now doing to “the Ukrainians.”

While not quite as colourful as Putin’s claim that Ukraine was committing “genocide” against the ethnic Russians in Donbas, these claims are nevertheless serious and merit clear examination.

…………………………………………………

Let’s look at the claim again:

“The Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.”

Is any of this true?

Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?

“The Ukrainian army killed.”

Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.

For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?

“ethnic Russians”

Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.

But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians. In reality, according to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the numbers killed in Donbas from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021were:

4,400 Ukrainian troops

6,500 Russia—owned separatist troops

3,404 civilians

So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021.

However, what about the last part:

“between 2014 and 2022.”

Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.

But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.

In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. Let’s just look at the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022.

The OSCE report ‘Civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine 2016’ shows there were 88 fatalities in 2016, including 37 from landmines, unexploded ordinance etc.

The OSCE report on civilian casualties covering 2017 to September 2020 shows 161 fatalities over those almost 4 years, of which the majority (81) were from landmines, unexploded ordinance etc. Note that both sides lay landmines; indeed, the UN has characterised the Donbas as one of the most mine-contaminated areas in the world.

The year by year figures were 87 fatalities in 2017, 43 in 2018, 19 in 2019, and 12 to September 2020.

The OSCE report as of 11 January 2021 reports “The total number of civilian casualties in 2020 stands at 128: 23 fatalities and 105 injuries.”

The OSCE Status Report as of 13 December 2021 reports “since the beginning of 2021, the SMM has confirmed 88 civilian casualties (16 fatalities and 72 injured)” in 2021.

Of these 16 fatalities in 2021, 11 were from the first half of 2021: according to the OSCE Status Report as of 14 June 2021, “Over the past two weeks, the SMM corroborated four civilian casualties, all injuries due to explosive objects. This brings the total number of civilian casualties that occurred since the beginning of 2021 to 37 (11 fatalities and 26 injuries). Again, the majority of the casualties (27) were due to mines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive objects.”

Meanwhile, the weekly OSCE Status Report as of 6 September 2021 reported “a fatality, bringing the total number of confirmed civilian casualties since the beginning of 2021 to 62 (15 fatalities and 47 injuries).” Hence, of the 5 fatalities in the second half of the year, 4 were before September.

From these three 2021 reports, we see a continual decline in fatalities in Donbas: 11 in January-June, 4 in June-September, 1 in September-December.

This trend continued into 2022. The OSCE Status Report as of 7 February 2022 reports “The Mission corroborated reports of a civilian casualty: a 56-year-old man suffering a leg injury as a result of small-arms fire on 29 January 2022 in the western part of non-government-controlled Oleksandrivka, Donetsk region. This is the first civilian casualty corroborated by the Mission in 2022.” In other words, to 7 February 2022, 2 weeks before the Russian invasion, there had been zero fatalities in Donbas in 2022.

Therefore, this is the trend in what Putin calls the “genocide” of the ethnic Russians in Donbas, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides:

2016 – 88 deaths

2017 – 87 deaths

2018 – 43 deaths

2019 – 19 deaths

2020 – 23 deaths

2021 – 16 deaths, including:

– 11 deaths (Jan-June)

– 4 deaths (June-Sep)

– 1 death (Sep-Dec)

2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).

As we can see, the rate of death has continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.

The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.

But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.

…………………………………………………………….

The aim of this is not to let the Ukrainian government and army off the hook. Both the Ukrainian army and the Russian-backed separatist militia have committed war crimes (mostly in 2014-15), all of which should be condemned.

There is also room for criticism of the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s virulent Ukrainian nationalism, as a major factor leading to opposition among parts of the Russian-speaking population in the east; the fact that the Maidan was confronted by an anti-Maidan in the east was in itself an entirely valid expression of democratic protest. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed militia, armed by Russia, involving the direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weaponry, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine.

Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, has admitted that it was he who pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”

Simon Pirani argues that neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary as they often are by different people, and in fact the “social aspirations” of the two “were very close,” but “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”

It is important to understand that the Donbas is ethnically mixed; according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians form 58% of the population of Luhansk and 56.9% of Donetsk; the ethnic Russian minority accounts for 39% and 38.2% of the two regions respectively. How ironic that Putin supporters justify the flagrant Russian annexation of Crimea by pointing to the 58% ethnic Russian majority there, when Ukrainians are the same size majority in Donbas! The ethnic Ukrainian population is then evenly divided between primary Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers, but language does not equal ethnicity, and neither language nor ethnicity equal political opinion.

Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin found that in the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia, the majority against. Of the majority against, some 30% supported some kind of autonomy, while a quarter wanted no special status. But in the Ukraine government controlled two-thirds of Donbas, while the same percentage (around 30%) favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just being in Ukraine with no special status (almost none supported joining Russia). Even this should not be read to mean that, therefore, the chunks seized by the separatists are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation – given the dispossession of literally half the Donbas population, it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones.

Hence neither ethnic composition nor opinion shows the two Donbas provinces are “Russian” regions that favour separation or even necessarily autonomy; they are very mixed in all aspects. The borders of the bits that have been seized therefore (the fake ‘republics’) are entirely arbitrary – there was no basis for these seizures in terms of any “act of self-determination;” and since the armed conflict took off after these seizures, neither can the seizures and the militarisation be justified as necessary armed defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan which had not taken place.

The foreign-backed militarisation of the anti-Maidan on the one hand polarised views on the edges, while on the other driving away the middle, including a large part of the original anti-Maidan civilian population; and the more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian, political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any genuine expression of valid opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies. Alienation from this reality, combined with the war itself, led to literally half the population fleeing Donbas – 3.3 million of the original population of 6.6 million – either to other parts of Ukraine (the majority), or to Russia or Belarus.  

In this context, it was entirely expected that the Ukrainian armed forces would attempt to regain these regions conquered by separatist militia backed by a foreign power; and ‘valid’ in terms of international law, regardless of one’s views on how Ukraine conducted it. Of course, one may well criticise Ukraine’s reliance on purely military means to regain these regions with complex ethnic/regional issues, almost inevitable given that its virulent Ukrainian nationalist stance precluded a more political approach. But to lay the majority of blame on this military response rather than the foreign-backed military aggression it was responding to is hardly logical.

Whatever the case, and whatever one’s views on the relative responsibility of the two sides over these years, the continual and decisive reduction of fatalities, injuries and ceasefire violations between 2015 and 2022 – from 3128 civilian fatalities in 2014-2015 to 0 in early 2022 – puts the lie to not only Putin’s claim that his bloody invasion, with its countless thousands of deaths, millions uprooted and cataclysmic destruction, was in response to “genocide” of “ethnic Russians,” but also to the more subtle plague on both your houses case that the Ukrainian army was waging a relentless war against “ethnic Russians” in Donbas.

Sunday 22 May 2022, by KARADJIS Michael

As Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s horrific aggression and attempt to conquer and annex the south and east of the country, the quantity of arms being supplied to Ukraine by the United States and other western countries has steadily increased. As the country and people suffering from this naked imperialist aggression, the Ukrainians have every right to receive weapons from whoever wants to send them, regardless of the aims of those countries doing so, or the extraordinary hypocrisy of these imperialist powers.

However, much leftist commentary has increasingly seen this supply of arms as evidence of the war becoming a “proxy” war in which Ukraine, rather than fighting for its very existence, is essentially just acting as cat’s paw for an alleged US imperialist aim of waging “war against Russia,” perhaps even aiming to “Balkanise” Russia. A quick review of some left media just the last couple of days brings up an article that labels the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “U.S. war against Russia” which “threatens world peace;” while even in Socialist Worker, which strongly condemns the Russian invasion and certainly cannot be accused of softness on Putinism, we can read that “today any element of a war of liberation against Russian imperialism is wholly subsumed by, and subordinated to, Nato’s war on Russia.”

An important part of this discourse is the claim that supplying arms goes against the importance of “negotiations,”, which allegedly the US and western states are vetoing, along with the assertion that the US aim is to “weaken” Russia rather than just help Ukraine. Some of this is based on a number of ‘gotcha’ moments when one or another representative of the US ruling class said something a little out of line. Yet a serious analysis will demonstrate that these assumptions and alleged dichotomies have no basis in reality, and the more serious US imperial analysts highlight interests and fears that not only show the ‘gotcha’ moments have little to do with western policy, but ultimately state very similar fears to many of these leftist analysts regarding the potential for a dangerously destabilised Russia resulting from a loss of Russian ‘credibility’, and therefore advocate rather similar limits to US support and stress on negotiations.

‘Negotiations’ versus war?

Writing in Counterpunch on April 29, Richard Rubenstein asks: “If Putin now offered a ceasefire in order to negotiate the status of the Donbass republics and to assert other Russian needs and interests, would the U.S. and Ukraine be justified in refusing to talk in order to punish or “weaken” him?” And answers: “Of course not!”

There is just so much unreality in all these discussions that begin with such statements. “Would the US and Ukraine be justified”? The US and Ukraine are two different countries. What the US does is one thing, but Ukraine is under invasion and occupation. Ukraine is fighting for its existence. If it decides it wants to fight on in order to get as much of its country back as it can and to thus have a stronger position at the bargaining table, that is up to Ukraine, not the US or western leftists. If Ukraine decides it cannot handle the superior Russian firepower any longer and is forced to sign a ceasefire with humiliating conditions, that is up to Ukraine, not up to the US or western leftists. Ukraine’s decisions, in other words, should not be subject to the approval of either western imperialism or the western imperial left. Either way, we should simply demand Russia get out.

Now the first assumption in these endless articles spouting the wisdom of “ceasefire and negotiations” and of Rubenstein’s question above is that Russia is dying to negotiate, and has “reasonable” concerns, or as Rubenstein puts it, “other Russian needs and interests,” which apparently exist inside another sovereign state. I wonder if Rubenstein would seek to justify the ongoing US occupation of part of Cuba’s sovereign territory as due to “US needs and interests.” The related assumption is either that Ukraine is opposed to negotiating, or that many in Ukraine, perhaps Zelensky, would be ready to negotiate, but the US is opposed to negotiations or to any concessions to Russia, and is “banning” Ukraine from negotiating or compromising, or by pumping in arms, it is “encouraging” Ukraine to fight and not negotiate.

This scenario, however, is entirely fictional. No-one making these endless statements has ever presented any evidence whatsoever. They just make it up, because it fits their schema that this is a “proxy war” being waged by US imperialism, which is apparently using Ukraine and Ukrainian lives for its (the US’s) “war on Russia,” as opposed to the actual war of conquest being waged by Russian imperialism against its former colony that stares anyone in the face who wants to look.

It is a remarkably western-centric view, even for the always western-centric Manichean “anti-imperialist” left, to imagine that the millions of Ukrainians who have risen up at the grass-roots level in an extraordinary mobilisation to defend Ukraine’s right to exist as a state and nation are not doing so in their own interests but are merely being fooled into being “proxies” for US imperialism’s schemes.

Ukraine has been either negotiating, or offering to re-start negotiations, more or less continually. It should not be obliged to; Ukraine would be in its full rights to simply say Russian troops need to leave Ukraine and there is nothing to negotiate except the pace and logistics of that withdrawal. But it negotiates anyway because of the position it is in. So when western leftists demand Ukraine do something it is already doing, what they really mean is that Ukraine should surrender to Russia’s “reasonable” demands.

So they should come clean – what do these wise western sages demand that Ukraine do to satisfy Russia so that it will allegedly agree to a ceasefire and negotiations? For the most part, they demand Ukraine accepts Russia’s full program of Ukrainian surrender.

Even on paper, Russia’s demands for Ukrainian surrender – no right to join a security alliance of its choice, demilitarisation, recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and of Donbas – look remarkably like Israel’s “reasonable” demands for Palestinian surrender, including recognition of annexation by force and the whole package. In both cases, justification for calling such maximum demands “reasonable” derives easily from the view that “there is no such thing as Palestine/Ukraine.” Just as western imperialist leaders reject one and support the other, the western imperial left do exactly the same but merely reverse them. In contrast, the Russian and Israeli leaders of small-scale imperialist states engaged in old-style conquest-imperialism have long had a healthy respect for each other’s projects.

Ukraine’s negotiating proposal: No NATO, no military solutions to occupied regions

But are these “reasonable” Russian demands even what Russia is really waging this war for?

Let’s take the NATO demand. It is hard to understand why anyone can still think that Russia launched this war due to its alleged “security concerns” about “NATO enlargement.” NATO enlargement took place in 1999-2004, when 10 countries joined, including the only three “on Russia’s borders,” ie, the three tiny Baltic states. The four that have been allowed into NATO at different moments in the last 18 years were small Balkan states nowhere near Russia, often after long and difficult processes.

Ukraine applied to join in 2008, and the accusation that the US is pushing to “expand” into Ukraine is based on the fact that NATO did not say “no” that year, as its charter prevents it saying no to any European country. Yet 14 years later, Ukraine has still not even been given a Membership Action Plan (MAP), to allow it to begin attempting to meet the conditions of membership. No serious observer thinks Ukraine has any chance of being admitted for many years or decades.

But in any case, Zelensky made the major concession on NATO in negotiations just a few weeks into the war. It’s full elaboration as a written proposal was on March 30. The first few points of the 10-point plan are as follows:

Proposal 1: Ukraine proclaims itself a neutral state, promising to remain nonaligned with any blocs and refrain from developing nuclear weapons — in exchange for international legal guarantees. Possible guarantor states include Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, and other states would also be welcome to join the treaty.

Proposal 2: These international security guarantees for Ukraine would not extend to Crimea, Sevastopol, or certain areas of the Donbas [ie, the areas currently controlled by Kremlin stooges]. The parties to the agreement would need to define the boundaries of these regions or agree that each party understands these boundaries differently.

Proposal 3: Ukraine vows not to join any military coalitions or host any foreign military bases or troop contingents. Any international military exercises would be possible only with the consent of the guarantor-states. For their part, these guarantors confirm their intention to promote Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.

Note the second point also touches on Russia’s other surrender conditions. One of them, the Crimea issue, is further elaborated on in point 8:

Proposal 8: The parties’ desire to resolve issues related to Crimea and Sevastopol shall be committed to bilateral negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for a period of 15 years. Ukraine and Russia also pledge not to resolve these issues by military means and to continue diplomatic resolution efforts.

If anybody can find any evidence of US “rejection” of Ukraine’s plan, any attempt to “ban” Ukraine from making these concessions, please provide sources. Such evidence will not be forthcoming. In late April, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, far-right Republican Senator Rand Paul accused the Biden administration of provoking the war by “beating the drums to admit Ukraine to NATO.” In his response, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the White House would be open to an agreement that resulted in Ukraine becoming “an unaligned, neutral nation.” “We, Senator, are not going to be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians. These are decisions for them to make,” Blinken told Paul. “Our purpose is to make sure that they have within their hands the ability to repel the Russian aggression and indeed to strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table,” he added. While he saw no sign Putin was ready to negotiate, he said “If he is and if the Ukrainians engage, we’ll support that.”

That is not because Biden or Blinken are great peaceniks or not imperialists. It is simply that the “no negotiations” position imputed to them by many excitable leftists is simply not a position that interests the main body of US imperialism (the odd talking head or armchair warrior notwithstanding).

As opposed to the imaginary and evidence-free view that Ukraine may want to negotiate but the West will not allow it to, others claim (just as wrongly) that Ukraine refuses to negotiate, but the US and the West must negotiate anyway. This is a rather odd demand – since Russia is not invading the US or western Europe, and they are not invading Russia, what exactly is the US supposed to negotiate about?

The point being, of course, that these “anti-imperialists” here reveal themselves as super-imperialists: they are demanding that the US and the West negotiate “on behalf of” Ukraine! So presumably, if the US or France “negotiates” with Putin for Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbas to Russia, Ukraine should happily accept being divided up by imperialist powers, and this Kissingerian chessboard ‘realist’ geopolitics is now supposedly the essence of an emancipatory leftist position!

Is there a new US aim to “weaken Russia”?

On a related track, the statement by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on April 25 that the US aims to “see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do these kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine” created great excitement. This is supposedly a declaration either of real, or new, US aims in this war. Now, even if interpreted this way, this would prove nothing about the war of resistance waged by the Ukrainian people against imperial Russia’s attempt to wipe them off the map. Obviously, US imperialism has its own reasons for aiding this resistance (indeed, providing large numbers of the very weapons that it not only did not provide to the anti-Assad Syrian rebellion, but actively blocked others from providing). But if the US aims to weaken Russia via supporting this Ukrainian resistance, that is not a choice made by Ukraine; Ukraine did not invade Russia to give the US an avenue to weaken Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine; if Ukraine’s resistance allows the US to weaken Russia by aiding it, Russia can thank Putin for that.

But in any case, the statement can mean virtually anything; Ukraine simply maintaining its right to existence, or to exist without suffering large territorial losses – a defeat of the aims of the Russian invasion – will weaken Russia. So anyone not advocating a Russian victory over Ukraine could also be considered to be in agreement with Austin. By providing any aid at all since Day 1, the US was helping “weaken Russia.”

Some proclaim that this was not the original US aim, but Austin’s statement heralded a “new” strategic turn in US policy. But if so, they need to explain what has changed in practice. Previously, they claim, the US was aiding the Ukrainian resistance with the aim of helping Ukraine resist the Russian invasion – for its own reasons, of course, but within these confines. Now the US is doing the same thing, aiding the Ukrainian resistance, but with the aim of weakening Russia. Pardon me for being confused about what has changed in practice.

A common claim is that by supplying arms to Ukraine, the US aims to drag out the war, so as to bog down and wear out Russia, the weakening of Russia being paid for by Ukrainian death and suffering. Social media is full of western leftist wits proclaiming “the US will fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood.” Apparently, the reason millions of Ukrainians are resisting the Russian invasion is not because they don’t want to be overrun by a brutal imperialist power, but because they are unconsciously acting against their own interests, dying for a US aim of weakening Russia. If only they knew what these brave and smart western lefties knew, that their real interests lie in accepting colonial oppression, occupation, massacre and dispossession.

The obvious question arising from this assertion that the US wants to drag out the war to weaken Russia is ‘how can the war end more quickly?’ On the one hand, the assertion could mean that by allowing Ukrainians to better resist Russian conquest, these western arms prevent the rapid end of the war via total Russian victory, with its attendant massacres and war crimes, imposition of a fascistic regime of repression, and annexation of a large part of Ukraine. If these leftists advocate a rapid end of the war via this conclusion, so it is not “dragged out,” they should say so openly and stop beating around the bush.

But if they do not mean this, the only other way for the war to end more quickly and not bog Russia down would be for a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of arms deliveries to Ukraine, so that it could convincingly and quickly evict Russia from its territory; while Russia would still be somewhat weakened by defeat, at least the war would not drag on, and hence the alleged aim of getting Russia stuck there and drained would not be fulfilled. In that case they should be denouncing the US for not supplying Ukraine arms of sufficient quantity and quality to do this, but only enough to fight on but not win. But it is unlikely they mean this either.

So if the idea is not a rapid end to the war via crushing Russian victory, nor via Ukraine swiftly driving out the invader, then the statement has no meaning, it is merely a piece of cheap rhetoric.

But of course, as tankies become pacifists, it is back to demanding “ceasefire and negotiations.” No rapid Russian victory, no total Ukrainian victory, but also no dragging out the war, because as we know, “negotiations” can end the war. That always works, and no-one ever thought of it before.

All Ukraine has to do is surrender to Russia’s “reasonable demands,” leading to a satisfied Russia calling a ceasefire; or if not, the US must negotiate this surrender “on Ukraine’s behalf.” Leaving aside how much this Imperial Left stance contradicts leftist stances in virtually every other struggle by a nation and people against imperialist aggression, occupation and conquest, how realistic is this ‘strategy’ on its own terms?

Russia engaged in a war of old-style conquest imperialism

To answer this, how has Russia responded to Ukraine’s proposals in March, discussed above, for no NATO, for neutrality with security guarantees, no joining any military blocs, a 15-year negotiation on Crimea with no military solutions? With what we have seen since – the complete destruction of Mariupol, the Bucha massacre, all the rest of the horror since. The last thing Russia wanted was for Ukraine to call its bluff.

The problem is that this “anti-imperialist” left do not understand the nature of imperialism; or by claiming that Russia is not an imperialist power, but rather just a large capitalist power with average expansionist tendencies, they imagine the same imperialist logic does not apply.

Russia is engaged in a war of late 19^th century style imperialist conquest. Obviously, it is not unique in the world as western media claims, we’ve had Israel, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey and others engage in wars of conquest and annexation in recent decades, greeted by either western indifference, or avid western and especially US support. Pointing out western hypocrisy is politically important as we confront the onslaught of self-serving and laughable propaganda about the world being divided between “democracy and autocracy,” about there allegedly being a “rules-based international order” that no-one ever violated before Putin did, and so on. But fighting hypocrisy does not inform analysis of a concrete situation. These other cases are all of relatively small countries; the largest, Indonesia, was eventually defeated in East Timor (with the aid of a change in imperialist policy, indeed imperialist intervention in defence of east Timor), though not in West Papua. Turkey held back from formal annexation of northern Cyprus which it still occupies; and although it never faced western sanctions, its puppet ‘republic’ is not recognised by any country in the world. Obviously Israel/Palestine is the most globally consequential of these cases.

But this is the first time a major global imperialist power has engaged in 19^th century-style ‘direct conquest’ imperialism since 1945. This is not a morality contest here, obviously the US invasion of Iraq was extraordinarily brutal and criminal, but the aim was not conquest as such; and of course both the US and Russia and others have engaged in massive and brutal “interventions” after being “invited in,” but once again this has not been about conquest as such. We need to wrap our heads around this fact.

In late April, Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, stated that Russia planned to forge a land corridor between Crimea and Donbas in eastern Ukraine; this is rather obvious anyway – that is why Mariupol had to be conquered and destroyed, being right in the middle and a key port. These are of course Russian-speaking regions, where the ‘liberator of Russians’ slaughtered them. But he went on, noting that “control over the south of Ukraine is another way to Transdniestria, where there is also evidence that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed.”

In other words, the entire south of Ukraine, its entire Black Sea coast, is Russian imperialism’s aim. Not only linking Donbas to Crimea, but also seizing Odessa and linking Crimea to the Russian-controlled fake ‘republic’ of Transdniestria, which Russia seized from Moldova decades ago (how amazing that a region under effective Russian control is also “oppressing” Russians now!). And if we take the more extreme ‘Eurasianist’ views into account, Moldova – a neutral state, like Ukraine, outside NATO – should probably also be worrying about its existence.

Of course, the enormous mobilisation of Ukrainian resistance has probably put the brakes on the more extreme Russian geographic aims – at this stage it looks like Russia will consolidate the Donbas to Crimea link conquest and will not have the capacity to venture beyond to Odessa – but that doesn’t alter the fact that these are Russia’s aims. And even just consolidating this part of the conquest locks Ukraine out from most of the Black Sea.

The evidence that Russia aims to annex its new conquests can be seen wherein “Russian officials have already moved to introduce the ruble currency, install proxy politicians in local governments, impose new school curriculums, reroute internet servers through Russia and cut the population off from Ukrainian broadcasts” in these conquered regions. Marat Khusnullin, Russia’s deputy prime minister for infrastructure, also stated that Russia intends “to charge Ukraine for electricity generated by the Ukrainian nuclear plant that Russian forces commandeered in the early weeks of the invasion.”

The Black Sea, of course is full of hydrocarbons. Let’s not make things too complicated. Russian imperialism wants them. It certainly doesn’t want its former colony to share any of them, and by cutting it off from most of its sea coast, can effectively blockade it into submission.

Where to now for US policy?

The opinions on where US policy is heading in response to this situation range from ‘the US will continue to escalate until it leads to war with Russia’ to ‘the US will cut a deal with Russia and sell out Ukraine’. The scenario involving the US pressuring Ukraine into making a compromise that is not fully just once it feels Russia has been weakened enough, rather than pushing for full victory, is just as possible, if not more, than the projections of it drifting into war with Russia. Whatever the case, it is clear that the US and other imperialist powers are supporting Ukraine for their own reasons and their interests are not identical.

What then are the US interests involved? Obviously, US imperialism has already ‘won’ due to Putin’s invasion: US ‘security’ hegemony over Europe is now stronger than at any time since the end of the Cold War, NATO is now adding new members, the many years of the Russian-German gas pipeline development have suddenly come to nothing. Obviously, US and western imperialism more generally does not want a Russian conquest of the entire Black Sea; and allowing Russia conquer much beyond where it already held in Ukraine before the invasion would not be good for US or NATO “credibility.” But once that drive is defeated, there may be little appetite to keep backing Ukraine.

The simple fact is that US imperialism has not been in any “war drive” against Russia, and has no interest in one. There were no signs of any US build-up against Russia before the war, and while relations have been tense since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, they have been relatively normal, including a great deal of cooperation in places like Syria. While a certain amount of anti-Russian rhetoric may have characterised some US statements in comparison to the more accommodating Franco-German approach, this can be understood as part of keeping NATO – its tool for hegemony in Europe – “relevant”, in particular among some of the more anti-Russian eastern European ruling elites (and even this had been wearing thin before Putin saved NATO – just a few months ago, a string of east European right-wing populist rulers were increasingly close to Moscow).

But it is important to not confuse this symbolic US-Russia “rivalry” – related to credibility, the size of the countries, military power, Cold War hangovers – to actual inter-imperialist competition. Their economies are just too different in both character and size for the US to see Putin’s hydro-carbon-based economic fiefdom as a serious global competitor – that award goes to rising, hyper-dynamic Chinese imperialism. And getting bogged down in Ukraine is not conducive to the US ‘pivot to Asia’ where its Chinese rival is based, though for this very reason it may be very much in China’s interests.

Yes, massive quantities of arms have gone to Ukraine, but there have also been clear limits: the US blocking of Poland from delivering warplanes for instance; and a no-fly zone has been placed off-limits by the US and the West from the outset.

One problem with confusing some rhetorical flourishes with US imperialist policy is that each of these ‘gotcha’ moments has been walked back by other US government figures. After Austin mentioned weakening Russia, Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained this simply meant “our objective to prevent that [Russia taking over Ukraine] from happening … but, yes, we are also looking to prevent them from expanding their efforts and President Putin’s objectives beyond that, too.” When Biden said that Putin shouldn’t remain in power, this was immediately hosed down by others in the US government. And when Rep. Seth Moulton stated “We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded “President Biden has been clear that U.S. forces are not and will not engage in a conflict with Russia. We are supporting the Ukrainian people as they defend their country.” Finally, in early May, the US government imposed new limits on the intelligence it shares with Ukraine.

Richard Haas, Thomas Friedman, Eliot Cohen: Voices from the US ruling class

Indeed, we can also find ‘gotcha’ moments of a different kind. On May 9, Biden expressed concern that Putin “doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we do about that.”

This concern – to give Putin some “way out” to avoid the kind of destabilisation that could result from an outright defeat for Russia – is likely much closer to real US imperial interests that the imaginary spectre of the US aiming to “Balkanise Russia”, more likely the very thing everyone wants to avoid. Such concerns are consistent with those expressed in several pieces by leading US ruling class strategists in the serious media. While these strategists do not create US policy, the explanations they give for what US policy should be are not only logical, but also coincide with the very limits of Biden’s approach, and express a number of similar concerns.

The first of these is an article in Foreign Affairs by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has served in various US governments since the late 1970s, including for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the Bush administration, as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department from 2001 to 2003 during the lead-up to the Iraq war. So no lightweight. Haas begins:

“In principle, success from the West’s perspective can be defined as ending the war sooner rather than later, and on terms that Ukraine’s democratic government is prepared to accept. But just what are those terms? Will Ukraine seek to recover all the territory it has lost in the past two months? Will it require that Russian forces withdraw completely from the Donbas and Crimea? Will it demand the right to join the EU and NATO? Will it insist that all this be set forth in a formal document signed by Russia?

“The United States, the EU, and NATO need to discuss such questions with one another and with Ukraine now. … To be sure, the Ukrainians have every right to define their war aims. But so do the United States and Europe. Although Western interests overlap with Ukraine’s, they are broader, including nuclear stability with Russia and the ability to influence the trajectory of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

“It is also essential to take into account that Russia gets a vote. Although Putin initiated this war of choice, it will take more than just him to end it. He and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will both have to consider what they require in the way of territory and terms to halt hostilities. They will also have to decide if they are prepared not only to order an end to the fighting but also to enter into and honor a peace agreement. Another complexity is that some aspects of any peace, such as the lifting of sanctions against Russia, would not be determined by Ukraine alone but would require the consent of others.”

Discussing several scenarios, Haas sees the scenario in which Ukrainian success reaches the point that it attempts to take back all territory seized since 2014, rather than only territory seized in 2022, as a destabilising outcome:

“… it is near impossible to imagine Putin accepting such an outcome, since it would surely threaten his political survival, and possibly even his physical survival. In desperation, he might try to widen the war through cyberattacks or attacks on one or more NATO countries. He might even resort to chemical or nuclear weapons. … Arguably, these aims are better left for a postconflict, or even a post-Putin, period in which the West could condition sanctions relief on Russia’s signing of a formal peace agreement. Such a pact might allow Ukraine to enjoy formal ties to the EU and security guarantees, even as it remained officially neutral and outside NATO. Russia, for its part, might agree to withdraw its forces from the entirety of the Donbas in exchange for international protections for the ethnic Russians living there. Crimea might gain some special status, with Moscow and Kyiv agreeing that its final status would be determined down the road.”

Discussing the lessons learned from the Cold War and the balance achieved which guaranteed peace (between the superpowers that is), Haas notes that these are consistent with the very limitations of Biden’s strategy:

“From the outset of the crisis, the United States made it clear that it would not place boots on the ground or establish a no-fly zone, since doing so could bring U.S. and Russian forces into direct contact and raise the risk of escalation. Instead, Washington and its NATO partners opted for an indirect strategy of providing arms, intelligence, and training to Ukraine while pressuring Russia with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.”

From here on “ … success for now could consist of a winding down of hostilities, with Russia possessing no more territory than it held before the recent invasion and continuing to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction. Over time, the West could employ a mix of sanctions and diplomacy in an effort to achieve a full Russian military withdrawal from Ukraine. Such success would be far from perfect, just preferable to the alternatives.”

The second piece was by long-term imperial columnist Thomas L Friedman in the May 6 New York Times. Like Haas, Friedman is no stranger to being hawkish when he believes such a stance is in US interests, but takes a similar view to what actual US interests are in this case.

He also warned that certain US actions “could be creating an opening for Putin to respond in ways that could dangerously widen this conflict — and drag the U.S. in deeper than it wants to be,” which is all the more dangerous given Putin’s unpredictability, and the fact that “Putin is running out of options for some kind of face-saving success on the ground — or even a face-saving off ramp.”

Moreover, for Friedman, the problem is not only Russia, as “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has been trying to do the same thing from the start — to make Ukraine an immediate member of NATO or get Washington to forge a bilateral security pact with Kyiv” something Friedman clearly sees as against US interests.

Like Haas, he ultimately thinks that Biden has the right balance:

But my sense is that the Biden team is walking much more of a tightrope with Zelensky than it would appear to the eye — wanting to do everything possible to make sure he wins this war but doing so in a way that still keeps some distance between us and Ukraine’s leadership. That’s so Kyiv is not calling the shots and so we’ll not be embarrassed by messy Ukrainian politics in the war’s aftermath. The view of Biden and his team, according to my reporting, is that America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty and beat the Russians back — but not let Ukraine turn itself into an American protectorate on the border of Russia. We need to stay laser-focused on what is our national interest and not stray in ways that lead to exposures and risks we don’t want.”

While much of the western left sees the US making Ukraine its ‘protectorate’, Friedman sees this as an evil Ukrainian plot which the US must be, and is, on guard against. “But we are dealing with some incredibly unstable elements, particularly a politically wounded Putin. Boasting about killing his generals and sinking his ships, or falling in love with Ukraine in ways that will get us enmeshed there forever, is the height of folly.”

Before moving to the third, more hawkish, piece, it is worth noting that the editorial in the May 19 New York Times makes similar points to Haas and Friedman. While stating that the US goal to help Ukraine rebuff Russian aggression “cannot shift,” nevertheless “in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions.” The editorial warns that “a decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. Though Russia’s planning and fighting have been surprisingly sloppy, Russia remains too strong, and Mr. Putin has invested too much personal prestige in the invasion to back down.” Therefore, “as the war continues, Mr. Biden should also make clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster.”

So, apart from the odd gaffe, it seems difficult to find serious US ruling class opinion saying what much of the left is claiming it is saying. Actually, they appear to saying remarkably similar things to each other! Perhaps we can find the evidence in a more serious hawk?

The third piece by Eliot A. Cohen, writing in The Atlantic on May 11, may be such an example. A professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, former Counselor of the Department of State, former editor of The National Interest, the title of his book The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force tells us his views on the use military power. Not surprisingly, therefore, this article is more hawkish in tone than those of Haas and Friedman.

Cohen does not necessarily insist Ukraine must take back all territory lost, but he argues that Ukraine must define what its objectives are and that US policy should recognise “it will be up to Ukraine to decide what it wishes to accomplish.” Having borne “the burdens of blood and sacrifice on a scale not seen since World War II” and with a cause “indisputably just,” Ukraine “has every right to decide what it can and cannot accept and strive for.” This is combined with the fact that Russia “has acted with unspeakable barbarity” and these “moral facts” should therefore “modify or even outweigh coolly geopolitical calculations of the European balance of power.” And when the war ends, western objectives should include helping to put Ukraine “in a condition to defeat further Russian aggression.”

Cohen is an unalloyed partisan of US imperialism, but, from this, obviously hypocritical, perspective, we can at least say there appears to be more respect for Ukraine’s self-determination than the more geopolitically-oriented views of Haas and Friedman, with their insistence on distinguishing the US from the Ukrainian interest.

Therefore, it is here we may expect to see some evidence of the alleged US imperialist desire to wage war on, to humiliate, or even ‘Balkanise’ Russia.

In reality, Cohen warns precisely about the dangers involved in Russia’s defeat. He does not want Russia defeated in Ukraine in order to bring it to its knees and humiliate or ‘Balkanise’ it; on the contrary, he argues that while Ukrainian victory is necessary for other reasons, the negative side-effects of this are nevertheless very much against US and western interests.

“But all of this leaves the problem of Russia. … If it is convulsed from within, it is less likely to be dominated by liberals (many of whom have fled the country) than by disgruntled nationalists. Putin may go, but his replacements are likely to come from similar backgrounds in the secret police or, possibly, the military.” And it will be “more than usually difficult to bring it back into a Eurasian order that it, and no one else, has attempted to destroy” with its “utterly unjustified” attack on Ukraine with “its exceptional brutality, the shamelessness of Russia’s lies and threats, and the grotesqueness of its claims to hegemony in the former Soviet states.”

The result will be “the hardest task of American statecraft going forward: dealing with a Russia reeling from defeat and humiliation, weakened but still dangerous.” Indeed, the old Cold Warrior even sees the old Soviet Union as a more “rationalist” enemy, whereas a defeat for Putinist Russia “will be much more like dealing with a rabid, wounded beast that claws and bites at itself as much as it does at others, in the grip not of a millennial ideology but a bizarre combination of nationalism and nihilism.”

Far from wanting to make “war on Russia”, Cohen thinks that apart from strengthening states on Russia’s borders, all the West will be able to do is “hope against hope that the new “sick man of Europe” will, somehow and against the odds, recover something like moral sanity.”

All US and western imperialist wars since 1945 have been against countries in regions of the former colonial world that they aimed to maintain domination of – from Indochina to Iraq and Afghanistan to Panama and Grenada and Nicaragua, and the current drone wars – and the list goes on. Quite simply, there has been no US “war drive” against Russia, not because the US does not engage in war drives, but because post-Soviet Russia has neither been an ideological enemy – quite the opposite – nor powerful enough to be a genuine imperialist rival.

On the contrary, it is Putin’s sudden resort to primitive conquest-imperialism that has thrown the established imperialist modus vivendi between the US, Europe and Russia to the woods, and the western reaction has been crisis management on the run. While the US has, naturally enough, taken full advantage of what Putin has offered them up on a plate by restoring unchallenged US hegemony in Europe via a strengthened NATO, the point is that this is the US goal in itself; there is no US or western interest in massive destabilisation, a huge black hole, in a gigantic country like Russia which, just a few months ago, was plenty lucrative for western capital, and was an integral part of the world capitalist economy.

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By Michael Karadjis

_{Former head of the Ku Lux Klan, David Duke, with Putin’s ‘fascist brain’, Alexander Dugin, discussing how to save the White race}

According to Russian president Vladimir Putin:

“The United States continues to receive more and more immigrants, and, as far as I understand, the white, Christian population is already outnumbered … White Christians have become a minority, less than 50 percent now. … Russia is a vast territory, from its western to eastern borders, it is a Eurasian space. But as regards culture, even language group and history, this all is undoubtedly a European space, as it is inhabited by people of this culture. … we have to preserve all this to remain a significant centre in the world.”

Putin’s appeal to “great replacement” theory, his dog-whistle to the “White Christian” world that must be “preserved” lest it become a minority, demonstrates the clear ideological basis of Putin’s status as demi-God to the global far-right, fascist, Nazi and white supremacist movements.

Here’s what David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, had to say when leaving Russia after his five-year sojourn there:

“In this holy cause we must share one immutable principle: all people of European descent, no matter where they reside in the world, are brothers. … Russia has always been a bulwark to the East, the frontier of our race, and it is now on the frontline of our current struggle. It is my prayer that Mother Russia be strong and healthy, may Mother Russia be free; may she always be White. When a racially aware Russia and reawakened America become united in our cause, the world will change. Our race will survive and together we shall go to the stars!”

Years later, exploding with joy following former US president Trump’s chummy press conference with his good mate Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Duke lavished praise on Trump and Putin, believing his wish had come true: “Bravo Trump! Bravo Russia! Russia has values America once had and America the values that Communist Russia had!”

Similarly, French far-right leader Eric Zemmour claims Putin “restored the state,” “stepped in as the last defender of the Christians of the East”, “defends national sovereignty, the family and the Orthodox religion”, contrasting this to liberal, multicultural French politics.

This may be confusing to some who have recently heard that Putin claims he wants to “de-Nazify” Ukraine by bombing it to bits; propaganda can be quite creative. Perhaps more confusing is that there are fascists and Nazis among the vast array of political forces in Ukraine resisting Russia’s imperialist invasion today and intervention in Donbas earlier.

But these are the inherent contradictions of fascism; always based on extreme nationalism and racism, it is near impossible for fascists to collaborate when their “great nations” are in conflict. Try to imagine a collab between Greek and Turkish fascists, for instance.

Not that we should underestimate the malevolence of the Ukrainian fascist forces; we will come to that below. But as we will also see, they are virtually an anomaly in today’s global fascist climate where to be anti-Putin is a non-starter; virtually the entirety of fascist, Nazi, white-supremacist and ultra-rightist forces everywhere in the world have been strongly aligned to the Putin regime; while the political and military forces Russia has installed in the Donbas region of Ukraine are also overwhelmingly fascist. Anyone considering taking seriously Putin’s rhetoric about “de-Nazifying” anywhere should read on for a reality check.

Material basis of Russian imperialism’s alliance with global fascism

The ideological basis of the alliance demonstrates that it is not simply a matter of expediency as sometimes suggested (eg, that Putin’s alliance with European fascism only represents a convergence of interests against the European Union). Nevertheless, this ideological alliance does relate to the concrete material interests of Russian imperialism as it challenges established imperialist powers.

While it is overblown rhetoric to compare Putin’s authoritarian regime, with its parliamentary façade, and its savage litany of crimes against humanity, to Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship and the Holocaust, this does not mean there are no parallels. German imperialism had been the loser of WWI, and the victorious ‘Allied’ imperialists imposed the winner-take-all Treaty of Versailles on Germany. The rise of extreme German nationalism embodied in Naziism reflected the struggle of the weaker, defeated, imperialist Germany, alongside weaker Italian and Japanese imperialism, against the dominant imperialist powers of the day. These weaker powers had to rely on direct conquest – unnecessary for British and French imperialism which still owned all the world they had earlier conquered, or US imperialism whose economic hegemony was growing. Extreme reactionary ideologies glorifying the mythical past as the ruling class crushes the masses while mobilising them for military conquest with nationalist, racist and militarist slogans fitted well with the needs of these powers.

In broadly similar fashion, the Russian ruling class emerging from the wreckage of the USSR, now heading a smaller Russian Federation, saw itself as ‘defeated’, given the effective domination Russia had exercised over the USSR. While the USSR was not conceived of as an empire, for the reactionary oligarchic elite that arose on the ashes of ‘communism’, the independence of the non-Russian republics was seen as “loss of empire,” and the mythical past of the ‘Great Russian Fatherland’ of the Tsarist Russian Empire extolled as something to aspire to. Of course, there was no unequal treaty a la Versailles imposed on Russia; while the massive immiseration of the Russian working class was imposed by the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and other western state-connected privatisation ‘experts’, the Russian oligarchy was completely complicit in this gigantic plunder, indeed it was its main beneficiary. However, the economic collapse this partnership-in-plunder led to could domestically be blamed on “the West” alone, as a propaganda device to deceive the masses. While I have argued elsewhere that ‘NATO expansion’ cannot be blamed for Putin’s aggression, in the big picture the retention of a US-led, Cold War relic like NATO, as opposed to a new pan-European security architecture, was a further factor that could be used to harness a new Russian nationalist world-view as the rising capitalist elite around Putin strove to overcome its humiliation and strike out as a new, relatively weak, imperialist power.

The strategic orientation of this new Russian imperialism consisted of a number of planks.

The first, more long-term, was embodied in its far-right ideology of ‘Eurasianism’, the idea of uniting Europe and Asia under Russian leadership, which would entail a defeat of off-shore US imperialism and its current hegemony in Europe. Russia, in other words, as the connection between Europe and China; since the turn of the 20^th century, geopolitical strategists from the US, Europe and Russia have seen dominating ‘Eurasia’ as key to world domination. In many ways, one could argue this was slowing occurring; Russia’s domination of natural resources, especially oil and gas, and the pipelines, connected it to energy-hungry European and Chinese imperialism as the grand centre. To some extent this dovetailed with the Franco-German imperial project of a Europe more independent of US imperialism; French and German opposition to Ukraine joining NATO, the Russian gas pipeline to Germany, the active diplomacy they engaged in with Russia and Ukraine to prevent war, contrasted to the more confrontational US approach; for the US, avoiding this EU-Russia imperial consortium had been a strategic aim since the end of the Cold War. Beefing up NATO was a major tool of this US strategy, because providing “security” to European imperialism is the main way the US has continued to exercise hegemony there.

Yet how does this Eurasian conception relate to the second leg of Russian imperial strategy – the tendency of the emerging weaker imperialist power to rely more on traditional imperialist methods of direct conquest, straight land grabs, similar, in some way, to weaker German, Italian and Japanese imperialism in the 1930s? Again, Russian imperialism doesn’t possess the global economic hegemony exercised by US and European imperialism, or that China is gaining. This difference should not be exaggerated; the absurd western rhetoric about Putin overturning an imaginary “rules-based international order” is too laughable to require comment; obviously conquest was a past staple of western imperialism, while Russian imperialism has also quietly expanded economically. But the relative difference has become sharper over Ukraine. Obviously one could point to the criminal US invasion of Iraq to highlight the hypocrisy of current western propaganda, but not only was the sheer hubris of this war widely seen as the onset of decline of US global hegemony, but the argument here is not about levels of morality or invasions and violations of international law as such; the US of course is highly “revisionist” in such matters. Rather, the issue if one of formal territorial conquest/annexation as a characteristic of emerging Russian imperialist expansion, which the US has no need for and which even Iraq did not concern.

Yet by invading Ukraine (rather than just Crimea and Donbas, or small parts of Georgia and Moldova), Putin has destroyed the more gradual advance of the Eurasian project; NATO, and US “security” hegemony over Europe, is now more solid than for a generation, and Russia’s European links have been destroyed, symbolised by Germany’s abandonment of Nordstream. While obviously this is the result of catastrophic miscalculation by Putin, it also signifies a limitation of the Eurasian project in its gradualist form: while domination of oil and gas gives Russia bargaining power, in economic terms it means Russia remains eclipsed as the ‘second world’ natural resource supplier of more powerful European and Chinese imperialism. A revanchist Russian Empire, however, drunk on past glory, and its outsized role as the world’s second largest military power, envisages itself as the leader, the centre, of Eurasia. Therefore, asserting its military superiority was important to its “credibility”; it wasn’t going to allow a third world country like Ukraine to demonstrate any independence from the Fatherland. According to professor Jane Burbank, Ukrainian sovereignty was always a problem to ‘Eurasianist’ ideology, its leading ideologist, Alexander Dugin, calling it a “huge danger to all of Eurasia”. Russian leadership of Eurasia required Russian-led unity of the three ‘core’ ex-Soviet states (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), and, as a minimum, control of the whole north coast of the Black Sea was an “absolute imperative.” A strategic waterway full of hydrocarbons, Russian imperialism did not plan to share the Black Sea with its former colony.

As such the seizure of the Black Sea coastline from the recalcitrant child represented economic, political, military-gendarme, ‘credibility’ and nationalist-ideological objectives at once.    

Given these specific needs of the weaker, emerging imperialist power, and its ideological emergence from alleged “national humiliation”, it is logical for the deeply reactionary, revanchist regime to cultivate ties to other extreme right, fascist parties around the world, which can act in Moscow’s interests by challenging the western imperialist leaders from the right without challenging the same capitalist system they are all part of. Not unlike the role of western fascist parties as allies of Nazi Germany or fascist Italy.

A third dimension of Russian imperial strategy has been to strike out beyond the former Soviet sphere, to exert power in regions such as the Middle East and Africa; the intervention of the Russian air force on the side of Assad’s genocidal regime has been the most prominent, alongside a smaller scale intervention in the Libyan civil war, and support for various African dictatorships’ military and ‘security’ needs, via the Wagner paramilitary. These armed interventions accompany growing Russia economic penetration, even if at a far lower level than western or Chinese capital; in Syria, Russia grabs significant parts of the economy while entrenching itself in vital infrastructure such as ports and bases.

While the plunder of Syrian resources as ‘compensation’ for aiding Assad is old gunboat-style imperialism, Russia’s gendarme role in aiding the regional counterrevolution has been appreciated by the US and its regional allies, especially Israel and the Gulf monarchies. Given the sharing of Syrian air space with the US air force (which bombed ISIS as Russia bombed the anti-Assad rebels), the Russian role had more a ‘sub-imperial’ character, rather than that of ‘imperial rivalry’ with US imperialism. But the war also entailed a Bush-Cheney-style “war on terror” Islamophobic ideological construct that was very attractive to the global far-right, who almost universally saw the Assad regime as a defender of “western civilisation” against “Islamic barbarism,” the ideology espoused by the Syrian regime itself. So Assad was another key connection between Putinism and global fascism.

Alexander Dugin: Putin’s fascist alter-ego

The alliance between Putin’s far-right, uber-nationalist ‘United Russia Party’ and global fascism should already seem obvious from an ideological perspective; but in any case, relations between the Russian and global far-right are also mediated by Russia’s own crop of far-right ieologues. The most well-known is unabashed leading Russian fascist, Alexander Dugin, “former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016.” While Dugin and Putin are not personally close (indeed Putin appears to be closer to a number of other far-right ideologues), and some of their emphases are different (which however would require a different essay), nevertheless Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics  – which advocates his Russian-led ‘Eurasianist’ empire “from Dublin to Vladivostok” – is “assigned to every member of Russia’s General Staff Academy.” While Dugin lost his position at Moscow State University in recent years, Putin seems to have drawn closer to Dugin’s uber-reactionary positions in the same period. If not strictly Putin’s fascist ‘philosopher king’ as he has been dubbed, he has acted as a kind of fascist alter-ego, a Rasputin-type figure in the background to the Russian elite’s descent into fascistic thinking.

According to one source, “Gestated in anti-communist right-wing activism during the waning days of the Soviet Union, indebted to a specifically anti-liberal and anti-Enlightenment philosophical embrace of authoritarianism, irrationalism, and hyper-nationalism, Dugin dreams of a reborn Orthodox Tsarist state surpassing the borders and spheres of influence as they existed before 1989, of a Novorossiya built not on socialist principles, but fascist ones.” In fact, he criticises traditional fascisms in his 1997 book, Templars of the Proletariat, for moderation; by contrast, in Russia there will emerge a truly “fascist fascism.”

In Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin asserts that “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning. It has no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness;” hence Putin’s view that Ukraine has no right to exist and was merely a communist plot by Lenin to destroy the Russian Fatherland, expressed in a long article, and then in the speech he gave before his invasion of Ukraine, is sourced from his fascist philosopher alter-ego. Dugin’s new Tsarist Empire would be a pre-modern one (while happy to use modern technology for weapons that obliterate large numbers of humans); in Novorossiya, according to Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory, “everything is to be cleansed off… science, values, philosophy, art, society, modes, patterns, ‘truths,’ understanding of Being, time and space. All is dead with Modernity. So it should end. We are going to end it.” Clearly, the alliance with the western far-right’s war against liberalism, multi-culturalism, homosexuality, feminism, ‘decadence’ and so on is based on common “values.”

_{White Europe as conceived by Eurasianist fascists.}

Dugin, like Putin, had a special love for Trump, who he called “the American Putin,” and he has special relationships with American neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Dugin is a contributor to Spencer’s Alternative Right webzine.

Another source of this Duginite and increasingly Putinite worldview is the Russian Orthodox Church, which promotes the ‘Russian World’ concept, according to which the peoples of the historic territory of ancient Rus are one, including those in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. At the third annual Assembly of the Russian World in November of 2009, Moscow Patriarch Kirill stated that “if we consider the Russian Federation with its present boundaries, then we have sinned against the historical truth and artificially cut off millions of people who are aware of their role in the fate of the Russian World.”

The global far-right and Putin

We will now review the global far-right’s connection to Putin’s regime; hopefully the next sections can be used as a handy guide when Putin supporters pedal out the argument that Putin is fighting “fascism” in Ukraine in the form of the 1000-strong Azov regiment.

_{Marine Le Pen meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2017 | Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images}

Following French National Front leader, Marine Le Pen’s, visit to Moscow in June 2013 at the invitation of State Duma, discussing “issues of common concern, such as Syria, EU enlargement, and gay marriage,” the Front supported the annexation of Crimea, stating that “historically, Crimea is part of Mother Russia.” She visited again in 2017. Her rival on the French far-right, Eric Zammour, reacted to Crimea by proposing a “Russian alliance, the only way to kill both the myth of federal Europe and to finally break away from the American protectorate.”

Similarly, the Nazi-like Jobbik party in Hungary called Putin’s fake Crimea referendum “exemplary.” Leader Gabor Vona visited Moscow in May 2013 at the invite of right-wing nationalists at Moscow State University, where he was hosted by Dugin. The Moscow visit was considered “a major breakthrough” which made “clear that Russian leaders consider Jobbik as a partner.” Bulgaria’s far right Ataka party similarly “insisted that Bulgaria should recognize the results from the referendum for Crimea’s joining to the Russian Federation.”

Not surprisingly, Putin’s Crimea ‘referendum’ – carried out after Russian military occupation forces staged a coup and placed in power the far-right ‘Russian Unity’ party that had received 4 percent of the vote at the previous Crimea elections – did not bother with many international observers. However, Russia did invite a few. Alongside observers from the French National Front, Jobbik and Attaka, the rest of the invitees list – Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right.

Other European far-right leaders have followed the National Front and Jobbik in their Moscow pilgrimages. In February 2017, three politicians of the German neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) “flew to Moscow in a private jet paid for by the Russian government,” at a cost of some 25,000 Euro. This was not the only time Moscow was caught funding far-right parties; the French National Front has also been a recipient of Moscow cash which helped finance its 2014 election campaign.

Another far-right leader invited to Moscow by the State Duma, in March 2018, was Geert Wilders, of the arch-Islamophobic Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV). According to Wilders, “Vladimir Putin is a leader, whatever you think of him. … I applaud him as I applaud Mr. Trump for being leaders, who are standing there on behalf of the Russian and the American people … We lack that kind of leadership in Europe.”

_{Lega Nord leader Salvini advertising Putin}

The Italian far-right is prominently allied to Putin. Mateo Salvini, head of the far-right Lega Nord (Northern League), signed a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party in 2017; he is famous for wearing Putin T-shirts, and even brokered an oil deal with Russia to feed the League’s coffers. Putin lavished praise on Salvini during his 2019 visit to Italy, when Salvini attended a dinner in his honour. In March 2015, head of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party, Roberto Fiore, attended the “International Russian Conservative Forum” in St Petersburg, along with the ‘League of Lombardy’, a Lega Nord front group, and the Duginite-fascist Italian party ‘Millennium.’

The St. Petersburg “Conservative Forum’ was also attended by the British National Party’s former leader Nick Griffin, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party of Greece, Udo Voigt from the German neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), Jared Taylor of the American Renaissance, former Ku Klux Klan lawyer Sam Dickson and various other fringe lunar rightists, along with Russian fascists led  by the Putin-connected Rodina (Motherland) party and the Russian Imperial Movement. The Austrian Freedom Party and Serbian Radical Party were also invited but did not make it. The meeting “was adorned by a line from remarks Putin made in 2013 accusing Europe of backing away ‘from the Christian values at the foundation of European civilization’.”

The St. Petersburg forum launched a World National-Conservative Movement (WNCM), to which some 60 global fascist organisations were invited (full list here), an expanded version of the Alliance for Peace and Freedom (AFP), an existing pro-Putin alliance of 20 fascist parties, led by Fiore, Griffin and Le Pen. The AFP itself was invited into the WNCM; the dozens of other extreme right parties not only covered Europe and the US (including unabashed Nazis like the Nordic Resistance Movement, and the US Confederate League of the South), but also further afield, such as the South African white racist Front Nasionaal, the Nazi-inspired Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and Thailand’s viciously anti-democratic National Alliance for Democracy, the ‘Yellow Shirts’.

Alongside Griffin (by then head of the ‘British Unity” group) and the BNP, other British fascists invited were ‘Britain First’ and ‘UK Life League’. Meanwhile, in February 2020, Tommy Robinson, former head of the fascist English Defence League, visited Moscow to give a lecture in St. Petersburg about “The Rape of Britain” (ie, by immigrants, gays, liberals, the EU etc), though some former associates claim he was also looking for Moscow cash. During her own Moscow sojourn, British racist commentator Katie Hopkins declared that “Putin is not the big baddie the media have made him out to be, as she filmed pro-Putin videos from Russia. Putin puts Russia first. And his people love him for it. Far safer than Londonistan.” Not surprisingly, she was also a favourite of Trump.

The presence of Greece’s Golden Dawn – which explicitly displays Nazi symbols, and who sing the Greek version of the Nazi Party anthem – is hardly surprising, given the close alleged ‘historic’ connection between Russian and Greek fascism and ultra-conservative ideologies connected to Orthodoxy. Golden Dawn leader Michaloliakos even received a letter while in prison from Dugin, who “expressed support for Golden Dawn’s geopolitical positions.”  

While US attendance at the St. Petersburg forum was limited to Taylor and Dickson, the US far-right is heavily pro-Putin; not for nothing did David Duke, former head of the Klan, live in Russia for five years (while there he sub-let his apartment to American neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton). Duke believes Russia is “the key to white survival.” In 2014, fellow white supremacist Richard Spencer, who believes Russia is the “sole white power in the world,” invited Dugin to a global conference of the far-right planned to be held in Hungary. Then there’s Matthew Heimbach, founder of the pro-Confederate Traditional Workers Party, who believes “Russia is the leader of the free world” while “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance.” As widely reported, American Rinaldo Nazzaro runs the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation The Base from a Russian apartment. In 2017, far-right commentator Ann Coulter declared that “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European.” On the Christian fascist end, evangelist Pat Robertson declared that Putin had been “compelled by God” to invade Ukraine.

Just as the marchers at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 chanted “Russia is our friend,” so likewise at a recent white nationalist event in Florida organised by the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), racist Nick Fuentes prompted the crowd, “Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” The crowd responded by shouting: “Putin! Putin!”

Then there is the more mainstream, parliamentary, far-right, such as former US president Trump itself, whose Putin connections are well-known. As Ukraine exploded, Trump praised Putin as a “genius.” “Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine independent. Oh that’s wonderful. … How smart is that? And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border.” And of course there’s right-wing ideologue and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who recently declared “Putin ain’t woke” in an exchange with Blackwater founder, Eric Prince, who agreed that “The Russian people still know which bathroom to use;”  and Trump’s Secretary of State and Christian rightist Mike Pompeo, who declared his “enormous respect” for the “talented statesman;” while Trump’s first National Security Advisor Mike Flynn claimed that after Biden “ignored and laughed at Putin’s legitimate security concerns … President Putin calculated this strategic, historic, and geographic play and made the decision to move.”

Trump loyalist and white supremacist Fox News host Tucker Carlson went full dog-whistle for Putin: “It may be worth asking yourself… why do I hate Putin.. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a world-wide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity?”

Likewise in Europe, the parliamentary hard-right – to the extent we can distinguish them from the organisations above with genuinely fascist origins – are hard-line Putin’s supporters – from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Czech president Zeman, idiosyncratic neo-right populist Croatian president Zoran Milanovic, Serbia’s far-right Aleksander Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party, and the Austrian government headed by Sebastian Kurtz, with ministers from the far-right Austrian Freedom Party. Likewise the close pro-Putin links of Nigel Farage and his Eurosceptic UK Independence Party.

This extends around the world, from Modi’s reactionary Hinduvsta regime in India to Brazil’s far-right Trump acolyte Bolsonaro. Both are allied to the US, while India is also geopolitically allied to Russia (above all, balance against China), but the Russia connection is also ideological in the case of its current far-right regime. In Brazil’s case, there is no obvious geopolitical connection to Russia, but Bolsonaro was more pro-Trump than pro-US, leading him into ideological alliance with Putin – Bolsonaro visited Putin on the eve of his invasion and declared he feels “deep solidarity with Russia.”

Fascism in the Donbass

But what of the Donbas? Putin is God to most fascists and Nazis the world over, but in Ukraine the only Nazis are anti-Russia Ukrainians, like Azov, right? In reality, as one source argues:

“On the whole, members of far-right groups played a much greater role on the Russian side of the conflict than on the Ukrainian side.”

Let’s look at some of this galaxy of ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi, Orthodox-fascist and neo-Tsarist parties and militia involved in the ‘separatist’ political and military leadership; of whom most are actual Russians, from Russia, rather than ethnic Russians from Ukraine.

We could start with the preamble to the constitution of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ which calls for the “…establishment of a sovereign independent state, based on the restoration of a unified cultural and civilizational space of Russian World, on the basis of its traditional religious, social, cultural and moral values ​​, with the prospect of becoming a part of “Greater Russia” as halo territories of the “Russian World”. This extreme Russian nationalist vision – in a region where Russians are not even a majority – is highlighted by its double-headed eagle flag – ie, the symbol of Tsarist Russia:

_{Tsarist-era flag of the fascist-led ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’}

First let’s look at Russia’s leading mercenary gang, its equal to the US Blackwater – the Wagner Group, named by its founder after Hitler’s favourite musician. An extremely vicious militia, but are they fascists? Well, take a look at founder Dmitry Utkin. According to open source analyst Lukas Andriukaitis:

“Taking a closer look at the photos, Nazi collar tabs with Waffen SS bolts on the left and military rank on the right can be identified. Lower on the chest, a Reichsadler Eagle, can be seen. All three of these tattoos are symbols found Waffen-SS military uniforms, which was the military branch of the Nazi Party’s SS organization.”

A candidate to “de-Nazify” Ukraine? Well, it has been operating in the Donbas war since 2015 and has been playing a prominent role in the invasion, when they’re not busy brutalising Africans and Syrians.

_{Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin, covered in Nazi symbols as he fights to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine}

One Nazi unit within Wagner operating in Donbas, known as (Sabotage-Assault and Reconnaissance Group) Rusich, sports a logo featuring the ‘Slavic Swastika’ known as a Kolovrat; one Rusich account shows fighters holding a Valknut flag, which has been appropriated by white supremacists. Rusich first came to prominence in 2014 operating in the Russian ‘separatist’ war in Luhansk, when they carved a kolovrat onto the cheek of a captured Ukrainian service member (before dousing him with petrol and setting him alight).

But just in case these are just “traditional symbols”, and the brutality just normal brutality, Rusich leader Alexey Milchakov decided to make it clear for us in an interview:

“I’m a Nazi, I’m a Nazi. I won’t elaborate whether I’m a nationalist, a patriot or imperialist. I say directly: I’m a Nazi. I can raise my hand in Nazi salute.”

And here he is demonstrating the fact:

_{Rusich leader Milchakov making sure we know his political stance}

Alongside Milchakov, another Rusich leader is Yan Petrovsky, who, when residing in Norway, was a member of the Norwegian neo-Nazi group Soldiers of Odin. A third is Yevgeny “Topaz” Rasskazov, who, during the current invasion, did an interview with Yevgeny Dolganov of the neo-Nazi band Russkiy Styag, where he noted: “I am a good husband, hopefully a great father in the future, and I came to kill Ukrainians”.

In case of any lingering doubts about Rusich, here they are giving Nazi salutes:

_{Rusich members carrying out ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine}

The first Russian militias in the Donbas were associated with the Russian National Unity party, a neo-Nazi organisation; here is its swastika logo. The DPR’s first ‘people’s governor’, and founder of the Donbas People’s Militia, Pavel Gubarev, was a member of the RNU. The RNU’s founder, Alexander Barkashov, previously led post-Soviet Russia’s first fascist organisation, Pamyat.

The heavily armed RNU Nazi militias arrived in Donbas on March 9, 2014, that is, within a fortnight after Yanukovych fled Ukraine with his stolen billions. “The members of RNE, swastikas tattooed on their necks and arms, have no qualms about negotiating with Ukraine’s regional governments and making ultimatums,” according to Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov in his Ukraine Diaries.

_{Swastika of the Russian National Unity Party; and one of its members.}

Gubarev has since joined the Duginite, astonishingly wrongly named, ‘Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine’, led by Natalya Vitrenko, “a long-term associate of American right-wing extremist and anti-Semite Lyndon LaRouche.” Gubarev later lost out to rival fascists in the DPR, but returned to Ukraine to take part in the invasion in 2022. Just in case there was any doubt about his (and Putin’s) motivations, he lays it out clearly his promises of genocide to the Ukrainians:

“We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”

RNU is closely associated with the clerical-fascist Russian Orthodox Army, which proclaimed former Russian FSB agent Igor Girkin (Strelkov) its leader. Its motto is ‘Warriors of the faith, brothers of the Great Russia, we will unite the whole Southeast’; they have been connected to serious crimes in Donbas, including murdering non-Orthodox civilians.

Girkin became the DPR’s first ‘minister of defence’ in May 2014, and is himself is an interesting character, with a long murderous fascist legacy. In the mid-1990s, he joined a Russian far-right militia, the Tsarist Wolves, to go and fight in Bosnia on behalf of the Bosnian Serb genocidist forces led by Radovan Karadzic, busily exterminating the Bosnian Muslim population to create an ethnically pure ‘Greater Serbia’.

In 2018, Girkin “declared that the Holocaust had been motivated in Eastern Europe by a desire for “revenge” for what he claimed was a Jewish-dominated campaign of genocide by the Bolsheviks and that only “600-800 thousand people of Jewish nationality, or those with a touch of Jewish blood… no ‘6 million’ (or even 2-3 million)” had been murdered,” asserting that “the Jewish financial oligarchy and their stooges” were responsible for exaggerating the Holocaust.

Girkin first showed up in Crimea, but then crossed from Russia into Donetsk with 52 Russian fighters on 11–12 April 2014. These fighters began seizing administrative buildings in the city of Sloviansk. According to Girkin:

“I pulled the trigger of the war after all. Had our unit not crossed the border, it would have ended up like in Kharkiv, like in Odessa. There would have been a few dozen killed, burned, arrested. And that would have been the end of it”.

As ‘defence minister’, he was deemed responsible for the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines flight that killed 298 passengers and crew later in 2014.

Another Russian fascist working closely with Girkin and involved in Donbas from the outset was the DPR’s first ‘prime minister’, Aleksander Borodai. In the 1990s, Borodai wrote for the newspaper Zavtra, run by idiosyncratic fascist Aleksander Prokhanov, who believed Russia was the mystical womb of Aryan civilisation. In 2011, Borodai and Prokhanov launched “Djen” TV, which promoted “anti-Semitism, Russian nationalism, conspiracy theories, homophobia, misogyny, denunciations of the decadence of European civilization, and treatises on the ‘fiction’ of a Ukrainian national identity.”

Prokhanov praised Borodai as a true ‘White Russian nationalist’ and commented that when he became prime minister he had brought “Russian nationalism of the white, and not the red imperial consciousness.” Like Gubarev and Milchakov (but not Girkin), Borodai is again taking part in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The violent monarcho-fascist, white supremacist Russian Imperial Movement , which aims to re-create the Russian empire and draws inspiration from the ‘Black Hundreds’ of Tsarist Russia, also trained and sent troops to Donbas, arriving at the very outset, in February 2014 (and again now). The RIM is associated with the most extremist Nazi-style groups in Europe, including the Nordic Resistance Movement and the German neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NDP), both of which have trained in camps in Russia run by the RIM. Following training in Russia, the Nordic Resistance Movement set off several bombs in Sweden, in late 2016 and early 2017, targeting left-wing, migrant and refugee centres.

_{Two members of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement, on left of photo, at Russian Imperial Movement training camp, 2016.}

Another traditionalist-fascist militia is the neo-Cossack ‘Wolves’ Hundred’, founded during World War II by one ‘Shkuro’, later executed as a Nazi collaborator. According to one Russian ‘Cossack’ in the occupation of Slavyansk town hall in Donbas in 2014: “We don’t want Ukraine. Ukraine doesn’t exist for us. There are no people called Ukrainians. There are just Slav people who used to be in Kievan Rus, before Jews like Trotsky divided us.”

Then there was an actual ‘Black Hundreds’ militia as well, named after the Tsarist, ultra-nationalist and antisemitic gangs that operated in Russia before the revolution, led by Anton Raevskii, who took part in ‘separatist’ rallies in Odessa from March 2014 in attempt to foment an uprising. The organisation promotes “monarchy, empire and Eastern Orthodox Church.” Before being deported from Ukraine, Raevskii set up a military camp “to recruit and train militants in order to allegedly start an offensive against Ukrainian bases and Jewish communities.” Here he is, with the Nazi slogan ‘blood and soil’ tattooed on his lower right arm, and Hitler and a swastika on the upper arm:

_{Anton Raevskii, Hitlerite leader of the ‘Black Hundreds’}

Then there is the neo-Nazi Russkii Obraz, promoted by Putin to ideologically outgun nationalist supporters of oppositionist Navalny. Obraz leader Ilya Goryachev “was a fervent supporter of the neo-Nazi underground, the skinheads who committed hundreds of racist murders in the second half of the 2000s.” In 2014, Obraz found a new home when Aleksandr Matyushin of Obraz “helped to terrorise supporters of the Ukrainian state in Donetsk” and became a major field commander.

Other far-right militia involved in Donbas from 2014 included the Interbrigades, connected to the Nazbol ‘Other Russia’ organisation, the Svarozhich and Ratibor battalions, which sport the ‘Slavic swastika’, the Sparta Battalion, the Duginite Eurasianist Youth, the Nazi Slavic Union and the racist Movement Against Illegal Immigration. According to the Small Wars Journal, “the extremist website Sputnik and Pogrom has also allegedly been involved in the conflict by calling Russians to join a radical right militia that would later be known as the Batman Battalion, led by Alexander Bednov.

For all the inevitable hatred between ultra-nationalist fascists in countries in conflict with each other, their similarity occasionally shows through. In July 2015, then DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko praised the Ukrainian Right Sector:

“The Right Sector rose and said: “Down with Poroshenko!” I began to respect them. I respect them for two moments: when gays were beaten in Kiev and when they tried to remove Poroshenko. I realized that the Right Sector are the same normal men.”

Various sections of Putin’s global far-right fan club have also fought in Donbas, including Falanga (Polish fascists), Orthodox Dawn (Bulgarian clerical fascists), Legion of St Stephen (Hungarian fascists aligned with Jobbik) and Jovan Šević Detatchment (Serbian Chetniks). While not fighting, the German neo-Nazi AfD has paid high-level visits to the Donbas ‘republics’.

According to Prospect Magazine:

“Various far-right Italian mercenaries and ultras (the country’s extremist football fans) are even fighting alongside Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine. Many of those combatants have made contact with a neo-Nazi organisation called Rusich, inspired by Pan-Slavism and a longing to recreate a 21st-century nationalistic version of the USSR. The exchange of personnel goes in both directions: in recent years various Italo-Russians have stood in local elections in Rome for Forza Nuova and another neo-fascist party, Fratelli D’Italia.”

Another Italian fascist group, Millennium, also fought in Donetsk, the group accused of charges “ranging from recruiting, training, and funding foreign mercenaries in Eastern Ukraine, to fighting alongside pro-Russia and nationalist extremists in the region.” Members of the French far-right ‘Eurasianist’ group Unité Continentale have also fought in Donbas.

Active global far-right support for Assad

Alongside the love of Putin generally, global fascism is also specifically enamoured to one of Putin’s major projects independently of Putin: in their support for Syria’s genocidal Assad regime. Everywhere in the world – in the US, everywhere in Europe, in Australia, various reactionary governments from India to Hungary – the far-right, fascists, Nazis, white-supremacists, far-right populists – almost unanimously support Assad.

This involves more than their connections to Putin, or to Assad’s allies in the Nazi-style Syrian Social Nationalist Party (established in the 1930s in admiration of Naziism, it displays its specific kind of swastika). Rather, the global far-right has lapped up Assad’s propaganda that he is fighting a war for civilisation against “Islamic terrorists” and “jihadists,” protecting Christians and minorities. Assad’s “war on terror”, like that of Israel, the US and Russia, is one global war the far-right fully identifies with.

Not surprisingly, both father and daughter Le Pen have been strongly pro-Assad. In 2012,  Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that it was “not abnormal for the Syrian state to defend itself,” so Assad should not be criticised by countries who had fought Nazi Germany! Marine Le Pen in 2015 claimed that Assad is the only person who can rule Syria and save it from chaos. In 2016, former National Front youth leader Julien Rochedy visited Damascus to snap a selfie with his favourite tyrant.

In June 2013, a large delegation of European fascists visited Damascus to express support to the Assad dictatorship. According to Anton Shekhovtsov, the delegation included  

• Bartosz Bekier, leader of the Polish fascist Falanga (which advocates stripping Polish Jews of their citizenship rights), and Mateusz Piskorski, member of the Samooborona (Self-Defence), Poland
• Frank Creyelman and Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang, Belgium
• Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, UK
• Roberto Fiore, leader of Forza Nuova (New Force), Italy
• Luc Michel, leader of the Parti Communautaire National-Européen and founder of the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections, Belgium

The delegation met the Speaker of the Syrian People’s Assembly, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, and the Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi.

Griffin, who declared that the Syrian opposition were “jihadi terrorists”, has continually expressed support for Assad, as has EDL founder Tommy Robinson, far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins (who also praises western propagandists for Assad such as Vanessa Beeley and ‘Partisan Girl’), and Nigel Farage, among other far-right British figures.

_{May 2016, Assad’s Presidential Political and Media Advisor Bouthaina Shaaban meets another delegation from the fascist European Solidarity Front for Syria}

In 2016, Greece’s Golden Dawn MP Ioannis Sachinidis visited Syria and met parliament speaker Muhammad Jihad al-Lahham. Earlier, in 2013, the Greek neo-Nazi Black Lily (Mavros Krinos) claimed it had fighters in Syria supporting Assad, reportedly taking part in the regime’s conquest of Qusayr from the rebels. Black Lilly is a member of The European Solidarity Front, a coalition of far-right European parties “open to all those who love Syria, and support solidarity with President Assad, the Syrian nation and its army.” The neo-Nazi Skandinaviska Förbundet (Scandinavian League) has also sent fighters to Syria.

In early September 2013, an Italian delegation from the European Solidarity Front travelled to Damascus and Tartus “in support of the legitimate government of Bashar Al Assad and the Syrian people.” Alongside Forza Nuova, the delegation included the anti-immigrant CasaPound, “the fascist movement that has brought Mussolini back to the mainstream,” which in September 2015 invited the Syrian regime and the SSNP to its ‘International Congress of identity-solidarity’ in Rome. According to leader Simone Di Stefano, “Under the Assad regime, people can celebrate Christmas openly and women are not forced to wear a headscarf. Of course, we like the ideology of the Syrian state, but we also support what they represent.” In 2016, Forza Nuova chief Robert Fiore wrote that his fascist group “defends Assad and the Syrian people against attacks by ISIS and the USA,” in a post showing FN members holding a pro-Assad banner.

When in 2019, CasaPound visited Aleppo, the Syrian Ministry of Tourism tweeted the visit with the message “Syria is getting its tourism groove back.” CasaPound “expressed their pleasure to experience the fast restoration process and resilience & steadfastness of Syrian people.”

_{Syrian Tourism Ministry extols the rise of fascist tourism CasaPound fascist tourists in Syria}

Udo Voigt, former leader of the neo-Nazi German NPD, took part in a 2016 Alliance of Peace and Freedom trip to Syria; on his return he noted that he “did not notice any oppression” and therefore “there is no reason to flee,” being an advocate of forcible return of Syrian refugees to Assad. The far-right AfD organised its own “fact-finding” trips to Syria in March 2018 and November 2019, feted by the regime, aimed at proving how “safe” Assad-land is for refugees to return to. The AfD has special links with Assad, via one Kevork Almassian, a Syrian who, curiously, sought asylum in Germany despite being a crazed Assadist, and was given a job in the AfD’s office.

In the US, Richard Spencer, has long argued for courting Assad, who he considers “a civilized person” and “source of stability in this chaotic world.” Even before the war, former Klansman David Duke delivered a speech in Damascus in 2005 on state television, claiming that his country, too, was “occupied by Zionists.” Consistent in his admiration, in March 2017 Duke declared “Assad is a modern day hero standing up to demonic forces seeking to destroy his people and nation – GOD BLESS ASSAD!”

During the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, demonstrators proudly wore T-shirts advertising “Bashar’s Barrel Delivery Co.” The white supremacist James Fields who murdered Heather Heyer posted a portrait of Assad with the caption “UNDEFEATED.”

It is quite hard to find any on the US far-right that have not defended Assad, whether in the form of chemical war denialism, slanders of the White Helmets or more general praise for the alleged “defeater of jihadis,” from Alex Jones and his right-wing conspiracist ‘Infowars’, to far-right commentators Ann Coulter, Mike Peinovich , Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy, Tomi Lahren (who sought to remind Trump “that it’s America first”), and of course racist Tucker Carlson. While some mistakenly see Tulsi Gabbard as part of the “left”, in fact her praise for Assad comes from the same place as her strong Zionism, her love for the BJP and her claim to be a “hawk” on the drone wars – ie, right-wing Islamophobia.

_{Syrian Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi and Nick Griffin. Damascus, June 2013 Roberto Fiore, Syrian Minister of Information Omran al-Zoubi, Nabil Al Malazi. Damascus, June 2013}

Of course, the more mainstream right-wing in the US and elsewhere, as opposed to ultra-rightists and fascists, is a mixed bag. While some on the right are anti-Assad because they are anti-Iran, or because they love US military power and see Assad as a convenient target, overwhelmingly rhetorical anti-Assadism was more prevalent among “liberal interventionist” voices in the Democratic Party, while the hard right tended towards the ‘Assad ain’t good but he’s better than the jihadists’ trope.

Trump was forthright pro-Assad in the lead-up to his election, and maintained that position until Assad betrayed him by using sarin gas, leading Trump to launch a theatrical strike which did close to zero damage to the Assadist military; Trump cut off all Obama-era aid to the Free Syrian Army and even to the civil opposition and ensured anyone backed by the US only fights ISIS. Ted Cruz held a similar position, Assad was bad but is the lesser evil to the Islamists he fights. His campaign manager, Dick Black, was more forthright pro-Assad, visiting Assad in Damascus twice. Black and Cruz are associated with the Christian right, many of whom see Assad as a saviour of Christians against “Islamic extremism.” Another hard reactionary, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, also continually called for support to Assad (which didn’t prevent him being very anti-Iran). Then there is old reactionary and Trump ally Newt Gingrich who also reckons “both sides” are as bad as each other. Arch-warmonger John Bolton, whose main policy for 20 years was “attack Iran,” makes an exception with Syria, claiming regime change would result in “al-Qaida” coming to power. Then we have other reactionary neocons and Islamophobe extremists like Daniel Pipes, who penned “Support Assad” against the Islamists, and various ex-neocons like Leslie Gelb who turned to Assad as the shield against terrorism.

Putin, global fascism, Assad and the Israel connection

In 95 percent of the above cases of global far-right support to Assad, these parties, organisations and spokespeople also strongly support Israel and its war against the Palestinian people, for the same reason: Israel is another frontier state in the “war on terror”, a defender of western “civilisation” against “Islamic terrorism.” Given Israel’s nature as an apartheid state, it will be included here as part of the global far-right (as would apartheid South Africa if it still existed), but even for those who don’t accept this, there can be little doubt about the essentially fascistic character of the parties of the Israeli right: former prime minister Netanyahu’s Likud, and other parties of the secular, religious and settler right, such as those of current prime minister Naftali Bennett, and minister under both, Avigdor Lieberman.

Take for example Le Pen and the French National Front/Rally, the Austrian Freedom Party, the neo-Nazi AfD in Germany, Italy’s Lega Nord, Vlaams Belang of Belgium, Geert Wilders’ Dutch Party for Freedom, British National Party, English Defence League (EDL), Katie Hopkins (who called for the arrest of a grieving Palestinian mother whose baby had died from inhaling Israeli police tear gas)  Nigel Farage, Orban, Bolsonaro, the US far-right in almost all its manifestations – are all absolutely pro-Israel, and usually favour the most hard-line Israeli policy against the Palestinians as practiced and peached by the Israeli hard-right (eg, support for the violently far-right Jewish Defence League by Le Pen and by the EDL –even the US government calls the JDL terrorist!).

Lega Nord leader Salvini has promised that, if elected, he would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as has the German AfD and others. Indeed, just as the AfD has a ‘special relationship’ with Assad via Kevork Almassian, it has a special relationship with Israel via Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu; after he slammed the “evil” European Union as the enemy to Israel and “all European Christian countries,” he was held up as a “poster boy” by the AfD.

While this may seem problematic given the far-right’s traditional anti-Semitism, the majority the global far-right long ago switched from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia and see Israel, with its hard line against mostly Muslim Palestinians, as a model of the kind of hard anti-immigrant, militaristic ethno-state they fight for, part of their vision of a “Judeo-Christian” Europe “locked in a clash of civilisations against the Muslim world.” Of course, there are exceptions, but these are mostly just genuine throwbacks, actual Nazis or Klansmen (like David Duke), ie, the monkey fringe of the far-right. In any case, Israeli leaders, especially on the Likudnik and allied right, have little problem working with far-right governments and organisations which, despite their love for Israel, still entertain a degree of anti-Semitism.

Even some of the most unrepentant anti-Semites of the Naziesque far-right are concurrently pro-Israel, most prominently Richard Spencer, who describes himself as “a white Zionist,” calling Israel “the most important and perhaps most revolutionary ethno-state,” which he wants for “whites” in the US. He supported Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “capital,” and was enthusiastic about Netanyahu’s “nation-state” law. He just doesn’t like “globalist” Jews who live in the US, which leads to “white people being dispossessed from this country,” unlike Israeli Jews “who understand [their] identity, who ha[ve] a sense of nationhood and peoplehood.” Not surprisingly, Spencer’s inspiration, Alexander Dugin, holds similar view: “the chief enemy of the Jewish tradition will come from its own house,” from “the mixed multitude, the assimilated people,” just as “in our own community, in a similar way, the chief enemy of the Russian nation are liberal Russians and not the representatives of other groups.” As in classical anti-Semitism, it is the “cosmopolitan” Jew that is the enemy, not the “traditional” Jew attached to the state of Israel.

This more or less total identity of western fascist support for Assad and Israel is not simply an odd parallel, but is ideologically consistent, support for two “frontlines” in their “civilisational” war against “radical Islam.” But in addition, there is a key connection between the two: the Putin regime, which while intervening in Syria to aid Assad’s victory has also cultivated excellent relations with the Israeli right.

From the moment Russia’s Syria intervention began in 2015, Putin and Israeli prime minister and Likud leader, Zionist extremist Benjamin Netanyahu, never stopped having high level meetings – Netanyahu met with Putin more than with any other world leader. In 2018, Netanyahu was one of only two world leaders standing next to Putin in Red Square commemorating the 73^rd anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany, alongside Serbia’s Alexander Vucic. Netanyahu even produced a massive billboard showing himself with Putin for the 2019 elections. Not surprisingly, both partners were also enthusiastic allies of Trump. Under his rule, Israel authorized the ‘Cellebrite’ company “to sell its mobile phone hacking device to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which serves President Putin as a key tool of internal repression and political persecution in the country.”

_{Election poster on the Likud party headquarters showing Putin and Netanyahu, 2019}

Likewise, his equally ultra-rightist successor, and former ally, prime minister Naftali Bennett, was the first “world leader” to make a high level visit to Moscow to meet Putin. Bennett’s first statement following Russia’s invasion merely affirmed Ukraine’s right to sovereignty, but made no mention of Russia. Following US pressure, foreign minister and “moderate” Zionist Yair Lapid issued the official, half-hearted condemnation. But even then Bennett still refused to mention Putin or Russia in subsequent statements; he issued a demand that his ministers say nothing; rejected Ukraine’s calls for arms, and promised to block any attempt by Baltic states to send Israeli-made arms to Ukraine. His equally fascistic minister Lieberman later refused to condemn Russia following the Bucha massacre, claiming “I support first of all Israeli interests.” Earlier, Israel had blocked the US from providing Israeli ‘iron dome’ missile shield technology to Ukraine.

Israel refused the US request to co-sponsor a UN Security Council move to put a motion to condemn Russia to the General Assembly. Again this caused rebuke from Washington, so Israel voted in favour at the General Assembly, where it had no teeth. Bennett explained that Russia understood Israel’s forced stand, as Russia affirmed, promising that this would not affect their cooperation in Syria. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s far-right Likud opposition criticises the government for saying anything at all, advising an even more “guarded” approach.

While Putin is one key link between Israel and the Assad regime (alongside the UAE-Bahrain-Egypt axis), Israel leaders are not shy about their own views. As Assad’s troops reconquered the south in 2018 as part of a Trump-Putin supervised deal, Netanyahu declared “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.” His Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border,” while his National Security Adviser, Meir Ben Shabat, declared that Israel has no problem with Assad as long as the Iranians leave. Fascistic defence minister Lieberman noted that from Israel’s perspective, “the situation is returning to how it was before the civil war, meaning there is a real address, someone responsible, and central rule,” as it “is also in Assad’s interest” to keep the occupied Golan “border” calm.

In other words, Israel always preferred Assad to prevail over the uprising; the alliance with Putin is not only because Putin’s air defence system in Syria allows Israel to bomb Iranian assets in the country (Russia and Iran both backed Assad’s victory but are now partially rivals over influence and spoils), as widely claimed.

Actually the Israel-Russia alliance precedes direct Russian intervention in Syria. During Israel’s Gaza blitzkrieg in 2014, Putin declared “I support the struggle of Israel,” while Israel refused to join its western allies in condemning the Russian annexation of Crimea, abstaining in the UN and rejecting sanctions.

Therefore, this alliance must be seen in its broader context: Israel’s own territorial aggression, violation of international law via annexation of other countries’ territory, and justification of occupation, aggression and commission of crimes of humanity on the basis that the Palestinian nation is a fiction, all strongly parallel Putin’s actions and ideological justifications. While allied to the US empire, Israel is a small-scale imperialist power in its own right with similar “revisionist” tendencies to Russia. There is a clear understanding of this affinity within the ruling elites of both countries.

The Ukrainian far-right versus the Russian far-right

While the summary above demonstrates that the global far-right has been overwhelmingly pro-Putin and highlights the nonsense in Putin’s claim to want to “de-Nazify” anywhere, that is not to deny the presence of an aggressive far-right, fascist and Nazi sector among the political and military formations associated with Ukrainian nationalism.   

On the one hand, the far-right – Svoboda, Right Sector and political representatives of Azov – collectively only received some 2.3 percent of the vote in the last Ukraine elections, so there is an extraordinary amount of demonisation in calling Ukraine some kind of “Nazi” cause, equivalent to the racist dubbing of freedom fighters in the Middle East – in Palestine, Syria and elsewhere – as “jihadis.”

On the other, the far-right – in particular the Azov regiment – has played a somewhat greater role on the military front since 2014, a common impact of military action which tends to empower tough guys and nationalists. The far-right Azov Battalion was formed in May 2014 by members of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly, which had “engaged in xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community and people opposing their views.” It gained a lot of initial support due to the relative disorganisation of official Ukrainian forces when suddenly confronted by the Russian intervention that year.

In November 2014, the government incorporated the Azov Battalion into the National Guard, as a means of controlling, or taming it; the government claims it can no longer act outside the discipline of the armed forces. While perhaps a dubious means, it did separate the armed forces from its political leadership. Ideological cadre including leader Andriy Biletsky had to leave Azov, as they allegedly were no longer able to do far-right work in the Ukrainian military, according to Alexander Ritzmann, a senior adviser at Berlin’s Counter Extremism Project. In 2016 Biletsky founded a far-right political party, National Corps. To get a taste of his views, in 2010 he had asserted that Ukraine’s mission should be to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against Semite-led Untermenschen.” Separated from his former militia, he set up the ‘Azov Circle’ civil movement and a new militia for internal repression, the National Druzhyna, formed in 2017 from veterans of the Azov Battalion. In January 2018, National Druzhyna “carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community,” under the guise of “restoring order.” These actions by the National Corps militia can easily be confused with the Azov regiment of the National Guard, but should be distinguished.

That doesn’t mean the Azov regiment is now free from fascist influence, but the reality is far from clear. In 2015, Andriy Diachenko, a spokesman for the regiment, claimed only 10-20 percent of regiment members are Nazis as regular non-ideological troops joined. According to Kacper Rekawek from the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, “year by year, the connections (between the regiment and the movement) are looser.” While these claims may or may not be true, uniforms still sport the Nazi-like Wolfsangel symbol of the original battalion.

In 2018, US Congress passed a bill banning any US arms, training or assistance going to the Azov regiment.

Azov is therefore part of the problem, because its very existence as part of the Ukrainian armed forces is a bigger political problem than its small military reach as such; having a fascist-influenced regiment on the fronts is the best way to drive any ethnic Russians sitting on the fence into the hands of the far-right Russia-owned separatists. The Ukrainian government should indeed be criticised for not disbanding it or more fully severing its connections to the political movement.

However, the vast expansion of military action as a result of full-scale Russian invasion significantly reduces the relative weight of Azov and other fascists, given the “vast popular mobilisation” of millions of Ukrainians – including Russian-speakers – which “has risen up which goes far beyond the state apparatuses” to defend their country’s existence. The Azov regiment is estimated to consist of about 900 fighters; the standing Ukrainian armed forces are 196,000 troops, with another 900,000 reserves!

Regardless, Ukrainian fascists fighting Russia are virtually an anomaly in today’s global fascist climate. The appeals to global far-right solidarity by Ukraine’s Svoboda and Pravy Sector fell on deaf ears in 2014 following Ukraine’s Euromaiden. There was a history of connection between sections of the Russian and Ukrainian far-right before 2014; Svoboda had had observer status in the far-right Alliance of European National Movements (AENM). However, it had already been expelled in 2013, before the Euromaiden, at the initiative of Hungarian Jobbik, which objected to Svoboda’s anti-Hungarian statements.

In any case, in 2014, the AENM declared that the new Ukrainian government had no legitimacy and that it supports Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Most connections between the Ukrainian and European far right ended. “For Ukraine’s radical nationalists the problem with these old and new connections is that many, if not the majority, of Europe’s right-wing radical formations have sympathies for, or even contacts with, Putin’s Russia.” In discussing why previous links with Greece’s Golden Dawn were severed, Andre Tarasenko, Right Sector leader, noted “we cut it because they are with Putin who funds most far-right European parties, like Le Pen.”

On the military front, Azov has had a little more success, with several fascist groups that are anomalous among the far-right within their countries developing links. An article in Newsweek, before the invasion, titled ‘Ukraine’s War Draws U.S. Far-Right to Fight Russia’, claimed “neo-Nazi militias have recruited white supremacists from around the world to join their fight against Russia and advance racist ideology.” Yet the only groups mentioned were, in the US, the Nazi Atomwaffen Division (members of whom were deported from Ukraine) and the racist Rise Above Movement, clearly at odds with the strongly pro-Putin hegemony on the US far-right; Germany’s neo-Nazi Third Path (Der Dritte Weg), differentiating itself from the pro-Putin NPD and AfD; and Italy’s fascist CasaPound.

The idiosyncratic fascists of CasaPound may likewise want to distinguish their position from Forza Nuova, Lega Nord and other pro-Putin Italian fascists by supporting Ukraine, but in reality their position is more ambivalent; “some members of CasaPound have voiced their support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, while others support the Kremlin and have even fought on the side of pro-Russian militants in Eastern Ukraine.” CasaPound has participated in conferences with Azov in Lvov; but has also participated in rallies with other Italian fascists where “the crowd displayed posters hailing Putin as well as waving flags of the DNR” [Donetsk Peoples Republic], and organised a public meeting in Rome with Dugin. Explaining CasaPound’s vision of a new Italian-led Mediterranean, Simone Di Stefano, explained that “Outside the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance, Russia is a fundamental strategic ally for us … I very much appreciate the concept of ‘eternal Russia’ expressed in Dugin’s book.”

Impact of the Russian invasion on far-right support for Putin

The unexpected nature, ferocity and wide-ranging nature of Russia’s outright invasion of sovereign Ukraine has caused considerable anxiety for Putin’s far-right allies, from quite different perspectives. Although most remain cautiously supportive, some have expressed concern while others are torn between Russian and Ukrainian fascism.

On the one hand, the far-right parties that have some tendency towards “respectability,” due to participation in elections, have been humiliated by the sheer blatancy of Russia’s aggression. So, for example, French National Rally leader Le Pen, her rival Zemmour, Italian Lega Nord leader Salvini, Czech president Miloš Zeman and Hungarian prime minister Orban all had to condemn the aggression; though just days earlier they were still claiming the idea of invasion was just a beat-up and that Russia did have legitimate “security concerns”.

Condemning blatant aggression did make them partisans of Ukraine or born-again Russia hawks; rather, they tended to adopt the same position as the pro-Putin “left,” ie, of course we condemn the invasion, so let’s push for negotiations, compromise, no sanctions etc. Le Pen refused demands to destroy election pamphlets that prominently display her with Putin, explaining the invasion had only “partly changed” her view of him; Zemmour claimed that while “Putin is the guilty one, those responsible are in NATO which has not stopped expanding.” While Orban fell in with the EU and NATO consensus on the invasion, he stressed his opposition to sanctions or sending arms to Ukraine.

Some still entirely blame NATO with no criticism of Putin. For example, Alice Weidel, MP of the German fascist AfD, blamed the failure of the West to assure that Ukraine remained neutral rather than “continuously pushing the frontiers of NATO’s eastward expansion,” which was an “insult” to Russia’s great status. Dutch fascist Thierry Baudet of the misnamed Forum for Democracy claimed “Russia didn’t have much of a choice.”

On the other extreme, much of the more hard-line far-right have been attracted to Putin because he is seen as a firm and tough leader who is not scared to throw his weight around to defend “his nation”, “western civilisation” and the like. Hence their unanimous support for Putin’s backing of Assad’s dictatorship against “Islamists.” They feel none of the “respectable” pressures of the first group, but Putin’s invasion is a huge risk due to the stakes involved: an outright victory of Imperial Russia would greatly embolden the admiration he receives from global fascism, whereas a humiliating defeat could equally lead to a massive loss of support. With the Russian army bogged down, thousands of conscripts returning in body bags, the inability to yet conquer any major city, and the disastrous impacts of harsh western sanctions, humiliating defeat is not out of the question.

A third issue is the difficulty of choosing between equally attractive fascist partners. Azov appears to have had some success with its active promotional activities; “it is a larger-than-life brand among many extremists. It has welcomed Westerners into its ranks via white-supremacist sites. Azov stickers and patches have been seen around the globe.” This blends with right-wing oriented soldier-of-fortune types and various macho gun lovers and fascists who just want combat experience, including many who admit they are not going to fight for Ukraine, but for a pure white state, with Ukraine a useful springboard; from where they are in the West, it is simply easier to enter Ukraine to fight than to enter from the other side.

Combined with this is fascist uneasiness with two “white” nations at war. This can lend itself either to supporting Putin’s propaganda about Russians and Ukrainians being “one nation” divided by communists and globalists, or to opposing Putin launching aggression against fellow “whites.” Reportedly there has been discussion on far-right social media platforms about the role of “Jews” in driving two “white” nations to war.

To date though this has not led to a massive swing against Putin by the global far-right, rather confusion, division and nervous watching. Deutsche Welle reports that “some of Germany’s right-wing extremists have long had links to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov militia. Other German neo-Nazis support Russia’s Vladimir Putin. … far-right activists who spent the past two years denouncing the German government and its restrictions to rein in the COVID pandemic, now place their hopes on Russia to champion their values: “When Putin marches through, men will again be men, electricity, and fuel will become cheaper, Islamization will end, and the greens and lefties will all be locked up,” read a chat group message of the ‘Free Thuringians’ extreme-right group. Similarly, the Washington Post reports that “the conflict has exposed a rift among extremists” in Germany, support divided between Russia and Ukraine. “A group called Free Saxony recently told its followers that the conflict was “largely fueled by NATO,” condemning smear campaigns against “friends of Putin.”

Thus, despite various articles with headings like Far right militias in Europe plan to confront Russian forces, concrete evidence is slim. This article reports that “in recent days, militia leaders in France, Finland and Ukraine have posted declarations urging their supporters to join in the fight to defend Ukraine against a Russian invasion” and that “numerous far-right white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups throughout Europe and North America had expressed an outpouring of support for Ukraine, including by seeking to join paramilitary units in battling Russia,” while naming very few.

The most concrete example was from Finland: “Neo-Nazi and white supremacist Telegram users from Finland also encouraged fellow Finns to join the fight alongside Ukrainians … One post said, “the age-old duty of the Finns has been to wage war against the Russians.” But that’s unsurprising – Finland was invaded and occupied by the Russian Empire, and then again by Stalin, leading to Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany against Russia, ie, like Ukraine, there is a history of national conflict with Russia which leads extreme nationalists into conflict with that country.

On the whole, therefore, while the edifice of Putin’s global alliance with fascism has been under strain from opposing pressures, there has been no drastic change to date. A complete Russian victory would almost certainly solidify the alliance and lead to an enormous surge in support for Kremlin-backed and financed fascist and far-right movements globally. In contrast, a humiliating Russian defeat would possibly lead to desertion of a weakened Russia by many fascist groups, and conversely, their long association with Putin, their heralding of him as the great white saviour, may discredit many of these groups and lead them to lose support. This is one more, not unimportant, reason to hope for the defeat of Putin’s bloody gamble in this fascistic far-right version of late 19^th century imperialism.

_{Cataclysmic destruction in Syria: Which were caused by the February 6 earthquake, which by Assad regime bombing?}

By Michael Karadjis

Following the 7.8 Richter earthquake of February 6, no disaster relief reached the people of northwest Syria, in the region under opposition control, from the United Nations or any country, in the crucial first week, meaning thousands died under the rubble. This was the part of Syria most heavily impacted by the quake. These people, who had already experienced the full brunt of years of horrific bombing by the Assad dictatorship and Imperial Russia with the full connivance of the “international community”, were yet again condemned to genocide by the world.

In the context of the quake, the Assad regime renewed its push for the lifting of US and EU economic sanctions on Syria. As I will argue in the second part of this series, there are good reasons to lift, or at least radically overhaul, these sanctions in their current form because, regardless of their intention and exemptions, they overwhelmingly impact the civilian population while the blood-drenched regime has consolidated. However, this has nothing to do with the current crisis over earthquake disaster relief.

It is very important that the genocidal regime – which has imposed the equivalent of hundreds of February 6 earthquakes on the people of Syria via its bombing of much of the country into a moonscape over the last decade, and which even bombed northwest Syria within hours after the earthquake, and has reportedly continued to do so since and even bombed Idlib on February 26-27 as the Egyptian foreign minister was meeting Assad – does not benefit from this disgraceful and hypocritical propaganda war. Because while 214 planeloads of disaster aid had arrived in regime-held Syria, via Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia airports, or via Beirut, as of February 24, from dozens of countries – completely unencumbered by sanctions which do not prevent such humanitarian aid – it is the much more heavily impacted northwest, outside regime control, that has been betrayed by the world, received very little, and initially left to die.

As UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths noted, “The first 72 hrs after a disaster are critical” because this is when people buried under rubble may still be found alive, so the absence of aid in the first week cannot be fixed by (a little) more arriving the second week; as Jasmine Gani explained on February 9, “as a result of the slow international response and lack of aid, residents in Idlib have reported that most of the victims who are still alive and might have been saved are still trapped under the rubble after four days. Tragically, the sounds of people calling for help under the debris are slowly giving way to silence.”

That was obviously not due to sanctions on the regime, but on the contrary, to the regime’s sanctions on sending some of the enormous aid it did receive to the northwest; to the Russian veto in the UN on most cross-border aid crossings from Turkey into northern Syria to “protect Syria’s sovereignty”; and above all the decision by the UN, the US, the EU and others to “respect” this argument about Assadist “sovereignty” or UN “legality” by not sending aid direct to the region – or else back-handedly justifying their lack of aid with these arguments. The regime’s propaganda is so despicable that images of destruction in non-regime Idlib are shown with slogans against sanctions; most people have heard that little aid has reached the victims in northern Syria and hence the disgraceful lie that this is due to sanctions on the genocidal regime often sounds persuasive to those not in the know.  

Background: The liberated northwest and years of Assadist terror-bombing

The Assad regime and Russia bombed the people here – as with elsewhere in Syria – for a decade with every conceivable form of “conventional” and unconventional WMD except nuclear, destroying entire cities and towns, turning much of the country into a moonscape, bombing hundreds of hospitals, but the people refused to submit. While the regime, with Russian and Iranian support and US connivance, reconquered most of the regions held by the anti-Assad revolution, two regions remain outside its control – the northwest (much of Idlib and Aleppo provinces), under the control of a range of rebel groups, and partially controlled by Turkish forces in an uneasy alliance with them, and the northeast, under the control of the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Yes, the rebel leaderships in the northwest became heavily co-opted either by Turkey, or by the jihadist militia HTS, in the last few years, inevitable considering their desperation to not be overrun by the genocidal Assad regime, and the lack of support from the West; yet even over the last few months we’ve seen mass popular demonstrations both against Turkey and against HTS at different times, suggesting that, while militarily defeated, the revolutionary masses still believe they have something to fight for and remain committed to the ideals which they rose up for in 2011.   

Indeed, while some of the demonstrations against HTS were simply against its attempt to impose its rule over areas it does not control, or against its repressive actions, others were against HTS attempting to open a trade connection with the regime; and similarly, the demonstrations against Turkey were against the growing convergence between Erdogan and Assad as they move to ‘bury the hatchet’, just as Erdogan has also recently moved to patch things up with his former enemies in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel (and just as the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain and increasingly Saudi Arabia have re-aligned with both the Assad regime and Israel in an axis of counterrevolution). But the 5 million people in the liberated northwest – including almost 3 million refugees from elsewhere in Syria – are both the main reason for Turkey maintaining some level of commitment to the anti-Assad cause when abandoned by everyone else – because, with 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey already, Erdogan does not want Assad to reconquer the region and send millions more across the border – but therefore also the main obstacle to full Erdogan-Assad rapprochement, and the main potential victims of such a deal. If one were cynical one would suggest the earthquake was too good “an opportunity” for the regional oppressors via the sheer level of death, destruction and demoralisation meted out to the stubbornly resistant people of the region.

_{Top: demonstration against HTS trying to open trade links with regime; bottom, demonstration against Turkey trying to reconcile with regime}

The impact: Turkey and the two parts of northwest Syria

Let’s clarify what is going on with the earthquake and its victims. Turkey suffered by far the biggest disaster, with over 44,000 killed and 345,000 apartments destroyed (some 160,000 buildings containing 520,000 apartments were either destroyed or severely damaged). Of these, the Syrian Network for Human Rights had already documented 3841 Syrian refugees in Turkey among the dead as of February 15, but at that point overall numbers were much lower so the real figure now may be much higher. The situation is unimaginable. But while no amount of disaster aid is enough, at least it has been arriving on a large-scale, and Turkey has a functioning government dealing with the situation, whatever one’s views on that government.   

In Syria, despite relatively smaller numbers, the situation is even more drastic due to the lack of such a government and the politics of aid. Regions both under regime control, and under opposition control, in northwest Syria were heavily impacted by the earthquake; victims on both sides deserve all the aid they can get. But there are two differences: firstly, the level of devastation is far worse in the opposition-controlled regions (4300 dead, 7600 injured, 1700 buildings completely destroyed) than inside the Assad-ruled part (still tragic, 1408 deaths, 2301 injuries, dozens of destroyed buildings), as the opposition-controlled region is closer to the epicentre of the quake in Turkey; and second, thousands of tons of disaster relief have poured into Damascus since the earthquake struck, into the hands of the regime or of humanitarian organisations in regime territory, from dozens of countries from the very first days, whereas hardly anything arrived in the opposition-controlled northwest in the crucial first week after the quake when survivors may still have been found, and only a fraction of what the regime received has arrived since. To this we can add that the opposition region has been destroyed by years of Assadist and Russian bombing already, which not only killed and destroyed on a far vaster scale than the earthquake while also weakening the foundations of its buildings which have now collapsed, and meted out an incomprehensible level of destruction of its hospitals and health infrastructure which were ruthlessly and deliberately targeted; and the conditions the refugees were living in was already dire, before the earthquake hit: 1.7 million are living in refugee camps, while 4.1 million of the region’s population already rely on humanitarian aid.

_{Regions of Syria under different political control. The green areas in the north-west under opposition/rebel control were the most heavily impacted, but very little disaster aid went there. Parts of the north-west under Assad regime control (in red) were also impacted, to a lesser extent – nearly all disaster aid has gone to the regime.}

How can aid get to northwest Syria: its two “borders” and regime sanction on cross-border aid

So, how can aid get into liberated northwest Syria? Well, it has two borders. To the south is regime-controlled Syria. So while all the disaster aid going into Syria is a good thing, it is largely irrelevant to northwest Syria, because the Assad regime does not allow supplies to cross the boundary; “this area is an open-air prison that is disconnected from everywhere else,” according to Zaher Sahloul, the president of the aid organization MedGlobal, which works in the region and in Gaziantep in southern Turkey, home to thousands of Syrian refugees. The regime has also cut off electricity to the region, so search-and-rescue and medical services run on generators. Even within the region of Syria it does control, the regime has a well-documented history of directing aid to politically preferred regions. Nothing crossed the boundary in the first week, indeed, the Syrian Foreign Minister initially declared that no aid should get to what it called “the terrorists in the north,” ie, regions controlled by the rebels. On February 10, four days after the quake hit, the regime finally announced that it would let aid cross (called “cross-line” aid to distinguish it from the cross-border aid from Turkey), clearly timed to allow most under the rubble to die first, and then try to look good afterwards. In any case, only a trickle at most has been sent since the announcement, while even attempts by Syrian citizens to collect and send aid to the northwest, from various parts of Syria, have reportedly been thwarted.

The other border is to the north, the border with Turkey. Turkey has been the main provider to this region, but also, international organisations have accessed this region via Turkey. Turkey itself has 3.6 million Syrian refugees, the world’s largest refugee population, and most live in the region of Turkey just destroyed by the earthquake there. There were long two major routes from Turkey into this region of Syria for humanitarian relief (as well as smaller routes), plus a route from Iraq and one from Jordan. However, since 2020, Russia has blocked the routes from Jordan and Iraq and all but one of the routes from Turkey, via its UN veto. This “resulted in a lack of essential items, building materials and specialist equipment making it impossible to rebuild the region which was devastated by war and bombed by Syrian and Russian forces.” Even the one crossing Russia reluctantly allowed the stay open, the Bab al-Hawa crossing, has to be renewed every 6 months. However, this route was itself badly damaged by the earthquake, and for over a week after the quake, the Syrian regime insisted that all aid must flow through Damascus, even that to the region outside its control, and therefore refused to budge on the question of “allowing” other crossings from Turkey. And the UN did not use the other routes to get in urgent aid, due to this Russian UN veto and respect for this alleged “Syrian sovereignty”, despite the fact that several months ago, before the earthquake struck, a range of international legal experts had already declared that no UN or regime “permission” is needed to send urgent humanitarian aid across borders.

The first crucial week: Massive aid to Assad’s Syria, nothing for the northwest

Now, of course, the main villain here is Putin’s imperialist Russian regime blocking humanitarian corridors on behalf of the alleged “sovereignty” of its satrap in Damascus, and that satrap; however, given the scale of the disaster, the UN could simply have used the other crossings, and put saving lives ahead of such spurious “sovereignty” arguments, as these experts argued.

Not a single search and rescue team arrived in the northwest from anywhere in the world in the first week, and the existing equipment in the hands of the relief organisations such as the absolutely heroic White Helmets was only sufficient to search about 5 percent of impacted areas. According to reporter Ruth Sherlock on February 11, “on a rare visit to this rebel-held enclave of a country broken and isolated by more than a decade of civil war, NPR saw no international crews of rescuers; no trucks loaded with machinery or medical aid; no streams of ambulances to save the wounded. The border crossing into Syria was empty and silent.”

Meanwhile, the damage at the one legal opening did not prevent trucks crossing to bring back bodies of Syrian refugees from Turkey killed in the earthquake there – so why couldn’t relief get in as well as bodies? Some 22 trucks did cross the border on February 9, three days after the earthquake, but that was only to deliver goods ordered before the earthquake, namely backlog supplies of food, water and cleaning materials, hardly what was most pressing at the time. By the end of the first week, northwest Syria had only received five truck convoys, a mere 52 trucks, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This compared with 84 planes and 12 truck convoys that arrived in regime-held Syria by that same point, clearly unimpeded by sanctions. And what about airdrops – couldn’t the UN or US or EU have carried out airdrops of supplies? As Jasmine Gani points out, “in 2016, due to the extent of damage to the roads, the UN was able to airdrop hundreds of supplies to the regime-held area of Deir Ezzor, multiple times; but the UN must first seek approval from the regime, and with a lack of permission, no such airdrops have been made in the North-west of Syria.” So the UN simply capitulated to the regime and continued to send all its aid to regime areas. And couldn’t the US or EU have somewhat pressured the UN on this issue if they really wanted to get aid in, or made airdrops themselves – after all, the US has an airbase just across the border in Turkey. Indeed, Idrees Ahmad shows, both made fancy statements about sending aid to the disaster-hit zone in the first week, but nothing arrived. The fact that they didn’t, and that the UN, US and EU all preferred to send aid via the regime-controlled region, makes extra mockery of the idea that sanctions were preventing aid, as no sanctions prevented them sending aid via Turkey to the north.

Of the 84 planeloads of aid and 12 truck convoys that were sent to regime-held Syria in the first week, the absolute majority, 71, came from Arab countries. Of these by far the largest contribution came from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which sent 22 planes and one truck convoy, while Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Tunisia all sent planes. In addition, another 15 planes came from a range of other countries, including the European Union and Italy. The story spread on some “anti-imperialist” sites that only “anti-imperialist” states sent aid was nothing but the laughable fiction we’ve come to expect from such quarters: depending on what this vague and hollow term is taken to mean, the 11 planes sent at this stage by Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela was relative peanuts. Russia, of course, had no trouble sending hundreds of warplanes to bomb Syria to bits for years, but only 3 planes for disaster relief. For many of the reactionary Arab states who sent the great bulk, especially the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Oman, and partially Saudi Arabia, this massive aid has gone hand in hand with dramatically increasing their political rapprochement with the Assad regime (including top state visits to Assad and by Assad) which these states have been leading in the Arab world for years now; it is no coincidence that they are the same states which have led rapprochement with Israel in the same period. Only Qatar (which rejects rapprochement with either Assad or Israel) and Kuwait have focused their aid on the northwest.

_{Chart showing the number of planes or convoys from different groups of countries (figure in brackets is number of countries)}  

Cross-border aid “allowed” but remains a relative trickle

Finally, on February 13, a week after the quake, the regime “gave permission” to the UN and other agencies to use the other crossings (Bab al-Salama and al-Rai) to deliver aid to the region it has no control over (apparently at the urging of its close UAE ally), again well-timed to allow maximum death first, and the UN, thanking “his Excellence” genocidal tyrant Assad for such magnanimity, finally delivered the first aid through the Bab al-Salama crossing on February 15.

By the end of the second week, 178 trucks had crossed the border from Turkey in the entire period since the quake hit, a big improvement which continued in the third week (282 trucks by February 24). However, while this may sound a lot, throughout 2022, “some 600 trucks loaded with aid crossed Türkiye each month” in normal times! Moreover, the contrast with the level of aid being sent to regime Syria remained stark: 167 planeloads of disaster aid had arrived in Syria, via Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia airports, in the region controlled by the Assad regime, as of February 18, rising to 214 planes as of February 24 (of which 93 were from the UAE). In fact, the number of trucks which arrived in the first two weeks in the northwest was equivalent to what sometimes arrived in regime-held Syria on a daily basis, for example, on February 18, a convoy of 100 Iraqi aid trucks crossed the Syrian border, plus trucks from various other countries, along with 17 planes, half from the UAE. To put it simply, almost as many planeloads arrived in regime-held Syria (in addition to trucks) as truckloads arrived in the far more impacted rebel-held Syria! Moreover, trucks mostly bring in aid such as food and tents rather than the specialist equipment required for search and rescue or construction materials to rebuild homes and buildings destroyed.

Actually, 120 trucks of aid collected by Syrians in Deir Ezzor, under the control of the SDF in northeast Syria (the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, AANES), which was sent to the northwest on February 14, exceeded the amount of aid sent by the United Nations at that point by two and a half times! The aid was transferred by AANES to the opposition Syrian Interim Government (SIG) which controls much of the northwest, despite their otherwise poor relations. Unfortunately, a second convoy of 30 tanks of fuel and 20 trucks of aid sent by AANES to the northwest was apparently blocked by the SIG, possibly due to Turkish pressure.

	First week	By February 18	By February 24
Regime-held Syria	84 planes + hundreds of trucks	167 planes + hundreds of trucks	214 planes + hundreds of trucks
Rebel-held northwest	0	178 trucks	282 trucks

_{Disaster aid arriving in two parts of Syria, first few weeks after earthquake}

So, what about the sanctions on the Assad regime?

Given all the above, it appears deeply ironic that the Assad regime is attempting to use this disaster to press for the end of US (and EU) sanctions on the regime, which were imposed in their current harsh form in 2019 after the US had facilitated Assad’s military victory over the armed opposition. This will be elaborated on in the second article of this series, focused on the sanctions.

The key point here is that, while there are good reasons to demand the end, or at least the radical overhaul, of the sanctions in their current form, this question has nothing to do with the current disaster relief issue. Therefore, raising that argument in the midst of the disaster played into the hands of the genocidal regime and its lies. It is abundantly clear from all the above data that the sanctions were not preventing any aid from getting into Assad’s Syria: on the contrary, as massive aid poured in, it was opposition-controlled Syria that was both most devasted, and receiving very little aid, where avoidable mass death took place. And part of the reason for this was the effective ‘sanctions’ imposed by the Assad regime on aid to the northwest, the UN veto imposed by its Russia paymaster on cross-border aid to the northwest, and above all the loyalty of the UN system to these legal fictions of Assadist “sovereignty” and Putinite “legality”, trumping the survival of thousands of Syrians under the rubble.

Regime Syria could receive all these hundreds of planes with thousands of tons of disaster relief from around the world precisely because the sanctions already exempt humanitarian and medical supplies, as the Assad regime’s foreign minister concedes. In any case, both the EU and the US have suspended any sanctions that could conceivably impact or hold up deliveries for the next 6 months in response to the disaster (the difference this makes therefore, is unclear, but the idea is to expedite aid delivery so that it doesn’t have to go through any process to get clearance first). Moreover, the major UN humanitarian operation inside Syria (coordinated by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), working in all Syrian provinces, received 44.7% of its $2.362 billion funding in 2022 from the US! And similar amounts every year. Indeed 91% of the UN humanitarian funding in Syria comes from the US, UK, EU and Canada – all of which sanction the regime. They do not sanction their own humanitarian funding now do they? Indeed, USAID has provided $16 billion in humanitarian aid to Syria since the crisis began in 2011, working in all Syrian provinces. The US has also pledged $185 million to Turkey and Syria in disaster relief for the current earthquake. The problem is more that the Assad regime has a well-documented history of stealing, manipulating, diverting all this aid going into Syria via the UN, so that much of it does not reach the intended targets, with the UN awarding nearly half of its procurement contrasts to individuals closely connected to the Assad regime in a situation described as “systematic corruption” in a 2022 report commissioned by the Syrian Legal Development Program (SLDP) and the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks (OPEN).

Therefore, given this combination of facts – the massive disaster relief sent to regime Syria unimpeded by sanctions, the corresponding catastrophic lack of disaster relief being sent to the rebel-held northwest which had borne the main brunt of the disaster, the fact that regime ‘sanctions’ on aid to the northwest and Russian UN veto on cross-border aid corridors worsened the situation of the northwest, the ongoing bombing of the earthquake-hit northwest by the regime, the regime’s theft and manipulation of aid, and the fact that this regime had bombed its country to ruins far, far exceeding what any earthquake could do – the opportunist campaign to use the disaster to call for the end of sanctions on the genocidal regime was deeply flawed and hypocritical, based on lies, and aimed at the regime’s rehabilitation rather than aiding earthquake victims.

But as long as we separate this issue from the current disaster, there are nevertheless good reasons to take a hard look at this question of US and EU sanctions on the regime in their current form. The assessment now that 3-4 years have elapsed appears to be: on the one hand, the ordinary Syrian people feel the major impact of sanctions, because, despite their exemptions, they impact humanitarian relief in countless indirect ways, especially in relation to the banking system, and sanctions on entire sections of the economy (eg energy) inevitably batter the poor regardless of intentions; on the other, the regime appears firmly entrenched in power and its oligarchic circles have always been in the best position to evade, or even profit from, sanctions. This however comes up against the question of, if not sanctions, what can be done with a regime that has destroyed its country, killed hundreds of thousands, still holds tens of thousands of political prisoners in horrific conditions involving systematic torture, while a quarter of the population have fled the country and will not return while Assad remains in power, and more than half of Syria’s pre-war population are outside regime control. This will be discussed in the second part of this series.

By Michael Karadjis

In response to the claim by the Assad dictatorship that it received 95 percent of the vote in its May 26 staged “election” circus, and that the turnout was 78 percent, or 14 million people, critics have pointed to a variety of obvious issues:

• Of 51 candidates who nominated, only two were accepted by the dictatorship’s Constitutional Court, ie two non-entity Assad clones – so essentially the alternatives one could vote for were Bashar al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad
• Even the clone “opposition” candidates only had 10 days to campaign so few knew anything about them
• Actual footage of fraud exists, of voters handing over their ID cards to the dictatorship’s handlers to “vote” for them (and would you say no?)
• Voters have to bloody their thumb to stamp their voting paper, so one wouldn’t want to turn up to work the next day without the wound
• Syrian regime people even photographed themselves voting multiple times
• According to reporter Elizabeth Tsurkov, “secret police warned residents of formerly rebel-held areas in northern Homs and Qalamoun that they may be arrested if they do not vote.”
• Students were told they had to vote, with the threat of expulsion from their universities hanging over their heads
• Residents also told her that the regime “made voting a condition for distribution of subsidized bread in Homs — as well as World Food Program aid baskets to the poor in the southern districts of Damascus and the displaced in the city of Aleppo.”

And countless more valid reasons to reject the legitimacy of these “elections” under a dictatorship where every expression of dissident thought is ruthlessly crushed in a country with one of the world’s largest and most horrific torture gulags.

The regime almost certainly increased its official percentage of votes, compared to what it would have gained in an actual election, due to all this fraud, manipulation and life-and-death pressure, and only in the sense that there was no-one else to vote for in any case.

However, we do not know how much all this increased the potential vote by; it may have increased it from 30 percent to 60 percent, for example, we simply do not know. All we know are the figures invented by the Ministry of Truth of a tyrannical dictatorship.

Why would anyone believe these figures had any reality at all, even given all the above methods? The most likely way the regime “gained” 95 percent of the votes, and a 78 percent turnout of voters, was by not gaining them at all, via any methods, but by simply making these figures up. Only after having decided on the “election results” in advance did it carry out all its pressure, fraud and so on to at least make it look like voting was real, to give something for its craven international supporters and fake “observers” to cite as “evidence.”

I mean, if you were part of the “electoral” process in Syria and you disputed the figures created by the regime, would you open your mouth? Would you want to stay alive? Or even if you didn’t care, would you want your children to be “disappeared”? Anyone who actually knows anything about the regime knows this is no exaggeration.

A history of dictators getting “99-100 percent” of the vote

The brutal family that wins more votes than God https://twitter.com/RevolutionSyria/status/1398046743506427905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

— Syrian Revolution Network شبكة الثورة السورية (@RevolutionSyria) May 27, 2021

After all, if the 95 percent is real, but gained only due to fraud, threats, having no opposition etc, then does that mean that in every other “election” held by the Assad regime (father and son in this hereditary monarchy), the announced figures were also the real results of regime pressure and fraud, rather than inventions of the dictatorship? I mean, did Hafez Assad really get 99-100% in “elections” in 1971, 1978, 1985, 1991 and 1999? Is fraud, manipulation, fear etc that effective?

And if so, then does that mean the hyper-corrupt, blood-drenched tyrant Joseph Mobutu really got 100 percent of the vote in 1970 “elections” in Congo? And again, 99-100 percent in 1977 and 1982 elections? Yes, he was a frightfully bloody tyrant, but did his inept regime really have the ability to force 99-100 percent to vote for him, or was the figure more likely an invention? Did Saddam Hussein really get 99-100 percent of the vote in Iraqi “elections” in 1995 and 2002 due to fear, fraud etc? Did Hosni Mubarak really get 96 percent in 1993 and almost 94 percent of the vote in Egypt in 1999 elections? And of course Ferdinand Marcos really got 89 percent in the Philippines in 1977, and 78 percent really approved Augusto Pinochet’s policies in Chile in 1978? Did 100 percent of North Koreans really go out and vote for Kim Jong-un in 2014 (and of course Kim the father and Kim the grandfather before him in that hereditary monarchy)? Well, perhaps that regime does have the totalitarian efficiency to carry it out.

Isn’t more likely that the consistency of figures around 94-100% (except in a couple of cases when dictators chose lower but still overwhelming figures to try to be more convincing) indicates that these figures are pure inventions, where there is no-one to check (at least, who wants to live)?

How many “voted” in Syria? 14 million or 4 million?

What of the alleged voter turnout of 78 percent? This invention can in fact be disproved with empirical facts. The regime claims this 78 percent voting amounted to 14.24 million Syrians. This is absurd because:

• This would indicate a Syrian voting population of some 18 million. However, the current total population inside Syria is estimated to be around 18 million people, and some 40-45 percent are under 18, ie, non-voters.
• Of the pre-war population of some 24 million people, there are now 6.6 million refugees living abroad; that’s why only some three-quarters of this figure now live in Syria.
• Of these 18 million living in Syria, there were over 5 million living in the northwest under Turkish and/or rebel control as of 2018, including 1.7 million refugees from elsewhere in Syria, but since subsequent regime and Russian offensives pushed the number of refugees up from 1.7 to 2.7 million, or perhaps even a million more than that, the real numbers in the northwest may be much higher; and another 3 million are living in the northeast under the control of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, including 700,000 refugees. Voting did not take place in either region, and no-one seriously believes that anyone living in these two regions wants anything to do with the regime.
• Therefore, the absolute maximum number of people – adults and children – living in regime-controlled parts of Syria is 8.5 million, and is likely considerably less.

In response, some regime apologists claim that refugees voted from abroad. If so, then their claim of a voting population of 18 million (out of a total Syrian population, in Syria and abroad, of over 24 million), might make some sense. Even if still inaccurate, given the considerably higher proportion of under-18’s in the population; and even though the regime clearly does not mean this, because it considers most Syrians in refuge ineligible to vote; let’s go with this for argument’s sake.

Some refugees did vote, to be sure. However, if we are to leave out the populations in Syria outside regime control where no voting took place, and add the population under regime control (8.5 million maximum) and in refuge abroad (6.6 million), the total figure, adults and children, comes to some 15 million people, just slightly higher than the alleged voter turnout! Therefore, for this to be true, it would mean not only that virtually every child, from 0-18 years of age, voted in the election inside regime-controlled Syria, but that virtually every one of the 6.6 million Syrians abroad, who fled Assad’s tyranny, also voted (again, from the age of 0 and up)!

While the first criterion is obvious nonsense, how likely is the second, that almost every refugee voted in the “election” circus, and for Assad?

First, there certainly were various pressures applied to refugees to vote (including legitimate concern that the regime would never return their property if they did not vote), and therefore it is likely that more “voted” than really wanted to. However, what is the evidence of the success of this campaign?

• In Lebanon, the media was full of stories of massive throngs of Syrians turning out to vote at the embassy, and this has been widely cited by apologists for the dictatorship abroad. Indeed, 50,000 people voting could well lead to chaotic scenes. However, 50,000 voters out of a Syrian refugee population of 1.5 million in Lebanon is peanuts; and even if the Syrian ambassador’s claim that 247,000 registered to vote is true, this would still be well over a million less than the required numbers. 
• In Jordan, it was reported that “hundreds” turned out to vote – of a Syrian refugee population of some 1.3 million in that country. Even if those hundreds grew to thousands or even tens of thousands, we would still be well over a million short of the required numbers.
• In Turkey, the Syrian “election” circus was not allowed for the massive 3.6 million Syrian refugees living there. While this may be considered a denial of the rights of whatever handful wanted to vote, it is undeniable that the mood among Syrian refugees in Turkey is overwhelming anti-Assad – like Syrian refugees everywhere, but even more emphatically so, given they fled there directly from the north of the country being bombed back to the stone age by the Assad regime.

This does not leave many “voters” among Syrian refugees in the three largest – by far – host countries.

As for Europe, the country with by far the largest number of Syrian refugees, Germany, also banned the “elections.” Again, while this may have violated the rights of some, the likelihood that this would have made much difference is small – refugees in Europe are overwhelmingly anti-Assad and largely refuse to go home precisely due to his presence in power. Nevertheless, some Syrian refugees in Germany staged this terrific mock election to protest the farce.

And in any case, despite claiming all these votes from abroad and applying pressure to vote, the dictatorship itself makes it almost impossible for most refugees to vote even if they wanted to – registering to vote requires a valid Syrian passport with an exit stamp issued by an official border crossing that show you left the country “legally”!

From all this, it is difficult to work out how many refugees voted – none in Turkey, where the majority of refugees live, a figure ranging between 50,000 and a few hundred thousand perhaps in Lebanon and Jordan combined, none in Germany, and any that voted elsewhere would be among relatively tiny populations of Syrians.

For argument’s sake, let’s be very generous and say 500,000 Syrians abroad voted. Now, of the maximum figure of 8.5 million Syrians living in regime-controlled Syria, let’s first leave out some 40-45 percent who are under 18, and we get a maximum voting population of 5 million. Now let’s take the regime’s word for it that 78% voted (I don’t know why we should, but I guess it is possible with all the methods described above) – that comes to nearly 4 million voters. Add a very generous half million from abroad, and we find that Bashar Assad was “elected” in an “election” involving a mere 4.5 million voters, where the only alternatives were Assad Clone 1 and Assad Clone 2.

Therefore, if the figure the regime cited for the number of voters can empirically be shown to be pure fiction, then obviously the same can be just as true for the numbers who “voted” for Assad.

However, one objection may be that if the regime only has to invent figures, then why go to all the trouble to organise fraud, manipulation, pressure etc? As stated above, impressions count. Trying to make it look like the invented figures could have some truth can be good propaganda – just look at the clownish “journalists” from Gray (Red-Brown) Zone gushing over the Syrian “elections”.

It is also important for internal consumption. Tsurkov sums it up well: “In an authoritarian regime like Syria’s, when the falsification of the results takes place out in the open, elections project the regime’s ability to compel compliance. Elections serve the interests of the regime, signaling to opponents that resistance is futile, encouraging its loyalists and creating a sense that the regime enjoys greater support than it actually does.” Or, as Kristin Helberg writing in Qantara puts it, “the election serves a dual purpose: it forces people to demonstrate loyalty at home and provides legitimacy abroad.”

“Elections” under a dictatorship? Why is this article even necessary?

_{Wonder who’s going to win?}

None of the above discussion should really be necessary. For decades, dictatorships (often, though not always, backed and armed by the US government and military) carried out “election” circuses and declared unbelievable figures for their “victories”, but left and progressive activists in the West denounced such “elections” as fraudulent. It was – and is – elementary common sense that “elections” under a violent dictatorship will not be “free and fair.” To anyone who understands elementary logic, no further explanation is necessary. 

It is a sign of strange times therefore that I even need to be writing this. Because a great range of political activists in the West today from the mechanical and superficial “anti-imperialist” school of thought are praising these “elections” being carried out by the world’s most violent dictatorship, one that has bombed every city in its country to rubble and which holds tens of thousands in horrific torture chambers. For example, this statement by “leftist” western observers that gloriously proclaims the legitimacy and democratic nature of Assad’s election victory. It is true, of course, that every section of the global far-right also praises Assad and his “elections” of course, but it is strange days when a section of the left finds itself in the same boat.

Strange days indeed, when for many being a “leftist” means to shill for a bloody dictatorship that protects a narrow capitalist oligarchy that owns the proceeds of its neo-liberalisation of the Syrian economy in the early twenty-first century; a regime that tortured Islamist “terror” suspects for the US “war on terror;” a dictatorship that Israel’s Netanyahu and other top leaders of the Israeli right see as optimal for Israel’s interests. A misnamed “anti-imperialism” devoid of substance. Yet one might expect even they would prefer to keep their mouths shut rather than engage in public self-humiliation. Not in 2021, it seems.

_{Images from OPCW report of the fact-finding mission regarding the incident of alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon in Douma}

by Michael Karadjis

Abstract: Vast numbers of responses to the conspiracy theories absolving the Assad regime of responsibility for the 2018 chemical massacre in Douma have been penned, some of which this article will list for reference. However, this article is not a repeat of this detective work; rather, the core of it is an examination of the absurdity of these assertions, precisely from the point of view of the questions of “who gains” and casus belli that these conspiracists evoke.

On April 7, 2018, the Assad regime launched a chemical attack, dropping chlorine canisters, on the besieged town of Douma, the last remaining part of the opposition-held East Ghouta region which had been under a month-long massive attack by the regime, during which it had reconquered the rest of the region.

The day after the attack, Douma itself surrendered. The regime had now virtually completed its reconquest of all parts of the southern and eastern regions of working-class outer-Damascus, which had been in opposition hands for over 5 years; the only exception was the Yarmouk Palestinian camp, which the regime reconquered in May, but the opposition had already lost Yarmouk to ISIS (despite fierce resistance) in 2015 in any case.

Forty-three bodies were reportedly discovered, and filmed, in one of the apartment blocks onto which the chlorine had been allegedly dropped; however, the Syrian regime and its Russian backers did not allow inspectors from the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to enter the area to carry out inspections until 2 weeks later, during which time the bodies were buried.

When they finally were allowed in, the OPCW inspectors found two “yellow industrial cylinders dedicated for pressurised gas” (which likely contained the chlorine) in the top levels of two apartment blocks, as well as the craters in the roof which they had crashed through. One was apparently intact; the building where the other had released its load is where most of the 43 bodies were reportedly found.

The OPCW released its full report in March 2019, which concluded there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that chlorine had been used, and was the most likely cause of death; that it was likely it came from the spent canister; and though the brief of the OPCW did not include assigning blame, the report did imply that the most likely way the chlorine got into the building was through the crater in the roof above; though it said nothing about aircraft, this is the only possible way it could crash through a roof. As only the regime has aircraft, it therefore implied the regime was responsible.

Yet since that time, the OPCW has been subject to a concerted propaganda campaign, led by the Russian state, which claims the OPCW is guilty of a “cover-up” of alternative explanations, and that either chlorine was not used, or if it was, it was used by the opposition, or even that the rebels merely planted the chlorine canisters in the building, and just killed the civilians themselves, in an elaborate plot to provoke western intervention against Assad.

The claims about “cover-up” are based on the testimony of two former employees of the OPCW. First, Ian Henderson, who was not part of the OPCW investigating team, but a liaison officer between the team and Damascus, sent a memo to the OPCW in March 2019, just before it released its report, claiming that the chlorine canisters could not have been dropped by helicopters, based on an “engineering report” that he had carried out (the OPCW claims he carried out this investigation outside his brief as OPCW employee). Two months later, the fact that the OPCW had not included this in its report was leaked to the world media as a “scandal.”

The OPCW claims it could not do this (apart from it being so late), because attributing blame for the incident was outside its brief. This is because Russia had blocked attributing blame from the OPCW’s investigation; the report makes no mention of helicopters.

Second, “Alex” (subsequently found to be Brendan Whelan), who was a member of OPCW team between April and August 2018, spoke out in October 2019. “Alex” had been a member of the team collecting evidence, but left before the real analysis began. He claimed his alternative view of events (he did not believe the evidence showed chlorine had been used) had been suppressed, and objected to some formulations in the interim report. The final report does modify its language slightly, arguably taking into account some of the objections, but still rejects them overall, with further evidence not yet available before “Alex” had quit.

Other than the constellation of conspiracist media sources led by the Russian state, the “cover-up” story was taken up by, among others, right-wing British journalist Peter Hitchens in the rubbishy tabloid Mail on Sunday; by a group of allegedly “anti-imperialist” leftists in an outfit named ‘Grayzone’ (otherwise known as ‘Red-Brown-Zone’); by far-right Trump-man in Fox News Tucker Carlson; by embedded journalist (for the Syrian military) Robert Fisk in The Independent; by long-term pro-Assad propagandists like Vanessa Beeley, a regular guest at Assad’s throne who writes for the conspiracist site 21^st Century Wire.

Just why we should believe two disgruntled former employees of the OPCW over the research of the majority of the professionals in the organisation, and why this majority would decide to collectively engage in a cover-up, is anybody’s guess.

For those who want to understand more of the ins and outs of this ongoing saga, I can only strongly recommend the following sources:

Episode 11 of the BBC’s MayDay series – Canister on the bed: What really happened in the Douma massacre? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08z33bp

Scott Lucas – Denying Syria’s Chemical Attacks, Attacking the Inspectors — The Douma Case, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw_ivOnsXx4

Bellingcat – Unpublished OPCW Douma Correspondence Casts Further Doubt on Claims of ‘Doctored’ Report https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/10/26/unpublished-opcw-douma-correspondence-raises-doubts-about-transparency-of-opcw-leaks-promoters

Bellingcat, The OPCW Douma Leaks Part 1: We Need To Talk About “Alex” https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-douma-leaks-part-1-we-need-to-talk-about-alex/

Now, if anyone is actually interested in this issue – and the fate of the victims of Assad’s decade of massacres – chemical and otherwise – then you need to listen, watch and read these sources, especially the first. Then draw your conclusions. If you don’t first do this, then your only interest is conspiracy-mongering.

Some other useful reads:

Life and Death in Douma. Part 1: The Russian narrative

https://magpie68.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/life-and-death-in-douma, for an excellent dissection of the propaganda unleashed by the Russian state allied journalists, and others like Robert Fisk, who was allowed in long before the OPCW was, to “interview” people in front of his Assad regime handlers.

The ‘Useful Idiots’: How These British Academics Helped Russia Deny War Crimes At The UN, good overall run-down by Chris York https://tinyurl.com/yar7vyox

Brian Whitaker, Leaked OPCW documents: what they really show about the Douma investigation, https://al-bab.com/blog/2019/12/leaked-opcw-documents-what-they-really-show-about-douma-investigation

James Harkin, What Happened in Douma? Searching for Facts in the Fog of Syria’s Propaganda War, https://theintercept.com/2019/02/09/douma-chemical-attack-evidence-syria/

Nafeez Ahmed, State Propaganda in Syria: From War Crimes to Pipelines, London: International State Crime Initiative, Queen Mary University of London, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8a59rfq

Casus belli?

However, while my conclusion from all this material is the OPCW report is a fair summary of what occurred, I prefer to look at the overall context than obsess with the detective work.

After all, casus belli is at the heart of the conspiracist argument; they ask, why would Assad want to “risk western intervention” by launching a chemical attack, when he was already winning in East Ghouta? Wouldn’t it be more in the interests of the rebels to stage a “false-flag” attack, get the regime blamed, and thus bring in western intervention to save them?

But why would this be necessary, if, as the far-right/alt-left coalition believe, the US has forever been dying to launch a war on Syria and carry out “regime-change”? After all, even if it were shown that the OPCW was mistaken and that Assad did not really launch that particular chlorine attack killing 43 people, it would not alter the fact that his regime has killed hundreds of thousands of people using every conceivable type of “conventional” WMD for a decade.

In other words, why would the US or rebels need to concoct stories of chemical attacks? Wouldn’t the US already have enough political ammunition with years of Assad levelling entire cities, dropping barrel bombs, cluster bombs, bombing schools, hundreds of hospitals, markets, firing ballistic missiles at apartment blocks and so on?

No? Oh, OK, all this is bad, but the US, for some pacifistic, law-abiding reason, only drew the red-line against chemical weapons, not all the rest. So “the lie about chemical weapons is whipped up to give the US the excuse to bomb Syria.”

Oh? What then of the 30,000 US strikes on ISIS, Nusra/HTS, Ahrar al-Sham, sometimes other Islamists or even mainstream rebels, killing, according to Airwars, anywhere from 6250 to 9,600 civilians, levelling the city of Raqqa? Is all this not “the US bombing Syria?”

Of course, none of this has ever been of any interest whatsoever to the western “anti”-war movement, let alone the far-right/alt-left coalition; for them, it only becomes dangerous US aggression if the US hits some Assad-regime installation for a few minutes a couple of times in 8 years, killing no-one and doing zero damage to Assad’s war machine.

But OK, let’s have it their way, only bombing Assad is bad, as opposed to bombing Syria, which is of no consequence.

So, in that case, if US agents in the media or inside the OPCW or wherever go to all the trouble to concoct a chemical weapons conspiracy hatched by the rebels, just because the US is so desperate to attack Assad but can somehow never find the excuse, then having concocted the excuse, wouldn’t the US perhaps use the opportunity to actually do some damage to Assad’s war machine, rather than hit three buildings in 45 minutes?

The context of the Douma attack

Let’s look at the context of the allegedly “false flag” Assad chemical weapons attack on Ghouta in April 2018.

In March 2018, the regime launched its final campaign to subjugate the long-time rebel-held, working-class East Ghouta region of outer Damascus, at the cost of some 1700 lives in four-weeks, in one of the most relentless episodes of terror bombing in the war. Far from using this horror as an excuse to “make war on Syria” as feverish imaginations believe the US wanted to do forever, throughout this month-long massacre the silence from the US and other western governments was deafening. During this month, top US and Russian generals held high-level discussions twice, where the topic of Ghouta was apparently not even mentioned. The conversation, which focused on Syria, reportedly demonstrated “a clear mutual interest to maintain the military lines of communication.” Defense James Mattis stressed the importance of cooperation with Russia, but noted sadly that issues such as Ukraine and Crimea suggested the Kremlin had other ideas. The Kremlin’s role at the very moment in pulverising Ghouta was not even considered worthy of note.

On March 29, weeks into Assad’s horror bombing of Ghouta, US president Trump announced that “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS, we’re coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it now” – “other people” being the Assad regime. Ghouta? Trump had probably never heard of it. It is true that the Pentagon pushed back on Trump’s rapid withdrawal idea, but not because they thought the US should do anything about Assad or the horrors of Ghouta, but rather simply that “we will continue to support the SDF as they continue to fight against ISIS.”

By early April, Assad had been completely victorious over almost all of the Ghouta region, but one militia, Jaysh al-Islam, was holding out in the suburb of Douma. This is where Assad’s “alleged” chlorine massacre took place. The very next day, Douma surrendered – which seems a reasonable answer to those who ask “what did Assad have to gain?” He gained immediate total victory. Apparently, to the conspiracists, the rebels had gone to all the trouble of concocting a false-flag operation to blame Assad and bring about western intervention, but then didn’t even wait a day for this intervention!

Confronted with yet another rude violation of the US “red-line” against only chemical weapons, despite Trump’s gift to the ungrateful Assad of extreme indifference to the month of slaughter and the announcement that the US was leaving Syria to Assad, Trump decided he needed to launch a “credibility” strike. The casualty-free strike hit three buildings allegedly associated with chemical weapons’ research or storage, with zero impact on Assad’s war machine. It then abruptly stopped. “Mission accomplished” declared Trump after 45 minutes.

Really, US imperialism, allegedly determined come what may to “make war on Syria”, to carry out “regime change” against Assad, helped the rebels concoct a false flag chemical attack in order perform this mere hiccup following Assad’s month-long slaughter of 1700 people?

And getting back to “why would Assad risk a US attack” etc – maybe because he rightly figured the worst would be a rap around the knuckles, a reasonable price to pay for rapid victory and the psychological terror created by chemical weapons attacks. After all, he already had the experience of such a pinprick strike a year earlier.

The Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack in 2017

Douma, of course, this was not the first such incident; the conspiracist set believe all Assad’s chemical attacks have been “false-flags” to bring about this elusive “western intervention”, from the massive sarin attack on East Ghouta in 2013, which killed 1400 people, resulting in, well, nothing, to the sarin attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria in April 2017. The Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute found the Assad regime responsible for 98 percent 336 chemical attacks in Syria; perhaps all of these were mere “false-flags”, which resulted in … zero western intervention.

It is well-worth looking at the case of Khan Sheikhoun, which took place in April 2017, exactly a year before the Douma massacre we have been discussing. The OPCW also later determined that the Assad regime had launched the sarin attack there.

Given the fact the US reacted by bombing Assad’s Shariyat airbase – the first US strike on Assad after nearly 8000 US strikes on Syria at that point, all on non-Assad and anti-Assad forces – does this signify that this was perhaps a “false-flag” operation?

Not even remotely. Again, let’s look at context and casus belli arguments.

In the weeks before Assad’s chemical massacre in Khan Sheikhoun, three prominent US leaders made Trump’s pro-Assad position clear. Trump’s UN representative Nikki Haley announced that the US was “no longer” focused on removing Assad “the way the previous administration was”; State Secretary Rex Tillerson used Assad’s words, declaring that the “longer term status of president Assad will be decided by the Syrian people”; and White House spokesman Sean Spicer declared that “with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept.”

When Assad took all this encouragement to mean that even sarin could be legitimised, the US had little choice but to strike Assad for the sake of imperial “credibility.” The US back-down on its “red line” in 2013 was exchanged with getting Assad to remove all his sarin. He could use every other type of horrific weaponry in the four intervening years, and the US could not care less, as long as he stayed off chemical weapons. In demonstrating that he had kept some sarin and was even willing to use it, Assad forced the US to launch a credibility strike, despite the very clear intentions of the Trump regime stated just days earlier.

To soften the blow, Trump warned Putin, who warned Assad, so that planes could be moved from the base in time. According to the Russians, some half a dozen out-of-service warplanes were hit. By the following day, the base was again in use bombing Syrians, and Khan Sheikhoun was again being bombed – just not with sarin.

Really? So rebels concocted a “false-flag” attack, the US presumably cajoled and pressured the OPCW to later issue a report falsely blaming Assad, and in response the US launched a pinprick strike whose impact, if any, lasted less than a day? Don’t be silly.

If you want to see bloody US intervention, you just had to look in the same region a few weeks earlier. From any human viewpoint, a comparison between the US bombing of a mosque in a rebel-held region of Aleppo in March 2017 which killed 57 worshippers, and the US strike on the Sharyat airbase a few weeks later, which killed no-one, highlights what a mundane event the second was. The Trump regime never issued any apology for the mosque massacre (claiming anti-Assad HTS “terrorists” might have been using it), and it was welcomed by Trump’s Russian mates. Meanwhile, the number of civilians killed by US bombing of ISIS-held regions in Iraq and Syria in Trump’s first six months was higher than the number killed in Obama’s eight years, yet the conspiracists will tell you the US was supporting ISIS, and/or HTS, and/or the rebels, against Assad!

The follow-up by clarified further that this was a one-off. Tillerson stressed the strike was entirely about sarin and warned “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.” Trump stressed that he launched the strike only because Assad used chemical weapons “which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it.” Defence Secretary Mattis stressed that “our military policy in Syria has not changed. Our priority remains the defeat of ISIS.”

National Security Advisor McMaster clarified that he had no concern that the base was being used again the next day, because harming Assad’s “operations from the airfield” was “not the objective” of the strike; and that the US goal, far from “regime-change” (ignore the absurd “regime change” title of the article, which McMaster simply states was up to the Russians), was merely defeating ISIS while also desiring “a significant change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular” (note: not a change in the nature of the regime, but specifically of the Assad regime!).

How did the chlorine get there?

While I believe this has established the inherent absurdity of the idea that either Douma or Khan Sheikhoun were conspiracies from the point of view of context and the casus belli argument, there are other ways of demonstrating the impossibility of the conspiracist argument.

In particular, going back to Douma, if the chlorine canisters found in the top section of the buildings were not dropped from the sky, how did they get there? The best take-down I have seen of this issue was that penned by Louis Proyect, in this article on the Douma issue. It is so to the point that I will quote a significant chunk of it here, one more aspect for doubters to consider:

• Procuring chlorine tanks might have been relatively easy, but how could Jaish el-Islam construct the fins, harness, axis, and wheels that are necessary for both loading into and then dropping them from helicopters? If you are going to frame Assad, you’d better be in a position to replicate the weapon he has been using for at least five years. Would Henderson and Alex argue that the pictures of the two weaponized chlorine tanks seen in the OPCW report were photoshopped? If not, how do you construct the fins, harness, axis and wheels from scratch? Did Jaish el-Islam make them in a machine shop? As someone with a night school diploma in lathe and milling machine from my days colonizing industry, I can tell you that this is not an easy task during constant bombardment and electrical blackouts.
• The Jaish el-Islam had to use a pneumatic drill or sledgehammers to create large holes in concrete ceilings or find apartments that had them already. If the apartment already had a hole, what accounted for the rubble on the floor beneath it? And what about the attention such tools would draw during a heavy-duty penetration of concrete ceilings? The racket would be enough to awaken the dead. Furthermore, what would their neighbors make of them hauling 300-pound chlorine tanks to the building and up the stairs? Clunkety-clunkety-clunk. Anybody spotting them would figure out that they were up to no good, especially since Douma tenement buildings were not likely to have rooftop swimming pools in need of sterilization.
• To make sure that the forty to fifty people who were to become sacrificial lambs in this unlikely false flag operation, the Jaish el-Islam had to prevent them from fleeing from the bottom floors, where they had taken refuge. But what if they tried to flee the minute chlorine gas was detected? If anybody escaped, wouldn’t they finger Jaish el-Islam? How would Jaish el-Islam not lose all support immediately?

A note on Jaysh al-Islam

A further point on this militia. Unlike other parts of East Ghouta controlled by more mainstream rebel groups, Jaysh al-Islam, the group in control of Douma, had a particularly bad reputation among other rebels and oppositionists, for running a highly authoritarian regime. For example, it is widely believed responsible for the disappearance, since late 2013, of the Douma Four revolutionary activists.

However, thousands of locals joined the ranks of this militia simply in order to defend the local people from reconquest by the far more repressive and murderous Assad regime. That had nothing to do with Jaysh al-Islam as such; as one civil activist in Douma, who is hostile to JaI, explained: “All the young people join Jaysh el-Islam. This is not out of ideological belief or because they like Alloush, but because they need to fight and not wait around.” On the contrary, it was the partial continuation, in extremely adverse conditions, of some semblance of the popular revolutionary traditions and institutions established in 2002-2003, very often in conflict with the JaI regime itself, that people fought to defend.

As revolutionary activist Firas Abdullah (who remained there for the entire duration of the siege) put it after fleeing Assad’s reconquest: “the dictatorship is one, but it has several colours.” JaI’s repressive rule, in other words, was nurtured precisely by years of Assadist siege, bombing and starvation. But the connection goes further: it was Assad who released Zoran Alloush, JaI’s founder, along with 1000 or so other jihadists, from his dungeons in mid-2011, at the very time he was arresting and jailing thousands of democratic activists, including from Douma. The vacuum of leadership created by Assad’s mass arrests was taken up by people like Alloush.

Yet it is precisely these origins of hard-Islamist currents like JaI – in the Iraqi jihad against the US occupation – that makes any connection between the West and JaI, as implied by these pro-Assad conspiracy theories, inherently unlikely. Indeed, US Defence Secretary John Kerry classified JaI (and Ahrar al-Sham) as “terrorist” groups. While the US did lightly arm various “vetted” rebel groups under Obama – never enough to even hold the line against Assad, but in order to politically co-opt them – no US arms ever went in the direction of JaI. If conspiracists want to claim they did, it is up to them to find the paper trail; they won’t. Whatever limited aid came over the southern Jordanian border in Obama years went to the FSA’s Southern Front, of which JaI was never a member, and in any case was geographically cut off from. In any case, in 2017 Trump ended all military aid to all rebels, and even cut off all aid to democratic councils and civil society in opposition territory. Long before 2018, therefore, the US leadership openly saw all rebels as an enemy, not only JaI.

Moreover, this worked both ways: the idea that JaI would try to bring about western intervention goes against the very grain of this group. Following Assad’s far more mass-murderous chemical attack East Ghouta in 2013, JaI responded to Obama’s alleged threat to strike Assad with this statement:

“What matters to us is the question of: Who will America target its strike against? And why choose this particular time? The Assad regime has used chemical weapons dozens of times and the U.S. did not move a finger. Have they experienced a sudden awakening of conscience or do they feel that the jihadists are on the cusp of achieving a final victory, which will allow them to seize control over the country? This has driven the U.S. to act in the last 15 minutes to deliver the final blow to this tottering regime so it can present itself as a key player and impose its crew which it has been preparing for months to govern Syria.”

No, the anti-western Jaysh al-Islam did not drag massive chlorine canisters up many flights of stairs and break holes in the roof to bring in a US intervention they were opposed to and then surrender to Assad the next day anyway; the entire scenario is nuts.

Briefly on the White Helmets “controversy”

I put controversy in quotation marks because it is only a “controversy” to a particularly hardened wing of alt-left/hard-right wingnuts. I mean, really, one would expect Assadists and conspiracists to slander military formations of the Syrian opposition and even political and civil leaders, but the obsession they have with volunteer first-responders, who put themselves in acute danger – many have died in action – to rescue civilians from the rubble of bombed-out buildings, to save thousands of lives, is a particularly oddball phenomenon.

The spectacle of comfortable, White academics, “journalists” and propagandists living in the West, many seeing themselves as “left-wing” while slandering and spitting on those brown folk dying in the line of fire, is so obscene that it should be self-defeating. Yet living in this anti-solidaristic era, where “left anti-imperialist” is often little more than a badge of honour in the “market-place” of ideas and image, we see thousands of followers line up to join in the obscenity. Whatever gives you a rise I guess, guys.

This White Helmets “controversy” is not the issue of this essay, so what, if any, connection does it have with the chemical attacks controversy? Nothing, necessarily, except that these are two cheap targets of the conspiracist set. However, one connection they attempt to make is the assertion that the White Helmets have been key informants in the “staging” of these “false-flag” attacks.

One allegation is that it was the White Helmets who had filmed the initial Douma footage of those killed in the chemical attack. Yet the footage was originally released by another opposition media centre; as Nafeez Ahmed, in a valuable piece taking on a great deal of this propaganda, explains, the White Helmets “had not even been present at the scene of the incident in the immediate aftermath” (p. 31). He also responds to Scott Ritter, the former UN investigator of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction; Ritter criticised the OPCW’s assessment that sarin had been used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, for allegedly relying on “none other than the White Helmets” to gain samples (p. 39), since the regime had blocked the OPCW from accessing the site. As Ahmed demonstrates, samples were gained from other sources, including the regime, from which the OPCW established the use of sarin.

Other than recommending several of the vast number of responses to sick the anti-White Helmets propaganda (try this and this and this, especially the first, the full BBC series), my final point will again be from the perspective of, “what does all this aim to achieve anyway?” Whether the claim is that the White Helmets are mere actors not rescuing anyone, or that they do rescue people, but use the footage of their deeds to create propaganda against the regime (because, I suppose, it is not self-evident that bombing the civilian sites from which the White Helmets rescue these people is a war crime?) – really, why would this be necessary?

Anyone with eyes, ears and brains has been able to watch an entire decades-worth of footage or read thousands of accounts by journalists, human rights activists, NGOs, Syrian civil activists, refugees, international organisations and so on to know that the Assad regime has been committing massive crimes against humanity on a daily basis, and has been responsible for well over 90 percent of all killings and war crimes in that country.

For example, according to a UN Human Rights Commission report in 2017:

“Government and pro-Government forces continue to attack civilian objects including hospitals, schools and water stations. A Syrian Air Force attack on a complex of schools in Haas (Idlib), amounting to war crimes, is a painful reminder that instead of serving as sanctuaries for children, schools are ruthlessly bombed and children’s lives senselessly robbed from them. Government and pro-Government forces continue to use prohibited weapons including cluster munitions, incendiary weapons and weaponised chlorine canisters on civilian-inhabited areas, further illustrating their complete disregard for civilian life and international law.”

Or, as the UN Commission of Inquiry on the war in Syria put it, the regime is guilty of the crime of “extermination.”

White Helmets “propaganda” against the regime would, in other words, be entirely superfluous; making the anti-White Helmets propaganda as mindless as it is malignant.

90 percent of Assad’s Reconquista under Trump’s watch

By Michael Karadjis

With US elections approaching, Syrian people wanting to end the 50-year tyranny of the Assad dynasty are looking for any light from either candidate of the US ruling class. The fact that most conclude there is little to be excited about, and search for the tiniest seeming advantage from either side, highlights the plain fact that the US rulers have never had any interest in supporting the Syrian struggle for freedom.

Now that Assad has largely won the so-called ‘civil war’ – mostly a one-sided slaughter he waged against the Syrian people – the only real debate going on is whether a victorious, yet highly unstable, Assad regime can be pushed into some kind of political compromise via a “constitutional commission” process.

Compared to the heady days of one of the vastest and most inspiring popular revolutionary uprisings of the 21^st century, having to ponder such questions is dull indeed.

Nevertheless, reality being what it is, these questions can hardly be avoided. Assad’s victory is no ordinary case of a dictatorship successfully cracking down on its people, not wanting to underestimate the terror involved even in such “simple” cases. In Syria, we need to consider the whole Syrian people, not only those forced to live under the dictatorship’s heel in the regions it controls.

Assad’s military victory: Counterrevolutionary stability or ongoing catastrophe?

First, of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million, there are 6.6 million refugees outside the country (of whom 3.6 million are in neighbouring Turkey), over a quarter of the population, plus an equal number internally displaced (IDPs) within Syria. Then there are over 5 million people living in the northwest (Idlib and northern Aleppo regions) still outside of Assad’s control, under what remains of various rebel groups, mostly under Turkish influence, according to a population survey in 2018, which at the time included over 1.7 million internally displaced from elsewhere in Syria; however, further waves of regime and Russian bombing in 2019 and 2020 pushed the number of internally displaced in the northwest to some 2.7 million. Yet even these figures may be low, given the difficulties of establishing clear figures in such catastrophic situations; according to a February 2021 UNICEF report, “Since December 2019, more than 940,000 people have been displaced, in addition to the 2.7 million who were already displaced” – which could mean some 3.7 million are displaced in the region. Then there are another 3 million people, including 700,000 internally displaced, in the northeast, under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the US military, who entered Syria to help the SDF defeat ISIS.

Therefore, around 15 million or more people – two thirds of Syria’s pre-war population – are outside regime control. When we add some 140,000 people estimated to have been incarcerated in Assad’s torture prisons or disappeared, of whom tens of thousands have been killed, and an estimated 670,000 people killed in the war, along with the physical destruction of much of Syria’s infrastructure by years of relentless regime and Russian terror bombing, it becomes clear why Syrians are not ready or able to say “OK, the dictatorship won, we lost, that’s bad, but now there’s no choice but to get on with our lives under counterrevolutionary stability” – any kind of “stability” is impossible under such conditions.

At the very least, those pushing this view – not only Assadists, but other well-meaning people who see the reality of defeat – need to take into account that if it is the interests of “the Syrian people” they are concerned about, then these “Syrian people” are not only the 8 million or so under regime control (even if we assume that these people are content with the situation, a likely erroneous assumption); but also the 6.6 million outside Syria, most of whom will not return with the regime in power, and the 8 million or more living in the northwest and northeast outside regime control.

For those concerned with ameliorating this situation, does a Trump or a Biden in the White House make any difference?

Trump versus Biden?

Various articles indicate that among Syrian exiles in the United States, there is little consensus, and this reflects the fact that the differences are very narrow. This is hardly surprising; there is little difference on many issues.

For example, Trump is clearly worse on Israel/Palestine, having recognised occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘capital”, put forward a anti-peace process that gives everything to Israel, cut off funding to UNWRA, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the illegally stolen Syrian Golan and so on. Yet Biden and Harris are also extremely pro-Israel. No, they may not have recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and they claim to support UN resolutions and the traditional, meaningless, “peace process”, but Biden has also stated he will nevertheless not move the US embassy back to Tel Aviv.

As the Trump and Biden camps are saying very little different in terms of Syria policy going forward, much of the debate inevitably looks at the records of the Obama administration (in which Biden was vice-president) and the Trump administration. And neither offer any inspiration whatsoever. Though my argument here is that Trump is worse, it is understandable that some view Obama more negatively.

Obama’s support for the Syrian opposition was tepid at best; the CIA program to train and equip “vetted” rebels was largely aimed at co-opting and taming them, putting the CIA in a position to pressure them to stop fighting Assad, and enlisting them for the “war on terror” against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra only (the Free Syrian Army – FSA – already fought ISIS, and often Nusra, but resisted dropping the fight against Assad). In other words, bringing real rebel formations around to the same position as the concurrent Pentagon program, which explicitly only armed ex-rebels to fight only ISIS or Nusra and not Assad – but therefore had difficulty finding many real rebel forces to enlist! Further, from 2012, the US placed spooks on the borders to ensure that shoulder-held anti-aircraft weapons (manpads) – the defensive weaponry most needed in a war of aerial slaughter – did not reach the FSA. Above all, Syrians disapprove of Obama’s nuclear deal – the JCPOA – with Iran, believing this encouraged Obama to turn a blind eye to massive Iranian support to Assad.

Those viewing Biden as a better choice might note things such as Trump ending all Obama-era assistance to the FSA and to Syrian civil society organisations, Trump’s view that the only US fight in Syria is against ISIS, the fact that 90 percent of Assad’s reconquest of much of Syria took place under Trump’s watch, the gutting of the Geneva process, and Trump’s overly friendly relationship with Russian Tsar Vladimir Putin, Assad’s main backer. The strongly pro-Assad orientation of Trump’s far-right base of support can also be noted. Trump also signed the ban on travel and migration from seven Muslim countries, including Syria; as Syrian-American Zaher Sahloul points out, “in 2020, fewer than 100 Syrian refugees were resettled in the U.S. compared with 12,500 in 2016.”

However, those who see Trump a better bet, regardless of his motivations, point to things such as Trump’s anti-Iranian orientation (including ripping up the nuclear deal), given Iran’s role as Assad’s second main backer, Trump’s two pinprick strikes on Assadist facilities to enforce the “red line” against Assad’s chemical warfare, which Obama had not enforced in 2013, and the current harsh sanctions imposed on the Assad regime in the post-reconquista phase.

This view, that opponents of Assad should wish for a Trump victory, seems counterintuitive, given Trump’s initial declarations of support for Assad and assurances that his administration was no longer focused on removing Assad “like the previous administration was.” And the idea that any degree of human liberation, in Syria or elsewhere, is more easily achieved by having a far-right, white-supremacist in the White House appears illogical.

But what if Trump’s greater tendency to enforce “red lines” leads him to stumble, by accident, into ousting Assad, or if his anti-Iran policy tipped the scales against Assad even if that were not the intention? Syrians are as entitled as any other oppressed people to exploit the contradictions among imperialist powers and reactionary states. It may place their interests in opposition to those of virtually anyone else in the world, from Palestinians to black and working-class Americans, fighting for their liberation, but that is hardly the fault of Syrians; rather, that would be the fault of those who have waged genocidal war against them, or helped this by ignoring them, slandering them and stabbing them in the back.

Nevertheless, this is a complete illusion. The interests of Syrians fighting Assad are not in the slightest aided by supporting an enemy of human liberation like Trump, neither on the Iran issue, not that of ‘red-lines’, nor on the issue of sanctions.

First let’s look at Trump’s record

In the lead-up to the 2016 US elections, Trump asserted that in Syria, the US should be on the same side as Russia and Assad in “fighting ISIS”, and said the US would cut off any meagre “support” still going to the anti-Assad opposition under Obama.

Trump fulfilled his promise, fully ending the long-dormant CIA program to arm and train some “vetted” rebels. While, as shown above, this program was already tepid and ineffective, its continuation at some level under Obama gave the FSA some room to manoeuvre and occasionally take advantage of the arms, which was too much for Trump: in abolishing it, he declared the program “dangerous and wasteful.”

With this cut-off of aid to the FSA, any US aid to Syrian “rebels” now was only to those who do not rebel: US Central Command spokesman Major Josh Jacques explained: “vetted Syrian opposition groups all swear an oath to fight only ISIS.”

Trump also ended US “stabilisation” funding for civil society in regions outside Assad regime control. Trump declared “the United States has ended the ridiculous 230 Million Dollar yearly development payment to Syria,” referring to the Obama-era funding for a vast array of opposition local governance and civil society organisations, independent media and education projects which kept society running in the regime’s absence. The State Department explained that US assistance in northwest Syria was being “freed up to provide potential increased support for priorities in northeast Syria,” ie, to where the fight is only against ISIS rather than the regime.

Thus Trump put an end to all US funding to both the civil and military sides of the revolution.

From the start, Trump declared “We’re there for one reason: to get rid of ISIS and to go home. We’re not there for any other reason.” His secretary of state Rex Tillerson virtually declared Assad an ally: “We call upon all parties, including the Syrian government and its allies, Syrian opposition forces, and Coalition forces carrying out the battle to defeat ISIS, to avoid conflict with one another and adhere to agreed geographical boundaries for military de-confliction.” Assad’s future was declared Russia’s issue, the US agnostic about “whether Assad goes or stays.”

Tillerson’s speech in January 2018 focused on supporting the Geneva process for a “political solution,” but the US no longer expected Assad to stand down at the beginning of a transition phase as under early Obama, or even at its end as under late Obama; rather, Tillerson claimed that Assad could be voted out in a “free election,” which would presumably occur with him in power, though the process may ‘take time” for which he “urge(d) patience.”

Before Obama left office, Assad’s reconquest of opposition-controlled regions had netted iconic democratic revolutionary centres south and west of Damascus such as Darayya, Madaya and Zabadani, and East Aleppo city in the north, by 2016. However, the fact that some 90 percent of Assad’s Reconquista took place under Trump was not accidental or the result of Trump’s alleged “isolationism”: it was based on US-Russia agreement, the fruits of Trump’s pro-Putin politics. In mid-2017, a “new” US strategy was presented by Defence Secretary James Mattis, State Secretary Tillerson and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph F. Dunford Jr., conceding Assad’s control of Syria west of the Euphrates River and most of centre and south. Discussing “a proposal that we’re working on with the Russians,” Dunford noted “the Russians are as enthusiastic as we are.”

How did that play out in different parts of Syria?

The conflict in the southeast desert

We will first turn to the east, where the US was leading an air war against ISIS, in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces. In the northeast, the main US ally was the Kurdish-led Peoples Protection Units (YPG), leading an expanded coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). While leading a just fight for the liberation of the Kurdish people, the YPG/SDF has played an essentially neutral role in the conflict between the Assad regime and the rebellion, making it the perfect partner for the US war on ISIS under both Obama and Trump.

Meanwhile, in the southeast desert, the US was arming and training two “vetted” ex-rebel brigades for the war against ISIS. These brigades had to swear to give up their fight with the regime, but one of them, Shohada al-Qaryatayn, could not stomach this and cut off its relationship with the US-led Coalition due to its pressure on them “to stop the fighting against the Syrian Arab Army”. Coalition spokesman, US Army Col. Ryan Dillon, demanded they return the equipment the US had provided them, warning that otherwise it would bomb them.

The US declared a 55-square kilometre zone around a US base in al-Tanf, a town on the Jordanian border, to be part of the US-Russia-Jordan southern ‘de-confliction zone’ declared to keep the fight focused on ISIS. Several times in May-June 2017, Iranian-led militia entered this zone and were hit by the US. In every case, the US released an identical statement, stressing that although it had hit forces advancing towards the US base inside the zone,

“The Coalition does not seek to fight the Syrian regime, Russian or pro-regime forces partnered with them. … The Coalition presence in Syria addresses the imminent threat ISIS poses globally, which is beyond the capability of the Syrian regime to address. … The Coalition calls on all parties to focus their efforts in the same direction to defeat ISIS, our common enemy and the greatest threat to worldwide peace and security.”

Stunningly, the US even gave permission to the Assad regime to bomb inside the US exclusion zone. On June 6, the regime relayed a request to the US military via Russia to bomb the US-proxy force, Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT), inside the US-declared zone, because it had attacked Iranian-backed forces which had entered the zone. So, even though the US itself demands these forces not enter the zone, it does not give permission for its own proxies to attack them, because they are only allowed to fight ISIS. So the US gave permission to Assad to bomb its (the US’s) own proxies inside its own exclusion zone!

Palmyra, east Qalamoun, east Suweida

Meanwhile, Assad’s forces, together with Iranian-backed forces and the Russian airforce, were finally making their own advance to the east against ISIS. This was after many years of Assad waiting as US bombing and SDF ground advances softened up ISIS, during which time Assad had been free to crush the anti-Assad, anti-ISIS rebels throughout the country.

In its first step, US bombing directly supported Assad’s reconquest of Palmyra in March 2017, in coordination with Russia and Iran, Palmyra being the regime’s gateway to Deir-Ezzor.

Over the next few months, from their strengthened position around Palmyra, Assad’s forces took advantage of the US focus on fighting ISIS only, and the US-Jordanian freeze on the FSA Southern Front, to seize significant parts of the eastern Qalamoun and eastern Suweida regions from the rebels, but MAT was not allowed to link up with and support the FSA in this region directly adjacent to al-Tanf (see map):

“ … pro-regime soldiers attacked the overstretched desert rebels roughly 60km southwest of Palmyra … The regime’s assault led to a swift victory. … rebel sources told Syria Direct that the US-led coalition provides support for opposition forces to combat IS but stops short of funding the rebels to attack the regime. “The coalition is a partner of ours in the war against Daesh, but when it comes to fighting the regime and its foreign militias, [the coalition] is not our partner,” Al-Baraa Fares, a MaT spokesman, explained.”

The Pentagon concurred: “We give them [FSA] training and equipment, and they fight against Daesh. That is all. We don’t help them to control an area or fight against the regime … We are not a part of their struggle against the regime.”

Deir-Ezzor

Having directly aided or facilitated Assad’s reconquest of Palmyra from ISIS, and the East Qalamoun, East Suweida and Badia regions from the rebels, surely the US would draw a line against the regime advancing towards Deir Ezzor? Isn’t that why the US was arming and training its own proxies?

In reality, the US had for years been in an unofficial alliance with Assad in the war around Deir Ezzor, which was now out in the open under Trump as US, Russian, Assadist and even Iraqi warplanes bombed the region together, while on the ground this US bombing not only aided Assad’s forces but even Iran-led forces for months in 2017. The widely discussed secret US-Russia deal allowing the US/SDF to take Raqqa and Assad-Russia to take Deir-Ezzor appeared to be borne out in practice.

The Pentagon was open about the fact that its proxy forces were little more than an aid to Assad’s reconquest of Deir Ezzor. As explained by US-led Coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon, if the Assad regime or its allies

“are making a concerted effort to move into ISIS-held areas we absolutely have no problem with that … if they want to fight ISIS in Abu Kamal and they have the capacity to do so, then that would be welcomed. We as a coalition are not in the land-grab business. We are in the killing-ISIS business. … if the Syrian regime wants to … put forth a concerted effort and show that they are doing that in Abu Kamal or Deir el-Zour or elsewhere, that means that we don’t have to do that in those places.”

As Trump tweeted when threatening US withdrawal from Syria in December 2018, “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there (sic) work.”

East Ghouta, south Damascus, Homs

In March 2018, the regime subjugated the rebel-held East Ghouta region of outer Damascus at the cost of 1700 lives in four-weeks, in one of the most relentless episodes of terror bombing in the war. Throughout this month-long massacre, the silence from the US and other western governments was deafening. During this month, top US and Russian generals held high-level discussions twice, where Ghouta was apparently not mentioned. The conversation, focusing on Syria, demonstrated “a clear mutual interest to maintain the military lines of communication.” Defense Minister Mattis stressed the importance of cooperation with Russia, but noted that issues such as Ukraine and Crimea suggested the Kremlin had other ideas. The Kremlin’s role at that very moment in pulverising Ghouta was not considered worthy of note.

On March 29, weeks into Assad’s horror bombing of Ghouta, Trump announced “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS, we’re coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it now” – “other people” being the Assad regime. Ghouta? Trump had never heard of it. It is true that the Pentagon pushed back on withdrawal, but not because they thought the US should do anything about Assad or Ghouta, but rather “we will continue to support the SDF as they continue to fight against ISIS.”

Assad also subjugated and expelled the people of a number of smaller rebel-held enclaves in part of Homs, Wadi Barada northeast of Damascus, and other parts of South Damascus, which, like East Ghouta, were all within the “west of Euphrates” majority of Syria the US had declared was Assad/Russia’s sphere.

Daraa and the south

Following this, the Assad regime turned its attention south, to Daraa and Quneitra provinces, the revolution’s birthplace, which straddle the Jordanian border and Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Daraa had long been held by the FSA Southern Front (SF), the largest military coalition controlled by avowed democratic and secularist forces. Under Obama, the Southern Front had for a time received US and Saudi support via Jordan. However, the Obama administration imposed a series of red lines on the SF beyond which it could not go; one line prevented it moving towards Damascus to link up with the rebel-held outer suburbs in the south and east. This red-line had contributed to the regime’s 2016 subjugation of the southern Damascus town of Darayya. After a certain point, the US and Jordan tightened the screws, insisting the SF drop its fight with Assad and focus entirely on ISIS.

The fate of the Southern Front had already been heralded in July 2017, with the US-Russia-Jordan agreement to make Daraa and Quneitra a “de-escalation zone.” Russia began occupying this zone with US blessing, to guarantee Israel that the regime’s return to the Golan would not be coupled with Iranian or Hezbollah forces, who had to keep away. This “de-escalation zone” converted the US red-line into international policy, preventing the SF from coming to the aid of East Ghouta and the greater Damascus rebellion, helping seal their fate.

Trump’s ending of all military assistance to the FSA helped in turn seal the SF’s fate. As Assad advanced south, the US told the FSA that “you should not base your decisions on the assumption or expectation of a military intervention by us.” Russia worked with the UAE to encourage SF groups to surrender and join the Russian-controlled 5^th Corp of Assad’s army; Israel welcomed the offensive, dispensing with a tiny ex-rebel group it had been using as “border”-guards on the stolen Golan. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, far-right defence minister Lieberman and various other Israeli political and military leaders openly declared their preference to have the Assad regime in power and controlling the Golan. The Trump-Putin-Assad-Netanyahu agreement to destroy the southern front of the revolution was consolidated with Russian military police joining the UN forces in the demilitarised zone, to “monitor implementation of the separation-of-forces agreement.”

Trump’s Russian friends, in other words, are now stationed in Syria to protect both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan!

Idlib and the northwest

Having rolled over most opposition-controlled territory under Trump, all that was left was the northwest, under the control of a range of rebel militia, partially under Turkish influence, and the northeast, under the control of the SDF, backed by the US airforce, military bases and troops.

When Trump came to power, the rebel-held northwest consisted of “greater Idlib,” meaning Idlib province and parts of northern Hama, northern Latakia and west and south Aleppo provinces. This region is connected to the northern Aleppo region along the Turkish border, where rebel militias are more directly under Turkish control, since Turkey entered in 2016 to expel ISIS from the region.

Under Trump’s watch, “greater Idlib” became “lesser Idlib,”, with the loss of around half the region to Assad, including all the Hama, Latakia and west Aleppo regions, and the southern part of Idlib, mostly during the 2019-2020 Russian-led terror-bombing offensive. All the iconic centres of the democratic revolution, which had long resisted HTS as well as the regime – including Maraat a-Nuuman, Atareb, Kafranbel and Saraqeb – were lost to Assad.

While the US did not directly facilitate Assad’s victory here, no discernible opposition to Assad’s gigantic massacre-offensives can be detected, under either US president. If we are to compare, then the short-lived provision of a number of US-made anti-tank TOW missiles to the FSA under Obama appears to have helped an offensive in early 2015 make gains, but this had already petered out by late Obama years; whereas Trump’s cut-off of all aid to both the political and military opposition almost certainly enabled Assad’s reconquest more directly than Obama-era shrugging.

To the extent that some aid has gone to the opposition and the region has not been fully reconquered, this has been largely due to Turkey’s intervention in support of the rebels. Turkey has a direct interest: it has taken in 3.6 million Syrian refugees, and since refugees from other rebel-held zones have flooded into Idlib, there would simply be nowhere else for them to go if Assad fully reconquered Idlib, meaning millions more refugees, which Turkey cannot handle.

Of course, Turkey does its own dealing. Its on and off dealing with Russia aims to facilitate Turkey’s oppressive interventions against the Kurdish populations in Afrin and the northeast, while blocking total Assadist reconquest of Idlib, though at times the same dealing may involve Turkey turning a blind eye to a degree of Assadist reconquest.

Ultimately, though, there is a line: Turkey showed what it is capable of early in 2020, when Assad refused to stop, and Turkey openly attacked regime forces and destroyed thousands of tons of Assadist killing equipment, even bringing down some warplanes – a joyous occasion, but one showing the real potential had anyone ever wanted to rein in Assad.

Either way, it had nothing to do with Trump. For a typical US reaction, the speech to the UN by Trump’s UN representative, Nikki Haley, during one murderous Assad-Putin offensive in August 2018 sums it up: “This is a tragic situation, and if they want to continue to go the route of taking over Syria, they can do that. But they cannot do it with chemical weapons.”

An excellent example of how the bogeyman of “chemical weapons” was used by the US government to inform Assad that literally everything other than chemical weapons goes, including “taking over Syria.”

In reality, despite Haley, even the US probably does not want a total Assadist victory in Idlib, given the massive instability this and subsequent enormous refugee outflows would cause. But beyond occasional harsh words, there is zero on the record of either administration obstructing Assad’s butchery. Following horrendous months-long terror-bombing offensives in early 2019 and early 2020, displacing another 1.4 million people, US national security adviser Robert O’Brian shrugged “the idea that America must do something… we’re supposed to parachute in as the global policeman and hold up a stop sign?”

Actually, the US has intervened in greater Idlib for years – bombing anti-Assad forces. Under Obama, the US had been bombing Nusra/HTS, and sometimes other Islamist rebels, since the day it began bombing ISIS in September 2014.

In early 2017, Trump was intensifying Obama’s war on HTS. In late January, Trump bombed an HTS training camp killing over 100 HTS cadre, as well as allied cadre from the Zinki rebel group, and in early February, the US killed a commander of Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist rebel group in  conflict with HTS, and the US even reportedly struck iconic revolutionary centre Kafranbel. In March 2017, the US bombed a mosque in west Aleppo (allegedly targeting HTS), where 57 worshippers were killed. The Trump regime never issued any apology, and the strike on the mosque was welcomed by Trump’s Russian mates.

These bombings continued till April; they only stopped because, following the US strike on an Assadist air base in early April (see below), Russia, which controls the airspace in that region, told the US their “de-confliction” mechanism would no longer operate in the northwest. Since then, US leaders stress they “absolutely agree” with Russia that “the terrorists” in Idlib “need to be taken care of”, that Idlib is “a magnet for terrorist groups.”

Despite the Russian ban, the US still occasionally bombs jihadist forces in Idlib. The latest strike took place in October 2020, when the US struck a major jihadist meeting, killing members of a range of factions. At one point even the Russians complained about these US strikes on al-Qaida-linked Hurras al-Din. While the local rebels do not see these forces as allies, it is indicative that the only forces the US continues to strike in Idlib are anti-Assad, never pro-Assad, forces.

The Kurds and the northeast

The northeast is somewhat a separate issue, as here the US intervention found its partner of expedience in a force that is neither allied to the regime – though it is far from averse to doing deals with it when it suits – nor with the movement to overthrow it. The SDF gained control over a vast area of northeast Syria for its own ‘Rojava revolution’, and set up an autonomous ‘North Syria Federation’.

Under Trump, the US took off all gloves to smash ISIS, leading to thousands of civilian casualties, but ISIS was indeed largely destroyed. Once the job was done, Trump was ready to get out, issuing “withdrawal” declarations in December 2018 and October 2019. The second time included a nod to Turkey’s Erdogan regime to launch an invasion in the northeast to expel the SDF from part of its territory, a strip along the Turkish border, ethnically cleansing the Kurdish population and committing brutal war crimes. This betrayal appears to have been a Trump whim, hoping to sell Turkey 100 F-35 fighter jets – a deal that ultimately did not eventuate.

Having betrayed its SDF allies, the US then reversed on “withdrawal” and kept 1000 troops in the northeast to protect the oil for the SDF, and signed an agreement with the SDF for a US oil company to invest in oil infrastructure.

When Turkey invaded to US indifference, the SDF felt forced to make a deal with Assad to allow a small number of Syrian troops back into parts of their zone. Far from complaining  about Assad’s latest partial-reconquest, Trump tweeted “Let Syria and Assad protect the Kurds and fight Turkey for their own land … Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”

For that matter, Erdogan said much the same: he had no problem as long as it was Assad, not the SDF, controlling the region. It is difficult to see how any of this can be spun in a positive way by anyone from any perspective.

But, Trump bombed to enforce the ‘red line’ …

Given this nakedly counterrevolutionary role of the Trump administration in Syria, how do the issues of ‘red-lines’, anti-Iranian policy and sanctions fit into this picture, and do they give Syrians reason to grudgingly support Trump despite the above?

Let’s begin with Trump’s two pinprick strikes on the Assad regime following its use of chemical weapons in Idlib in April 2017 and Ghouta in April 2018. Given Obama’s backing out from his threat the enforce the red-line against chemical weapons following Assad’s massive sarin attack on Ghouta in 2013, Trump’s apparently greater tendency to enforce the red-line, regardless of motivations (US imperial “credibility” etc), may appear an improvement.

Did the US bombing of Assad’s Shariyat airbase in April 2017 – the first US hit on Assad after nearly 8000 US strikes on Syria at that point, all on non-Assad and anti-Assad forces – signify a new US policy?

Not even remotely. In the weeks before Assad’s chemical massacre in Khan Sheikhoun, three prominent US leaders made Trump’s pro-Assad position clear. Trump’s UN representative Nikki Haley announced that the US was “no longer” focused on removing Assad “the way the previous administration was”; Tillerson used Assad’s words, declaring that the “longer term status of president Assad will be decided by the Syrian people”; and White House spokesman Sean Spicer declared that “with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept.”

When Assad took this encouragement to mean that even sarin could be legitimised, the US had little choice but to strike Assad for the sake of imperial “credibility.” The US back-down on its “red line” in 2013 was exchanged with getting Assad to remove all his sarin. In demonstrating that he had kept some sarin and was even willing to use it, Assad forced the US to launch a credibility strike, despite the very clear intentions of the Trump regime stated just days earlier.

Thus it was Obama’s deal with Assad that created the necessity of a strike this time: Assad had simply not used sarin again in any large enough display during Obama’s reign. We cannot therefore make assumptions about what may have happened if Obama were still president; he may have been forced to do the same as Trump. In fact, when Obama was threatening to enforce his red-line in August 2013, Trump was opposed to any action, as was Bolton, Mattis, Gingrich, virtually anyone in future associated with Trump.

To soften the blow, Trump warned Putin, who warned Assad, so that planes could be moved from the base in time. According to the Russians, some half a dozen out-of-service warplanes were hit. By the following day, the base was again in use bombing Syrians, and Khan Sheikhoun was again being bombed – just not with sarin.

Let’s set this minimalistic strike in context. The first months of Trump saw a massive intensification of the US war on ISIS, and a huge rise in civilian casualties: the number of civilians killed by US bombing in Iraq and Syria in Trump’s first six months was higher than the number killed in Obama’s eight years, including 472 killed by US airstrikes in Syria between May 23 and June 23 alone, the third month in a row that civilian casualties from US strikes topped even Assad’s toll. The massacre of dozens of displaced people in a school in Raqqa highlighted the nature of Trump’s war. The civilian toll from the decimation of Raqqa is likely to be much higher than official figures suggest, and by August, enormous massacres were occurring daily. In this context, a 55-minute hit on a few old regime warplanes, doing zero damage to its war-making capacity, is not even a hiccup.

As we saw above, Trump also escalated the US war on HTS. From any human viewpoint, a comparison between the US bombing of the rebel-held Aleppo mosque in March which killed 57 worshippers, and the US strike on the Sharyat airbase a few weeks later, which killed no-one, highlights what a mundane event the second was.

The follow-up by clarified further that this was a one-off. Tillerson stressed the strike was entirely about sarin and warned “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.” Trump stressed that he launched the strike only because Assad used chemical weapons “which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it.” Defence Secretary Mattis stressed that “our military policy in Syria has not changed. Our priority remains the defeat of ISIS,” but Assad “should think long and hard” before using sarin again. National Security Advisor McMaster clarified that if there were to be any “regime change” in Syria, it would be carried out by Russia, not the US; that he had no concern that the base was being used again the next day, because harming Assad’s military capacities was not the aim of the strike; and that the US goal remained defeating ISIS while it also desired “a significant change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular.”

So, even after Assad uses chemical weapons, the hardest policy within the Trump regime was for regime character change under Assad, facilitated by Russia.

The lead-up to the second hit, in April 2018, following Assad’s attack on Ghouta with chlorine gas, was similar;  as described above, the Trump’s US government  demonstrated complete indifference as the regime pounded East Ghouta for a month with every conceivable type of “conventional” WMD, as 1700 people were killed. As we saw above, during this terror, Trump announced the US was leaving Syria, as its only concern was ISIS. Ghouta was not even on his radar.

Assad had already been victorious over almost all of the Ghouta region, but one militia was holding out in the suburb of Douma. The day after the chemical attack, Douma surrendered. Confronted with yet another rude violation of the red-line, despite Trump’s gift to an ungrateful Assad of supreme indifference to the month of slaughter, Trump once again launched a credibility strike. The casualty-free strike hit three buildings allegedly associated with chemical weapons’ research or storage, with zero impact on Assad’s war machine. “Mission accomplished” declared Trump after 45 minutes.

Since then, the Assad regime has continued to use chemical weapons, with barely a whisper from Trump.

Trump’s hard line against Iran

Probably the biggest argument in favour of Trump among many Syrians has been his intensely anti-Iranian policy. Trump, so it goes, may not care about Assad, and his stance against Iran may only be driven by imperial US arrogance, but it will have the spin-off effect of weakening Assad. Obama signed the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) which released sanctions on Iran and returned it money the US had long held, so Iran was able to use this money to bolster Assad; and Obama’s determination to get the Iran deal was allegedly a major reason for the US going soft on Assad. Trump’s scrapping of the JCPOA means Iran has less money to bolster Assad. Biden would return to the treaty, again freeing Iran to shower Assad with money and troops.

While the argument is understandable, there are too many holes for it to hold up as any reason to grudgingly support Trump.

Let’s start with the last point. Would Iran be flush with cash to prop up Assad if Biden restored the JCPOA? Probably not, because its economy has crashed due to the huge fall in oil prices over the last year, as well as being hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis. In any case, the point is now moot following the imposition of harsh US sanctions on the Assad regime (see below). In the past, Syria could be prevented from receiving Iranian goods due to US sanctions on Iran (and anyone facilitating Iranian trade); now, third parties can be sanctioned by the US for supplying Syria. But then why would Iran care about that if it is already sanctioned? Ironically, only by abolishing the harsh sanctions on Iran would its incentives to aid Assad be reduced.

Regarding Obama, yes, the timing of the JCPOA was bad for Syrians, if not wrong in itself. The US did not have the right to keep billions of Iranian dollars for decades. The country with the most nuclear bombs on Earth does not have the right to prevent Iran from developing civil nuclear energy. But if the US had illegally held Iranian cash for decades, it could have held it a little longer if it wanted to stop Iran funding Assad. The discourse that Obama was soft on Assad because of his deal with Iran reverses the causality and demonstrates illusions in US imperialism. As can be easily demonstrated, the US never supported the Syrian uprising. This had nothing to do with the Iran deal. Obama could have used the Iran deal as a lever to get Iranian forces out of Syria, but chose not to.

But here’s the thing: under both Obama and Trump, the US was effectively allied to Iranian forces on the ground in Syria and Iraq, with with parallel objectives. In Iraq, the Iranian-backed Shiite sectarian death squads helped the US prop up the US-Iranian joint-venture Iraqi regime against the ISIS Sunni sectarian death squads.

Regarding Syria, let’s talk about the “anti-Iranian” Trump presidency. Throughout 2017 and early 2018, while Trump was facilitating Assad’s counterrevolutionary victory throughout the country, the anti-Iran issue took a back seat in practice, whatever Trump’s rhetoric, as long as Assad needed Iran-backed cannon-fodder to do much of his fighting on the ground. As shown above, during Assad’s reconquest of Deir Ezzor in 2017, US bombing of ISIS not only aided Assadist forces on the ground, but even Iranian forces on the ground.

Only after Assad’s throne was safe, following the crushing of Ghouta in April 2018, was the stage set for Trump to begin dealing with his Iranian issue. So in May 2018 the JCPOA scrapped, sanctions imposed and the anti-Iran rhetoric reached fever pitch.

It is true that Assad’s crushing of Daraa had not yet taken place, but when it did, it was carried out without any need for Iranian troops. As described above, the deal to crush Daraa involved Assad, Netanyahu, Trump and Putin; Russia ensured that Iranian troops were kept distant from the region. Iranian cannon fodder was now superfluous.

As for the ongoing slaughter in Idlib, it has been overwhelmingly Russian terror bombing aiding each Assadist offensive; Iran’s role has been relatively peripheral. In a number of Assad-Russia offensives, Iranian forces were absent, possibly due to the increasing anti-Kurdish alignment of Iranian and Turkish regional interests. Regarding a mid-2019 offensive, researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov writes “Iran is currently not engaged in the campaigns in Idlib for several reasons, including that it does not see the recapture of the province to be of strategic importance and it wants to maintain good relations with Turkey.”

Where Iran retains most strength is in eastern Deir Ezzor near the Iraqi border. But even here, it is increasingly in conflict with Russia, and even with the Assad regime, whose interests in that region line up more with those of Russia over Iran.

The bottom line is this: if Trump’s anti-Iran position was negative for Assad, then how did Assad reconquer most of the country under Trump’s watch?

The problem is giving greater weight to Iran than is warranted. Given the heavy role played by the Iranian regime and its regional proxies in sending thousands of troops to fight for Assad’s regime, many understandably take this a step further and see the Syrian war as primarily a war of Iranian conquest and occupation, with Assad virtually reduced to an Iranian pawn.

However, this Iranian angle is only one aspect of a multi-faceted war, whose dominant aspect remained a war of revolution and counterrevolution where the Syrian people’s main enemy was the Assad regime, with its own massive military machine, which never completely lost its independence to Iran.

One argument is that since Assad’s own Syrian forces became so hollowed out due to mass desertion and reluctance to fight, the armed forces he pitted against the rebels became overwhelmingly these Iran-owned forces. Forcing Iran-backed forces out will therefore leave Assad without an army.

However, this is a case of turning an actual phenomenon – significant desertion among SAA ranks – into an absolute. The SAA does continue to have thousands of Syrian troops, though greatly reduced and with low morale. Moreover, these absolutist views ignore the fact that there is another much greater power that has been central to rescuing Assad – the Russian Empire of Trump’s mate, Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s intervention via aerial mass bombing since 2015 saved Assad – after the Iranian and Hezbollah intervention since 2013 proved incapable of doing so. However, it is often claimed that while Russia supplies the airforce, it does not send ground troops, so Assad and Putin rely on Iran and its proxies to supply cannon fodder.

However, this again turns a core of truth into an absolute. In August 2018, for example, Russia claimed that 63,000 Russian troops had “seen combat” in Syria.

In March 2017, Assad’s forces launched an attack on the US-backed SDF in Deir Ezzor. While the US never touches the regime’s war-making machine when it fights the rebels, it retaliated against this attack on its SDF allies, only to find that it had killed 200-300 Russian mercenaries, of the Blackwater-like Wagner group, embedded with Assad’s forces! If that many Russians died on one day, it suggests significant numbers of Russian ground forces have fought in Syria.

But the Russian factor is bigger than that of ground troops. Russia is the other major power that Assad’s regime depends on militarily, economically and diplomatically. While Russia and Iran both back Assad, they are also rivals in the stakes of dominating post-war Syria. They also attempt to achieve their rival objectives in different ways – while Iran relies on sending in irregular militia under its own control and ideological persuasion (though also building connections with certain sections of the Assadist military, eg, Bashar’s cousin Maher Assad’s 4^th Division), Russia aims to rebuild and dominate the Baathist state apparatus which it has worked with for decades.

In doing this, Russia has put significant resources into the Assadist officer corp, building and financing entire sections of the military, notably the 5^th Corp and the Tiger Forces. This coincides with Russia’s increasing take-over of significant parts of the Syrian economy, a tightened hold on its military bases and attempts to restrict Iran’s strategic footprint in Syria. In mid-June, for example, Russia took full control of Palmyra Military Airbase  from the regime, expelling all Iranian and even regime forces.

While this rivalry gives the Assad regime the ability to manoeuvre between these two benefactors it also gives Iran’s enemies – the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, some other Gulf states – the same ability to manoeuvre, by putting their money on a Russian-dominated version of Baathist “stability” and/or “political solution” as opposed to the Iran-dominated version. Pushing back Iran does not necessarily mean undermining Assad. 

For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and al-Sisi’s Egyptian dictatorship are all strongly pro-Assad, and have excellent relations with Russia. While Israel bombs Iranian assets in Syria – taking care to distinguish them from the Assad regime’s assets – it has excellent relations with Russia, which, being in charge of Syria’s anti-aircraft system, is clearly giving Israel the green light; meanwhile top Israeli leaders have for years continually emphasised their support for Assad. In May his year, as Israel launched major strikes on Iranian forces, Israeli defence minister Naftali Bennet told Assad that Iran “used to be an asset for the Syrians, but now it’s a burden.” Even Saudi Arabia, previously a supporter of the Syrian uprising, has moved from ignoring Syria to making noises suggesting quiet support for the Egypt-UAE strategy.

However, while Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt line up very neatly with the Russian preference for Baathist regime continuity (with or without Assad), with some cosmetic ‘reform’, the US and the EU strive for some kind of “political transition”. In reality, ‘reformed Baathist ‘stability’ and ‘political solution’ are different ends of the same equation in the context of Assad’s military victory.

Nevertheless, ‘political transition’ at least offers some degree of greater possibilities than mere ‘reformed Baathism’, and the weapon chosen by the the US and the EU to pressure the regime in that direction is sanctions. So we will now move to Trump’s alleged third advantage, the current harsh sanctions regime.

Harsh sanctions for lame ‘political transition’

It may seem ironic that the US government, after years of facilitating Assad’s victory, began to articulate a firmer-sounding policy on Assad’s future soon after the regime’s mid-2018 reconquest of the south. In November, the US Treasury issued a “shipping advisory” warning third parties (especially Iran and Russia) that they would be subject to US sanctions if they facilitate the shipping of oil to Syria  (notably, the oil sanctions this was based on were issued in August 2011 under Obama). The advisory also noted that the US would prevent any funding for “reconstruction.” The new US special representative for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, outlined that these sanctions will apply until the US sees “irreversible progress in the UN-sponsored political process.”

US rulers had feared the “instability” of revolution more than the instability caused by the regime’s actions, but now with the revolution contained or crushed, this new approach indicates that the US now considers it safe to resume the search for a transition to a less destabilizing version of the regime, achieved “from above.”

The harshness of the new sanctions is balanced by how limited the objectives are. The “political process” Jeffrey refers to concerns Assad’s attempts to block the formation of a “constitutional commission” to re-write the constitution before future elections, the process launched by Assad’s allies Russia and Iran, along with Turkey, at the Sochi conference in January 2018, consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2254 (a resolution endorsed by Russia and China in 2015). Even the regime is officially on board, though it is trying to stall the process. It is somewhat ironic that the US now offers muscle to help push through a Russian-led process.

As the former head of the of the Syrian opposition, Moaz al-Khatib, noted, “the meagre demand of a mere constitutional committee” is a major step down from the key long-term component of the Geneva process, namely “the demand for a transitional ruling body,” which would consist half of regime and half of opposition members, both with right of veto over certain individuals (eg, Assad), tasked with organising elections. This was key to the Geneva process since its inception in 2012, based on a Russo-American understanding of the “political process” under Obama. With the new approach, the regime itself, rather than a transitional body, will be expected to ratify a new constitution and organize “elections”.

In other words, the late Trump administration’s position is “tough” in the context of policy objectives that represent a marked shift towards accommodating the regime. Of course, the US never had any “regime change” policy to begin with. The US had always opposed any collapse of the Baathist regime, and at most had aimed for Assad to “step down,” as Obama requested, leaving his regime intact. As Obama’s State Secretary John Kerry stated in December 2015, the US is “not seeking so-called regime change as it is known in Syria,” and the US and Russia see the conflict “fundamentally very similarly.”

This has been emphasised more clearly under the Trump administration. In November 2018, Jeffrey stressed that the US was committed to a political process that “will change the nature and the behaviour of the Syrian government, [but] this is not regime change, this is not related to personalities.”

Regarding the change in “behaviour,” Jeffrey’s stress was on the removal of  “Iranian-led” forces from Syria, which threaten “our friends in the region, principally Israel.” In June 2020, Jeffrey is still repeating this ‘muscular realpolitik’ approach, asserting that Washington “wants to see a political process, which may not lead to a change of the Syrian regime, but demands the Syrian regime to change its behaviour, not provide “shelter for terrorist organizations” or “a base for Iran.”

This is very different to his attitude to Assad’s other ally Russia; Jeffrey states that “we seek common ground with Russia in order to resolve the conflict in Syria,” calling on Russia to “join efforts to counter Iran’s destabilizing actions and influence in Syria.” Jeffrey bends over backwards to accommodate Russia:

“Our policy is that all Iranian-commanded forces have to leave Syria, along with frankly all other military forces that entered after 2011. This includes the United States, if all of the reports are correct about the Israeli Air Force that would include the Israelis, and it would include the Turks. The Russians entered before 2011, therefore they are exempt.”

In other words, the tough-sounding Jeffrey is putting it to Russia that the US supports a conservative, Russian-led process of “political transition,” ie, one which satisfies US-Russian allies like the UAE, Egypt and Israel that the regime is largely preserved as long as Iran is distanced.

While Russia intervened to save Assad’s regime, Putin has no special love for Assad himself, and understands that for its Syria colony to became stable for Russian investment and strategy, the regime needs to engage in some ‘political process’ involving dialogue with the opposition, perhaps broadening the base of an otherwise unstable sectarian regime. The Russian-led “constitutional commission” process, supported by the US, is conservative enough for this purpose: it bridges the gap between the concepts of Baathist regime continuity with cosmetic reform and “political solution.”

In theory, even a controlled ‘political solution’ process could open up Syrian politics for the masses to intervene even if that is not the intention; in practice it may go beyond a reformed Baathist regime. However, whether it or not it does depends on the relationship of forces on the ground, rather than what is written on paper.

With Assad receiving massive backing from Russia and Iran throughout the war, Assad could fight it out to ensure any final deal gave the best terms to the regime. The end result is seen today: the military crushing of the opposition ensuring that it lacks bargaining power; hundreds of revolutionary councils disbanded; thousands of civil leaders murdered in custody; a quarter of the population residing outside the country; and Russian, Iranian, American, and Turkish forces occupying substantial parts of Syria. The “political solution” in this context will likely end up a particularly conservative version.

Returning then to sanctions: what we see is the “blunt instrument” of harsh sanctions, which hurt ordinary civilians far more than the Assadist elite, arriving at the end of a US-facilitated, especially Trump-facilitated, military victory by Assad, in order to now pressure the victorious Assad into a limited “political solution” that preserves as much of the regime as possible.

Caesar sanctions: the good, the bad and the ugly, but bipartisan

However, while my focus is the cynical motivations of Trump, the sanctions debate is of central importance to Syrians; regardless of the reasons for the defeat of the military struggle, its reality means Syrians rightly ask: so what can be done now? To oppose any sanctions in this context means allowing the regime to rule unimpeded, having destroyed its country, killed hundreds of thousands of people, while still holding tens of thousands of political prisoners, leaving a quarter of the Syrian population as refugees and millions more internally displaced, while passing laws to steal their property.

It is here that the recently introduced ‘Caesar’ sanctions – named after the alias of the Syrian regime defector who leaked tens of thousands of photos of detainees tortured and murdered in Assad’s gulag – potentially offer a way forward. Credit for these sanctions goes to the years of democratic activism by Syrians and their supporters pressuring Western governments to take the kinds of actions that many activists have previously pushed for against western-backed repressive regimes.

The Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act puts specific demands on the regime like releasing political prisoners, ending sieges, facilitating return of refugees, and ending bombing of civilians, schools and medical facilities. This removes the dilemma whereby some may consider the US demand for “political transition” none of the US’s business, on the one hand, or view its actual content to be so watered down that it means reformed Assadism, on the other. Who can argue with release of political prisoners?

The Caesar Act sanctions the regime, entities controlled by it, individuals within it, and other active participants in repression (including foreign death squad leaders); the oil and gas industries, military aircraft, and “reconstruction”; and any ‘third-party’ individual entity or state doing business with any of the above.

Support for the Caesar sanctions is very strong among Syrian activists abroad, but not unanimous, because their harshness potentially impacts the civilian population (despite strong clauses allowing humanitarian access and exemptions), due to issues such as of “over-compliance,” “dual-use,” the fact that sanctioned regime-connected oligarchs own large parts of the economy and so on. Energy sanctions – already in place before Caesar – are particularly problematic: oil and gas are used in military repression, but also civilian transport and heating of homes. This is a delicate political and ethical issue. There is also a range of views among anti-Assad civil society in regions outside regime control.

Sanctions have a bad record of battering civilians, while elites connected to sanctioned regimes are best-placed to sanctions-bust and live well, even profit, from them. Moreover, there is a rich literature showing that economic sanctions rarely change regime behaviour, let alone lead to regime change. Far from suffering leading the masses to revolt, the everyday struggle for survival takes precedence. Further, by being able to point to foreign sanctions, the regime can attempt to get itself off the hook, even though in reality its massive destruction of civilian infrastructure over a decade is the main cause of civilian suffering, while the recent collapse of the Lebanese banking system was also a major hit to the Syrian economy.

But really, this is a different discussion. Because whether one views the sanctions in a more positive or more negative light, support for them in the US is bipartisan; Trump versus Biden is irrelevant. Far from being “Trump sanctions,” these sanctions, driven by Syrian-American activists, simply took years to get through all the complex processes of US policy making. The act was introduced by the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2016 with bipartisan support, and has had bipartisan support at every step through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The fact that it took until December 2019 for Caesar to be finally passed by both houses can in no sense be attributed to Trump.

Where to from here?

With the Caesar sanctions now law, there is no point arguing whether Trump or Biden would be more likely to lift them; both are bound by the law. The law gives the president the power to lift some sanctions if the regime, for example, releases some prisoners, perhaps allowing differing interpretations of the law.

But there is no indication that Biden is likely to be lenient on Caesar. If anything, the re-election of Trump, with his transactional approach, disdain for human rights, ties to regional dictatorships that support Assad, love of Putin and far-right base, would arguably seem more likely to lead to a ‘realpolitik’-type deal leaving the regime intact if Iran is distanced, compared to Biden’s ‘liberal internationalist’ tendencies. Biden’s top foreign policy advisor, Anthony Blinken, stressed that the US would remain in northeast Syria to exert pressure on the regime, and re-engage in the Geneva process, which he accused Trump of leaving to Russia. He also stated that Biden would use re-engagement with Iran “to address broader regional issues, including Syria.”

A western government that actually cared about Syrian people would pursue a strategy focusing more on carrot than stick. Not “carrot” for Assad, but rather, pouring funds into helping people in regions outside regime control build democratic alternative structures, demonstrating to civilians under Assad’s rule that an alternative exists, and providing the means to protect themselves against aerial massacre.  Yet it was Trump that ended the $230 million annual support to civil society in liberated areas, when there were a lot more liberated areas than now.

It is here that Biden perhaps offers the vaguest amount of light, where he promises to “recommit to standing with civil society and pro-democracy partners on the ground” in Syria. If this means a reversal of Trump’s policy, this would be a solid step forward, because only a resurgence of popular struggle offers any way forward in the grim situation.

Of course, neither Trump nor Biden offers much hope for Syrians. But the idea that a thug like Trump might offer just a little better on Syria, in contrast to virtually any other issue in the US or anywhere in the world, has no basis in reality.

How Erdogan handed northeast Syria to the Assad regime without it firing a shot

By Michael Karadjis

On October 6, the Turkish regime of Tayyip Erdogan launched its long-heralded invasion of northeast Syria, aiming to expel the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from a 30-kilometre border region, and then to dump some its 3.5 million Syrian refugees into territory from which the local population has been expelled. Erdogan’s deal with Russian president Putin consecrates a victory for both Erdogan and Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad, who will divide SDF-held territories between them.

 Turkey and the Kurds

Turkey, along with Iran, Iraq and Syria, have long oppressed their Kurdish populations. In their resistance to Turkish oppression, the Kurdish people in southeast Turkey faced extraordinary state violence under the decades of military regimes, forcing them to take the path of armed struggle in the 1980s, led by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Over the next two decades, some 40,000 people were killed, overwhelmingly by the Turkish state’s brutal counterinsurgency war.

However, the PKK, like many just struggles in the context of state-terror, also often operated in a ruthless fashion, earning it the same “terrorist” label as the Syrian rebels, the Palestinian resistance, the Irish freedom fighters and others in the oppressor’s discourse. Yet while ultra-hypocritical when this label is used by defenders of Turkish state-terror, the crimes of the PKK (including silencing rival Kurdish organisations) did contribute to its alienation from much of the Turkish working class who are therefore more easily manipulated by state propaganda.

The main force in the SDF in Syria is the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the PKK, and its militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The Syrian Kurds were brutally oppressed under the Assad dictatorship and hundreds of thousands denied citizenship. Although Turkey’s claim that the YPG-SDF represents a “threat” to Turkey’s security is laughably false – the YPG has never fired a shot across the border previous to the current invasion – it is true in the sense that the Kurdish autonomy achieved by the SDF in northeastern Syria is a “threat” via the example it sets for the Kurds in Turkey.

Just one part of the Syrian massacre …

This brutal aerial and land attack on the Kurdish and Arab civilian population is simply one more theatre of terror within the genocidal massacre that has engulfed Syria for nearly 9 years, some 95 percent of which has been perpetrated by the fascistic dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, backed by his Russian imperialist masters who have joined Assad in raining death from the skies, and the death squads sent by the Iranian theocracy. Most of the remaining killing was carried out by ISIS and by the US bombing that helped the SDF drive ISIS from eastern Syria.

Indeed, the last 6 months of particularly brutal mass homicide and dispossession carried out by Assad and Russia in northwest Syria has been barely noticed by the international media; many seem to have only just noticed that Syrians are being bombed now.

War crimes

Turkey’s aggression has driven at least 160,000 people from their homes, while Kurdish health authorities claim some 218 people have been killed as of mid-October. Although most media talk of the victims being Kurds, the region under SDF control is multi-ethnic, so the victims are Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and others. The main theatre of the Turkish operation is the largely non-Kurdish region along the border between the mostly Arab city of Tal Abyad and the mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Rays al-Ayn/Serekanye. However, Turkish bombing has also targeted the SDF in heavily Kurdish cities like Kobani and Qamishli, killing and maiming dozens of civilians.

Serious war crimes have also been committed on the ground, more explicitly directed against Kurds. In its October 18 report, Amnesty International wrote that “Turkish military forces and a coalition of Turkey-backed Syrian armed groups have displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians.” The slaughter of Hevrin Khalaf of the Kurdish Future Party, followed by the filming of the desecration of her body, and this field execution of a young Kurdish man, are two cases of absolutely shameful and sadistic crimes. Just who these gangs are will be dealt with below.

Against all selective solidarities

Since Turkey’s invasion, three main responses have been heard from the non-Assadist left and progressive world (not that supporters of Assadist fascism and its racist White Russian ally can be considered left or progressive, but unfortunately such confusion currently exists).

First, we have the voices rightly condemning Turkey’s invasion, but coming from people and organisations who have never, or rarely, condemned the slaughter carried out by Assad/Russia/Iran, or expressed any solidarity with its victims. This is sometimes connected to extreme romanticisation of the SDF (itself sometimes linked to mainstream western selective solidarity with Kurds as opposed to Arabs), combined with an extraordinary level of (often Islamophobic) demonisation of all Syrian rebel currents. When Syrian people called for a No-Fly-Zone to protect them from Assad’s genocidal bombing, they were denounced by many western leftists as tools of western imperialism; yet when the SDF got the full-scale support of the US airforce for 5 years, many of the same people remained quiet or even supported it, and condemn the US for withdrawing; meanwhile, demonstrations condemning the Turkish invasion are calling for a No-Fly-Zone! This is highlighted by the complete silence of many over the last 6 months of the murderous aerial bombing of rebel-held Idlib by the Assad regime and Russia. Many Syrians who have watched the global left ignore their plight for 9 years find this nakedly selective solidarity unbearable.

Unfortunately, this leads to the mirror-image error among some Syrian oppositionists and their supporters: supporting the invasion. Part of this derives from Turkey’s past role as a strong supporter of the Syrian uprising (largely now abandoned since Erdogan became best mates with Putin around 2016), to Turkey being the recipient of 3.5 million refugees from Assad’s slaughterhouse (who Erdogan, now in alliance with his former opponents, the fascistic MHP, wants to dump back anywhere in Syria) and to the SDF’s own transgressions (which leads to wrongly demonising them as ‘Assadists’). But even if we were to grant all this without the provisos, what of basic solidarity with the civilian population fleeing in their tens of thousands? Has the Turkish regime, a historic oppressor of Kurds, come to “liberate” the Syrian Kurds from “SDF oppression”?

The third reaction is that of those who have stood in solidarity with the Syrian people against Assad for years and who now condemn Turkey’s attack from the point of view of consistent solidarity, “in solidarity with the civilians there and against the barbarian Turkish attacks against them,” in the words of Syrian revolutionary Firas Abdullah. As leading Syrian revolutionary and political prisoner under Assad, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, declared:

“The Turkish “Peace Spring” war is a continuation of the Assadi, Iranian, Russian, American and Israeli wars in Syria, and by no means a rupture with them. ِActually, it is a new spring of war and an additional tomb to the aspirations to a new viable Syria. The Syrian vassals of Turkey’s new war are in continuation of the Assadis and their protectors’ wars, not to the crushed revolution of Syrians. Not in our names, you scumbags!”

A global left and progressive movement is nothing if its solidarity cannot be consistent.

 A little background

Arabs and Kurds in their tens of thousands joined mass rallies against Assad throughout northern Syria in 2011, but this solidarity came apart for a complex array of reasons that this article cannot do justice to. Political limitations of both the main Arab-led rebel and opposition groups, both secular-nationalist and Islamist and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) leadership, and of the main Kurdish groups, especially the PYD-YPG, derailed this unity against the regime.

While the Syrian revolution liberated significant parts of Syria from the regime, the PYD-YPG launched its own ‘Rojava revolution’ in the main Kurdish centres of northern Syria, which Assad withdrew from in order to focus on crushing the bigger revolution. While the Rojava project has been both romanticised and demonised, in brief it combines a number of highly progressive aspects with blemishes and limitations – as did other theatres of the Syrian revolution. It is both an act of Kurdish autonomy and the expression, whatever its problems, of the Kurdish people’s part of the broader revolution. However, the PYD-YPG never saw it that way, and it stood aloof from the conflict between regime and rebels from the outset. These divisions ultimately opened both rebel and Kurdish leaderships up to increasing pressures by the various outside powers intervening in Syria with their own agendas, including Turkey, Russia, the US, Iran and the Gulf states.

Turkey became one of the main backers of the FSA and the Syrian rebels, especially since Assad’s savagery drove 3.5 million refugees into Turkey; but this also allowed Turkey to pressure its rebel allies with its anti-Kurdish agenda. Meanwhile, when the US entered the war against ISIS in 2014, it chose the YPG as its ground partner, despite the Syrian rebels also being at war with ISIS; the US wanted them to fight ISIS only and not the Assad regime, whereas the rebels fought both. The SDF was formed by the YPG with a number of small Arab rebel groups who agreed to this US demand. This led to increasing conflict between Turkey and the US, and Turkey turned increasingly towards a diplomatic track with Russia and Iran, despite being on opposite sides within Syria.

Trump’s precipitous withdrawal from northeast Syria and betrayal of the US’s SDF allies in the face of Turkey’s threat to invade may have been partially aimed at patching up this US-Turkish rift, but as explained below, this move was at odds with the views of most of the US ruling class.

The deal: A Putin-sponsored partition of Rojava between Assad and Turkey

It was fairly clear from early in the  conflict what was happening: the territory controlled by the SDF (the North Syria Federation, often called ‘Rojava’) was being divided between Turkey and the Assad regime; the master of ceremonies is Vladimir Putin, who is tightly allied to both Assad and Erdogan. But anyone not convinced only had to wait for the historic Russia-Turkey agreement which came out of the Putin-Erdogan meeting of October 22.

The partition looks like this:

• Turkey gets to keep its troops in the largely Arab-populated border strip between the mainly Arab city of Tal Abyad, east to the smaller, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Ras al-Ayn (Serekanye), to a depth of 30 kilometres.
• Assad regime and Russian troops will control the rest of the northeast border, both to the west (Kobane, Manbij) and east (Qamishli, Hasake) of this Turkish-occupied section, clearing the SDF away from the border to a depth of 30 kilometres, already consecrated under the deal the SDF earlier made with the regime; thus the regime will control all the main Kurdish population centres, as well as the non-Kurdish Raqqa region further south.
• Once the SDF is expelled, Turkish and Russian troops (representing the regime) will patrol a 10-kilometre deep zone along the northeast border, outside of the Turkish-controlled zone.
• Both sides reaffirm the importance of the Adana Agreement, ie, the 1998 agreement between Turkey and Syria allowing Turkey to temporarily enter Syria when in pursuit of “terrorists.” Turkey thereby essentially recognises the Assad regime.

Just to make things clear, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov told the SDF that if it did not withdraw from the border region, Syrian borders guards and Russian military police would withdraw and leave the Kurds to be dealt with by Turkey. The Assad regime welcomed the agreement and blamed “separatists” for the crisis.

Now for the detail. While Turkish and allied militia war crimes have been directed against Kurds and the operation is anti-Kurdish in intent (and the pillaging and ethnic cleansing of Kurdish Afrin following Turkey’s 2018 invasion makes the current prospects clear enough for the Kurds), the region Turkey has conquered – and that it will be restricted to – is largely non-Kurdish, as these maps demonstrate:

The ease with which Turkey walked into Tal Abyad, with little resistance, may be simply explained by the SDF regrouping its forces, or to the SDF not having the base of support among the city’s Arab population that it claimed to have. Moreover, at least some of the “rebels” entering Tal Abyad with Turkey are from the Arab refugee population that was uprooted by the SDF during its conquest in 2015, who have been across the Turkish border in refugee camps ever since, unable to return.

There was much more resistance in Ras al-Ayn, given its larger Kurdish population; but the SDF has now evacuated it under the US-Turkish ‘ceasefire’ agreement signed five days before the far more significant Russia-Turkish agreement. Hence the only real confrontation – and the only significant SDF loss of ethnically Kurdish territory to Turkey – is this town bordering the two zones. Other than Ras al-Ayn, the SDF early made a full withdrawal from the Turkish-controlled segment.

According to the deal the SDF signed with the regime, “the SAA will be present in the entire region east and north of the Euphrates and in coordination with local military councils, while the area between Ras al Ayn and Tell Abyad stays as an unstable combat zone until it is liberated.” The Russia-Turkey agreement simply consecrated this.

Assadist and Russian forces had already moved into Manbij, as the US gently handed over its facilities there to Russia, even assisting Russian forces navigating the area (despite its largely Arab population and the previous US-Turkish agreement for joint patrols in the city). Russian forces were placed between the Turkish and Assadist militaries near Manbij.

Next door, the US told Erdogan Kobani is off limits, and Assadist forces entered the town (here we see US and Assadist forces passing each other along the road, in and out of Kobani). Assadist forces have also deployed south, in the Raqqa region; and in the heavily Kurdish region to the east of Ras al-Ayn (including Qamishle, Hasake etc), the regime will beef up its forces who have always remained present in two small bases.

The US-Turkish ‘ceasefire’ farce

What then of the earlier US-Turkish “ceasefire” deal signed by US Vice-President Pence and Erdogan on October 17? The text called for a “safe zone” to be “mostly” patrolled by Turkish troops, and the evacuation of the SDF from the border region. It appeared to hand Turkey everything it wants, and was rightly denounced as a sham and a betrayal, including by the leadership of the US Democratic Party and many Republicans. Even the “ceasefire” part was not respected by Turkey which has continued to bomb Ras al-Ayn.

In reality, however, this was largely a media stunt to save face for Trump and the US. The Syrian regime declared it “vague”, adding, ominously for the SDF, that it will never accept “another Iraqi Kurdistan in Syria”, and even the SDF accepted the ceasefire.

The main betrayal was handing over Ras al-Ayn to Turkey while the SDF was still resisting. Beyond that, however, the statement omitted any definition of the length or depth of this “safe zone”. Though Pence stated his acceptance of Turkey’s definition of the zone as 30 kilometres deep, Turkey’s absurd claim for this to extend all 444 kilometres along the border, from Manbij to the Iraqi border, was rejected by the US. US Special Envoy, James Jeffrey defined the safe zone “as the areas where Turkey was now operating, down 30 km in a central part of Northeast Syria,” that is, the 100 kilometres (of largely non-Kurdish territory) between Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. He said that beyond that, “the Turks have their own discussions going on with the Russians and the Syrians in other areas of the northeast”.

In other words, the US-Turkish agreement simply affirmed the existing unofficial Putin-led, Erdogan-Assad partition of the region, accepted by the SDF, now official in the Russia-Turkey agreement. The part of the agreement about the SDF being removed from the entire border, not just the limited “safe zone” part, will be taken care of by the Assad regime entering the region. The Pence mission and statement therefore was nothing but a meaningless face-saver for the US after Trump’s bungle, allowing it to claw back a little credibility and pretend to look important where Putin controls all levers.

Erdogan: Go Assad!

Is this a defeat for Erdogan? It may look like he has led Turkey into a trap only to get crumbs. After all, the US and Turkey had theoretically already established a “safe zone” along the entire border east of Manbij to the Iraqi border, from which the SDF had begun withdrawing. The SDF had accepted a 5-kilometre zone along most of the border, and 9-14 kilometres between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. Turkey invaded because it wasn’t satisfied with this. While the zone between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn will now be 30 kilometres deep, all the rest of the border goes to Assad, and while the zone within this where Turkish patrols are allowed extends from 5 to 10 kilometres, this is shared with Russia (representing Assad) rather than the US.

But really, does Turkey want to get bogged down fighting a guerrilla war in Kurdish population centres? Perhaps the aim was always for Assad to take the rest from the SDF.

Erdogan has repeatedly made clear that he has no problem as long as the Assad regime, rather than the SDF, controls the border; “the regime entering Manbij is not very negative for me. It’s their lands after all … what is important is that the terrorist organisation does not remain there,” Erdogan said. Erdogan said his operation would end once Russia or the Assad regime clears the border of the “terrorists.” Indeed, he made exactly the same statement last year when Assadist forces first moved nearby the Manbij region. Meanwhile, the Syrian and Turkish regimes have been in covert contact via Moscow throughout this campaign.

The SDF-Assad deal

Russia negotiated the SDF-Assad deal several days after Turkey’s invasion, allowing the regime to enter SDF territory to “defend its borders” against Turkey; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that Russia’s goal is that “all Kurdish organizations in Syria are woven into the country’s legal framework and constitution, so that there are no illegal armed units in Syria,” and thus pose no threat to Turkey, whose legitimate interests securing its border Russia recognises. Putin’s greenlight to Erdogan – more explicit than Trump’s – had the understanding from the outset that this would force the SDF under Assad’s wing.

It is futile arguing about whether the SDF made the right decision. It is true that the PYD/YPG has always had an opportunistic policy towards the regime, abstained from the anti-Assad uprising, and were always prepared for deals with Assad, Russia or the US. Sometimes this was about survival (eg, the US aid as ISIS advanced on Kobane in 2014), in other cases lust for territorial conquest (eg its Russian airforce-backed conquest of the rebel-held northern Aleppo region in early 2016). Completely dependent on the US, facing a precipitous US withdrawal, some deal with the devil was mathematically inevitable once Turkey launched its brutal invasion. The SDF and Rojava will be crushed in the Erdogan/Assad vice.

Beyond the entry of Assadist troops, the real outcome remains a matter of interpretation, with SDF spokespeople suggesting they will still have full internal control. Assad can temporarily pose as the “softer” alternative for the Kurds, allowing some limited autonomy to remain temporarily, to facilitate entry into SDF territory without conflict while the situation elsewhere remains unstable for the regime. But when all is done, Assad will finish the job of crushing all autonomy, as the regime has long promised. Even while doing the deal, Assad regime officials lambasted the SDF as traitors to Syria, making clear what their prospects are.

Did Trump also green-light Assad?

It is no surprise that Trump immediately tweeted that the Russia-Turkey agreement was “good news”. It may be conspiratorial to suggest that Trump’s withdrawal was part of the Putin-led plan, given Trump’s tendency to make policy decisions over a phone-call. But remove the idea of subjective intention: Trump’s move is consistent with a not uncommon view that there are no fundamental US interests in Syria; supporting oppressive regimes rolling over the oppressed is consistent with US policy and interests in countless other places (eg Palestine); patching it up with a big NATO state is ultimately in US interests; and this move is consistent with Trump’s repeated view that it is Assad’s counterrevolution to deal with, that the US should support Assad and Putin “fighting ISIS” (sic) and so on.

Trump was explicit, tweeting “Let Syria and Assad protect the Kurds and fight Turkey for their own land … Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!” Which is similar to what he tweeted last year when he announced “withdrawal”: “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there (sic) work.”

According to SDF commander Mazloum Kobani, Trump also greenlighted the SDF-Assad deal: “We told (Trump) that we are contacting the Syrian regime and the Russians in order to protect our country and land. He said, ‘We are not against that. We support that.”

There is no mystery here – US imperialism never attempted to unseat Assad despite trenchant myths. The US entered Syria’s war to support the YPG/SDF as their ground force against ISIS. With ISIS largely defeated, US imperialism has no fundamental reason to continue keeping some Syrian territory outside Assad’s control. While Trump’s policy is not the current policy of the US ruling-class mainstream (though there are exceptions, and this article claims a number of “pro-Turkey” advisors have entered the White House), it is conceivably one consistent choice for US imperialism.

When Trump first announced “withdrawal” in late 2018, I wrote that this was in effect going to be more of a greenlight to Assad than to Erdogan:

“ … while almost every analyst claimed this move was a sell-out of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to the Erdogan regime in Turkey … it was just as much, if not more, a green light for the Bashar Assad tyranny to take control of the SDF-controlled regions.

“However, some clarification may be in order: how can a US withdrawal favour Assad and Russia if the US presence in Syria was never opposed to them in the first place? Here we need to understand the US relationship with its ground ally, the SDF, which controls northeast Syria since driving out ISIS …

“ … the US and SDF [fought] ISIS in the east in a war completely separate to Assad’s counterrevolutionary war against the rebellion in western Syria. But while the SDF was not anti-Assad, nor was it pro-Assad; it was interested in building its own project, the ‘Rojava revolution’, separate to both Assad and the rebels. Therefore, the US was maintaining a region outside Assad’s direct control; but this was never the ultimate US aim, which was merely to use the SDF to defeat ISIS. Therefore, the current processes of the US abandoning the SDF to Assad, and the SDF itself trying to negotiate a deal with Assad, are essentially in harmony, but in these “negotiations” it is the regime, not the Rojava project, that will come out on top.”

Mainstream of US ruling-class furious

Most representatives of the US ruling-class – from the Pentagon through the Democratic Party and most of the Republican Party, from liberal doves to hard-nosed realists to unreconstructed neoconservatives, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal – furiously opposed Trump’s move. Defence Secretary Mark Esper openly declared Turkey to not be an ally; former Trump government hard-interventionist Nikki Haley created the twitter handle #TurkeyIsNotOurFriend. A joint Republican-Democratic team led by Trump ally Lindsay Graham has crafted a harsh sanctions bill against Turkey.

They believe it is in US interests to hang on to the SDF statelet in eastern Syria for longer, whether purely as a buffer against Iran (the Bolton view), or as a medium for pressuring Assad regarding the political process (while the US has always excelled at supporting tyrants, most recognise that Assad’s military victories are incapable of re-establishing any real stability and therefore support the UN-led “constitutional” process to broaden the Assad regime), or because precipitous withdrawal is massively damaging to US imperial credibility and threatens to undo five years of US military-political success in the region. However, none of this is really about love of “the Kurds” or the Rojava project and there should be little doubt that betrayal would have arrived sometime later.

As this article goes to press, this fury with Trump’s decision may be leading to a new tactic in managing the crisis it caused. Trump is alleged to now be in favour of keeping some 200 troops in Syria near the Iraqi border to bomb ISIS, but also to, as Trump tweeted, “secure the oil,” ie, some SDF-controlled oil wealth. This has apparently swung Lindsay Graham, who explains that “I believe we’re on the verge of a joint venture between us and the Syrian Democratic Forces … to modernize the oil fields and make sure they get the revenue.” Others suggest that the oil idea is just a ploy for the Pentagon to sell to Trump their desire to remain to keep bombing ISIS.

Turkey’s plan to drive refugees into Syria

Yet while Turkey has unequivocally declared its acceptance of the Assad regime taking control of SDF territories, the deal will not entirely satisfy Erdogan’s other stated objective: to dump some 2 million refugees into the “safe zone”. Perhaps Turkey can send some of its refugee population into the 100-kilometre section it has been allotted, as well as the region it already controls between Jarablus and Azaz, as well as occupied Kurdish Afrin.

As Firas Abdullah notes regarding this plan:

“This operation is coloured with racism and hateful speech, racism against the Kurdish Syrian civilians who are fleeing their cities because of the Turkish bombing now, and racism against the Syrians who are living in Turkey, and who are going to be deported to this territory after the operation is done according to the declarations from the Turkish side, so Turkey will get rid of over 1 or 2 million Syrians. Okay, what if I’m a Syrian from Homs and live in Istanbul? I’ll be deported to Hasakeh (after it’s been cleaned by the operation and destroyed).”

This campaign to dump Syrian refugees anywhere is driven just as much, if not more, by the Turkish opposition as by Erdogan’s AKP. In the 2011-2015 period when the AKP was welcoming these refugees from Assad’s terror (and also engaging in a limited ‘peace process’ with the Turkish Kurds and the PKK), the opposition in Turkey raised the banner of Turkish nationalism against both Syrian Arab refugees and talks with Kurds. Both the Kemalist CHP and the Turko-fascist MHP long demanded the Syrian refugees be deported. But since 2015 the AKP has been in coalition with the MHP; and now the MHP, the CHP, and the MHP’s equally far-right split, the IYI, all support this invasion, hoping to expel the Syrian refugees.

However, the blame cannot be laid solely at Turkey’s feet. The Syrian catastrophe is a global problem where the world has failed the Syrian people; yet Turkey has taken the lion’s share of refugees, and for this should be commended. Europe has been paying to keep the refugees in Turkey and out of Europe; while the US and other western countries have accepted markedly few refugees. Turkey’s method of dealing with this is appalling, but many Turks, Arabs and Kurds can be excused for seeing only hypocrisy in Europe and the US.

Who are the ‘Turkish-backed rebels’?

While on the topic of Erdogan dumping Syrian refugees into the northeast, the question arises of who the Syrian ‘rebel’ groups fighting under the banner of the Turkish-controlled ‘Syrian National Army’ (SNA) are. From the discourse of the apologists, these are simply rebel groups based among these refugees leading them back to their homeland. Others have them as simply the same rebel groups that fought Assad, now trying to liberate new territory; or alternatively, who are now proxified by Turkey due to weakness. The main depiction in media reports is of a bunch of crazed killers. The reality probably covers the entire spectrum.

Regarding the first idea, while many of these ‘rebels’ have been recruited from among dispossessed Syrians, including ex-rebels, overwhelmingly they are not returnees to the region being conquered. However, in some cases they are; as noted above, some of the “rebels” entering Tal Abyad are likely from the Arab refugee population that was uprooted by the SDF in 2015.

On the second depiction, it is true that, to some extent, the presence of former branches of the FSA or other rebel groups is the result of the defeats of the revolution and increasing dependence on outside “sponsors” with their own interests (the SDF’s reliance on US imperialism and now the Assad regime are similar in this sense). Some may feel they have no choice but to fight for Turkey in the hope that the latter will continue to keep some areas out of regime control in return, especially as the rest of the world has long ago dropped any pretence of support. In reality, the presence of fighters in the northeast rather than in Idlib will just make it easier for Assad to mop up there. Their presence is also partly explained by the divisions between the largely Arab rebels and the Kurdish fighters noted above, in which actions by the YPG have played their own role. For example, in early 2016, the SDF conquered the rebel-held, Arab majority region of Tal Rifaat and northern Aleppo with the aid of Russian terror bombing; some think it is now alright to ‘get back at them’ or ‘pay their debt’ to Turkey.

But whatever the causes of proxification, it is essential to distinguish the so-called ‘Turkish-led Free Syrian Army’ (TFSA, as the SNA is often dubbed) with the actual FSA. The legitimacy of the FSA was not in any particular ideology, still less purity, but rather the fact that it arose as the organic armed expression of the Syrian people’s uprising for freedom and democracy against the Assad dictatorship. Once divorced from that base among the revolutionary people, by defeat and/or dispossession and exile, these are just armed groups; whether or not they continue to advance a revolutionary cause depends entirely on context. The context here is their use by Turkey as shock troops for its anti-Kurdish goals, goals that have nothing to do with the original aims of the FSA.

Even if a group defending an Idlib town from Assad has the same name as a group invading northeast Syria, they have to be understood as different phenomena. Rebel brigades are local-based and defined; allegedly “national” groups do not operate like Leninist parties as some in the West may imagine.

On the third idea, being proxies does not make all the SNA fighters the sadistic killers that the media has highlighted. Nevertheless, the context of conquest does create the conditions for the savage crimes that have occurred and the more general tendency towards plunder, derived from their desperate and unhinged nature, the absence of connection to the region, the atmosphere of impunity and their complete dependence on Turkey.

In any case, even the actual names of the main groups involved in the Turkish-led invasion, especially those noted for the worst crimes, reveal they are far from being representative of the old FSA or rebel movement more generally.

For example, the group blamed for the worst crimes, Ahrar al-Sharqiyya, has its own history of violence against other rebel groups, and is a relatively new group, formed only in 2016 by exiled rebels from the Deir Ezzor region, who took part in Turkey’s 2016 Euphrates Shield operation to evict ISIS from the eastern Aleppo region. Therefore, it has no “FSA history” at all.

Another group is Jaysh al-Islam, which was a major non-FSA, Islamist rebel group in East Ghouta, expelled when Assad reconquered the region in 2018. Even when in East Ghouta, JaI regularly clashed with other rebels, was extremely oppressive, pathologically sectarian, and is widely suspected of the abduction and disappearance of the famous ‘Douma Four’ revolutionary activists. But if in East Ghouta it was still partially connected to the revolutionary masses resisting Assad (at least with respect to its foot soldiers, just local men joining whichever militia dominated their locality), once in exile in Turkish-controlled northern Syria, all that is left is the vile militia that revolutionary activists have already experienced.

A third major group is the Sultan Murad Brigade, which was originally simply a Turkmen branch of the FSA, but which has become heavily proxified by Turkey. Even if it hadn’t, the fact of Turkey sending an ethnic Turkmen brigade, based in the east Aleppo region, to invade Kurdish regions in northeast Syria, is symbolic of the nature of this operation.

A final point: pro-Assad chameleon Rania Khalek has claimed that “The US armed and funded extremists in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government and … those same extremists then attacked the Kurds on Turkey’s behalf.” This is nonsense at every level, but this is not the place to go into the extremely limited US support for heavily vetted rebels with stringent conditions (mostly to drop the fight against Assad and turn their guns only on ISIS), which dried up years ago, before being officially ended by Trump. I’ve written about it here and here. However, groups such as Ahrar al-Shaqiyya and Jaysh al-Islam never got a cent or a gun from the US, let alone any “extremists” which the US spent years bombing; in fact, the only US connection to Ahrar al-Shaqiyya was when it bombed them in 2016.

Meanwhile, who cares about Idlib …

Meanwhile, while global attention has been focused on Turkey’s brutality in the northeast, Assad and Putin continue to bomb, kill and dispossess the mostly Arab population of greater Idlib in the northwest, a campaign replete with systematic destruction of hospitals and schools, despite yet another Putin-Erdogan deal in September for a demilitarised buffer zone in Idlib separating Assadist and rebel forces. Dozens were killed in Idlib during the ten days of Turkey’s operation, but their multi-year plight gathers no global interest.

More importantly, there is almost certainly a quid pro quo here – Putin greenlights Erdogan’s attack on the SDF in the northeast, Erdogan sends armed refugees and fighters not from that region in to plunder it, rather than arming fighters and sending military support to the ongoing local resistance to Assad in the northwest. If Erdogan really cared about the rebellion, he could have poured in the resources – including fighters – to prevent Assad’s recent seizure of Khan Sheikhoun, for example. As Assad is now announcing a new “battle for Idlib” while Turkey distracts itself and thousands of ex-rebels elsewhere, this region will likely get eaten up, unless Erdogan can negotiate with Putin for a small strip along the border as another “safe zone” to prevent more Syrian refugees fleeing into Turkey.

Resistance in Deir-Ezzor?

Where the Assad-SDF deal could come unstuck is among the million-strong Arab population living in the ‘North Syria Federation’, the official name of the SDF-controlled region. While the SDF’s official multi-ethnicity appears to have been successful in some areas, this has greatly varied across the region. The PYD and YPG still hold effective political and military control behind the scenes of the elected multi-ethnic local bodies, often leading to serious tensions, even if most of the Arab population saw SDF rule as infinitely better than that of ISIS or the Assad regime.

In Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces, the Arab populations are extremely fearful of a return of the regime. On the one hand, Raqqa was so completely destroyed by US bombing in the eviction of ISIS that any echoes of its pre-ISIS revolutionary phase have probably been extinguished and the population so exhausted that any solution bringing stability may be grudgingly welcomed, although even here there are signs of protest. But the Arab population of Deir Ezzor, among the earliest to rise against Assad, will resist any attempt by Assad to retake the region. Before these current events, we saw both big protests against SDF rule, and, in the part of Deir Ezzor under Assad-Iran control, big protests demanding the SDF take control (ie, away from Assad), making clear who their main enemy is. There are already protests being launched throughout SDF-controlled Deir Ezzor and elsewhere in the northeast against the prospect of Assadist return. Meanwhile, even in Manbij there is resistance to the prospect of Assadist return, and a general strike is being called.

This uprising going on throughout Deir Ezzor and elsewhere, combined with ongoing demonstrations against the Assad regime, and sometimes against HTS, in the rebel-held northwest, and ongoing feats of resistance even in Daraa where Assad has re-asserted control, also indicate it is still premature to declare the Syrian revolution dead. While Yassin al-Haj Saleh claims that “the Syrian revolution has come to an end” he continues  “but the Syrian Question has just begun” because “there is no other choice than to continue, to persist, but with different methods, other rhythms, basing ourselves on the lessons that the martyred and battered revolution has given us.”

This rising and ebbing of any such movement in Syria cannot be divorced from what happens in the region: the Syrian revolution was part of the Arab Spring revolution, and where this has been crushed, diverted or exhausted elsewhere in the region, it is no surprise that counterrevolution also has the upper hand in Syria. But even now, along with the mini-uprising in Deir Ezzor and ongoing resistance in Idlib, we have seen in recent weeks mass uprisings in Egypt and Iraq, and now in Lebanon, along with the uprisings in Algeria and Sudan earlier in the year. It’s not over.

Geopolitics and the politics of confusion

Finally, some points about the regional geopolitics of this event. While Marxist thinking aims for a materialist explanation of events based on real social forces, a kind of simpleton “leftism” has come to the fore in recent decades which sees itself as “anti-imperialist” and believes one can determine their view of events based on “who supports who.” So here’s a little outline for anyone who needs their fix.

First, the United States and Russia jointly vetoed a UN Security Council resolution put by Britain, France and Germany condemning the Turkish invasion.

Second, the US House of Representatives voted 354-60 to condemn Trump’s withdrawal and Turkey’s invasion.

Next, despite the Assad regime’s deal with the SDF, its real view of the SDF was summed up by Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Maqdad, who stated that “We won’t accept any dialogue or talk with those who had become hostages to foreign forces” calling them “armed groups had betrayed their country and committed crimes against it.”

Not surprisingly, Benjamin Netanyahu stated that “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”

Likewise, the enemies of the Turkey-Qatar-Muslim Brotherhood regional bloc, especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt all vigorously condemned Turkey’s invasion. Saudi Arabia declared it “a threat to regional peace and security,” the UAE called it “a flagrant and unacceptable aggression against the sovereignty of a brotherly Arab state”, Egypt called it “blatant aggression” and called for the UN Security Council to halt “any attempts to occupy Syrian territories or change the demographics in northern Syria.”

Hope this checklist helps those who prefer ‘geopolitics’ to analysis.

Concluding remarks

While tons of ink has rightly been spread denouncing Trump for betrayal, there is no reason to be surprised; imperialist and regional powers look after their interests. Even though the majority of the US ruling class is opposed to the timing and manner of Trump’s actions, this is hardly a first, either for US betrayal of the Kurds – which occurred also in 1975 and 1991 – or of other oppressed peoples, including the Syrian people as a whole whom it falsely pretended to support.

Far too much ink has been spilt claiming the US is hereby betraying its own “values”. In reality, it is a very rare case for the US (or any imperialist power) to be in the situation to be able to “betray” a rightful cause in the first place, because its normal position is on the other side. US imperialist “values” range from the decade-long genocide in Vietnam through the installation, arming and financing of the most vicious dictatorships across Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa for decades to being the most consistent supporter and armer of Israel’s ongoing oppression, occupation, impunity and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

This should not be read as a criticism of the Kurdish people when they did rely on US aid to protect themselves from ISIS genocide in Kobane, just as Turkey’s vile actions today should not condemn the Syrian people, being bombed and tortured into oblivion by the world’s worst tyranny, gaining vital support over the years from Turkey. That is the real world; you get a lifeline from where you can. But the fact of different parts of the Syrian popular masses ending up in opposing camps and killing each other while being manipulated by different sponsoring powers intervening in Syria with their own interests, or by the fascist regime, is the bigger question that will need to be dealt with as part of the post-mortem of the Syrian revolution.

8 May 2019

Michael Karadjis

This article originally appeared in Al-Jumhuriya: https://aljumhuriya.net/en/content/regime-preservation-how-us-policy-facilitated-assad%E2%80%99s-victory

A close examination of eight years of US policy in Syria shows Washington’s objective has never been regime change, but rather “a modified form of regime preservation,” writes Dr. Michael Karadjis in a comprehensive review of the record.

As the military conflict in Syria has been largely decided in favor of the Bashar al-Assad regime, there have been a number of attempts to review the role of US intervention, or lack thereof, in the Syrian outcome. Late last year, Washington’s special envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, clarified that while the US wants to see a regime in Damascus that is “fundamentally different,” it is nevertheless “not regime change” the US is seeking. “We’re not trying to get rid of Assad.” Much commentary jumped on this as some kind of major shift in US policy, or a signal the US had “given up” on regime change.

Yet, as will be shown below, the US never had a “regime change” policy. On the contrary, Washington has always sought a modified form of regime preservation. Jeffrey’s statement was followed by President Trump’s announcement of an immediate US withdrawal from Syria. While the “immediate” was later dropped for reasons of expediency, a more gradual US withdrawal is still on the cards; a process coinciding with a creeping rapprochement with Assad by Trump’s Gulf allies, spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain restoring diplomatic relations with Syria in late December 2018.

A meeting in Damascus?

According to an August 2018 report, American security and intelligence officials met Syrian security chief Ali Mamlouk in Damascus in June the same year, as part of an “ongoing dialogue with members of the Assad regime” about completing the defeat of ISIS and the regime’s chemical weapons inventory.

Per the account given by the pro-Assad Al-Akhbar newspaper, the US officials demanded the withdrawal of Iranian forces from southern Syria, an issue already being negotiated between Israel and Russia as part of an agreement to facilitate the return of Assad’s forces to the UN armistice line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan, and their defeat of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Southern Front rebels. The Americans also reportedly asked for a role in the oil business in eastern Syria.

As Scott Lucas writes, following the regime’s reoccupation of formerly rebel-held Ghouta, the US “warned against an attack by the regime and its foreign allies on opposition areas of southern Syria. However, just before the June meeting, American officials told rebels that they could not count on any support, and the pro-Assad offensive—again enabled by Russia—seized the territory within weeks.”

While the report’s specifics cannot be verified—and no Al-Akhbar claim ought to be taken without due skepticism— they are consistent nonetheless with the American response to Assad’s reconquest of the south, and the fact that the entire US intervention in Syria has been against ISIS (and other jihadists such as Jabhat al-Nusra/HTS); that the only US concerns about the Assad regime have pertained to chemical weapons; and that the region US troops currently occupy—the northeast, in alliance with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) —is a region with abundant oil supplies.

Such a meeting would also be consistent with the orientation of the Trump administration. In the lead-up to his 2016 election, Trump asserted that the US should be on the same side as Russia and Assad in “fighting ISIS,” and said the US would cut off any meager “support” still going to the anti-Assad opposition.

Fulfilling this promise, in July 2017, Trump formally ended even the limited support the US had been providing to some FSA groups, which Trump described as “dangerous and wasteful.” As will be seen, this “support” had long ceased to have much meaning in any case. Trump’s government also ended a $200 million program funding civil initiatives in the opposition-controlled regions.

Obama and the “regime change” discourse

But that, of course, is Trump. In contrast, the Barack Obama administration is generally seen as a supporter of the “Arab Spring” uprisings, including the Syrian uprising against Assad. While it is generally recognized that the US later tempered its support due to its pursuit of the Iran nuclear deal, and its focus on fighting the Islamic State, the discourse that the US was supporting a “regime change” operation in Syria remains widely believed.

Even Trump’s UN representative, Nikki Haley, despite her own tendency to spout anti-Assad rhetoric, declared in March 2017 that the Trump administration was “no longer” focused on removing Assad “the way the previous administration was.”

Some of the allegations are quite wild. With reference to an unverified claim in the Washington Post that a “secret” CIA program to arm and train anti-Assad rebels was costing $1 billion a year, Patrick Higgins wrote in Jacobin in 2015 that, “in other words, the United States launched a full-scale war against Syria, and few Americans actually noticed.”

The fact that later estimates of this “secret” CIA funding reduced this figure to $1 billion for the whole war indicates that such estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, but in any case, we will discuss below what this funding actually meant.

In updated 2018 estimates, according to the testimony of former US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, “the cost of US military operations in Syria between FY 2014 and the end of FY 2017 was between $3 and $4 billion;” figures which cover both the CIA program and the separate Pentagon program to fight ISIS.

Referring to these estimates, the pro-Assad writer Ben Norton described them as a “glimpse of the exorbitant sums of money the U.S. spent trying to topple the government in Damascus.” Indeed, Norton added the $7.7 billion in humanitarian aid that the US had provided Syria to these figures to claim the US had spent $12 billion on “regime change”!

Of course, as is widely known, 2014 was the year that a full US intervention began in Syria, albeit one that had nothing at all to do with “toppling Assad.” In September 2014, the US began its air war against the Islamic State in eastern Syria, while supporting as its ground force the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG was not and still is not in armed conflict with the Assad regime, meaning the US has been involved for the last four and a half years in a conflict in eastern Syria that has been almost entirely separate from the main conflict, which mostly takes place in western Syria, between the regime and the rebellion.

As this real US intervention—run and funded by the Pentagon—has involved 15,000 air strikes, equipping the YPG, some 2,000 US special forces, and a number of US military bases, all in the east, it is rather obvious that the overwhelming bulk of this $3-4 billion-worth of US military operations was spent on this side conflict, not on “toppling Assad.”

This can be seen further with the famous story of the “Balkan arms pipeline.” A title like “The Pentagon’s $2.2 Billion Soviet Arms Pipeline Flooding Syria” may give the impression the Pentagon was spending this money to arm “rebels” to overthrow Assad. Yet reading beyond the title, we see that “the defeat of Islamic State in Syria is reliant on a questionable supply-line, funneling unprecedented quantities of weapons and ammunition from Eastern Europe to some 30,000 anti-ISIS rebel fighters.” [Emphasis added.] The use of the term “rebel” is the confusing part; what is distinctive about the Pentagon’s programs, whether going to the YPG, or to former anti-Assad rebels, is that recipients of these arms must agree to fight ISIS only, and to drop their fight against Assad.

A more nuanced, if still internally contradictory, view was presented last year in the Boston Review by Aslı U. Bâli and Aziz Rana. Even while admitting that the Obama administration’s approach to military intervention “ultimately consisted of half-measures,” which was never any match for the regime’s vast quantities of advanced weaponry, they nevertheless claim in a separate article that “continuous U.S. intervention, rather than its absence, has played a key part in fueling the blood-letting,” indeed it “dramatically escalated the violence and exacerbated the harm to its civilian population.” They contrast these military “half-measures” with the idea of a negotiated settlement, the unlikely implication being that if the rebels had received no arms at all; if there had been zero military pressure on Assad; he would have been more amenable to a diplomatic solution.

Deep US ambivalence towards the Syrian uprising

The reality of US intervention in Syria, however, was always markedly different to what is portrayed in such discourse. From the outset, the Obama administration was deeply ambivalent, at best, about the Syrian rebellion.

Despite rhetoric about “democracy,” US governments have long been tightly aligned with absolute monarchies and dictatorships throughout the Middle East, and had no wish to see them overthrown. While it might be argued the US may have a different view of a dictatorship that was less tightly aligned with US interests, the success of a democratic uprising in any state would tend to encourage the same elsewhere, especially in the context of the Arab Spring.

In any case, the Assad regime was never the “anti-imperialist” firebrand that it was sometimes portrayed as; over the previous decade, it had been one of “the most common destinations” for US torture-“renditions” of Islamist suspects. Further back, the regime of Hafez al-Assad had sent Syrian troops to fight alongside the US against Iraq during the first Gulf War of 1991, and had intervened in Lebanon, with US and Saudi backing, in 1976 to crush the Palestinian-Muslim-leftist coalition in the civil war, leading to a Syrian-led massacre of Palestinians in the Tal al-Zaatar refugee camp.

As for Assad’s so-called “resistance” to Israel’s illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated, “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime; for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.” Indeed, in the period preceding the uprising, the regime was engaged in US-brokered talks with Israel over the Golan. This process had gone so far that Assad was reportedly ready for direct talks with Israel, and Dennis Ross—an ultra-Zionist in the Obama administration if ever there was one—was convinced that “Syria is ready to move away from Iran and reduce relations with Hezbollah and Hamas, and work with the US in the fight against terrorism.”

Meanwhile, in the initial months of the uprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar all gave strong support to Assad. From the viewpoint of all the closest US allies in the region, there was no reason for the US government to wish for the overthrow of the regime.

Undeniably, however, the US was more tightly allied with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak—one of the largest recipients of US military aid in the world—than with Assad in 2011. And yet, within a week of the onset of the Egyptian uprising on January 25, Obama was already calling on Mubarak to begin the transition to a new government “now,” and claiming to be “inspired” by the uprising, while Republican senator John McCain demanded that Mubarak immediately “step down.” Even Mubarak’s announcement on February 10 that he would hand power to his vice-president was scolded by Obama as insufficient to meet the demands of the people.

In contrast, it took until August 18 for Obama to make a similar call on Assad to “step aside;” that is, some five months after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising on March 15, by which time the regime had killed thousands of peaceful protestors in what a UN human rights mission declared “may amount to crimes against humanity.”

Considering that the usual “evidence” presented for Obama’s alleged “regime change” policy is this call on Assad to step aside, the US must then have been particularly gung-ho about regime change against its ally Mubarak!

Two weeks after the outbreak of the uprising, when dozens had already been killed, US State Secretary Hillary Clinton asserted that Assad was a “reformer,” starkly contrasting the situation in Syria with that in Libya, where the US was already intervening against Muammar Gaddafi. In similar vein, Senator John Kerry—who dined with Assad in Damascus in 2009—said he had been “a believer for some period of time that we could make progress in that relationship” [with the Assad regime] “as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West.”

WikiLeaks files from the time (h/t Clay Clairborn) provide further evidence of this orientation. A March 31 Stratfor file assessed that “Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United States did not even hesitate throwing their support behind Assad at the very beginning,” while an intelligence assessment written for Syrian official Fares Kallas claimed it was clear that “the Obama Administration wants the leadership in Syria to survive,” noting the lack of calls for regime change or military intervention and the “relatively muted” criticism.

Another WikiLeaks email by Stratfor spook Bayless Parsley provides some analysis of this US response to Egypt and Syria:

“In Egypt, the U.S. could afford to abandon Mubarak and let the military keep running the show … the country was not going to descend into chaos if Mubarak were to be forced out by the deep state. In Syria … the sectarian nature of the country added to the fact that it’s not really isolated from its neighbors by large tracts of desert the way Egypt is makes the prospect of the Syrian regime collapsing much more dangerous than Mubarak being pushed out … not to mention Israel actually quite likes Bashar being in power.” [Emphasis added.]

A similar assessment was recently revealed in a US Marine Corps (USMC) draft strategy document from 2011, which appears to show that the main western interest in (later) supporting parts of the Syrian opposition was to counter Iranian influence, but they did not see “regime change” as a means to this end—they believed any attempt at “regime change” would have catastrophic consequences—arguing instead that the best outcome was for the “Alawite regime” to remain without Assad.

“Yemeni solution”

Why then did Obama begin calling on Assad to “step aside” in August? Despite thousands of killings, the uprising was only growing in strength and intensity, refugees were pouring across borders, and agitation throughout the region in solidarity with the largely Sunni-based uprising was encouraging more radical voices, especially from the Gulf, as the slaughter got more horrific. The US quest for stability by avoiding regime collapse had hit a dilemma: the actions of the regime itself were increasing instability inside Syria and throughout the region.

US governments generally have no special love for particular representatives of regimes they aim to keep in power, once they have become counter-productive. The classic case was the US-orchestrated coup against and assassination of South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963—a much more violent act than a mere call on Assad to step aside. Yet far from wanting to overthrow the South Vietnamese regime as a whole, the US spent the next twelve years waging one of history’s most terrible wars in its defense.

Thus a so-called “Yemeni solution” in Syria—named after the arrangement in Yemen whereby longtime dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh ceded power in 2011 to his deputy Abdrabbuh Hadi to preserve a cosmetically reformed regime—was spelled out in July 2012, when US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stressed that when Assad leaves, “the best way to preserve stability is to maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government.” That’s quite a hope to have about the security forces of the Assad regime.

Far from “regime change,” then, the US government has all along pushed for a “political solution” to facilitate this regime preservation strategy, in partnership with Russia.

The Geneva I and II conferences in 2012 and 2014 outlined the parameters of the process: the formation of a “transitional governing body,” composed of “members of the present government and the opposition … formed on the basis of mutual consent,” tasked with organizing elections. Despite Rana and Bâli’s assertion that “US policy-makers opposed an inclusive diplomatic solution in favor of an ‘Assad must go’ approach,” the US was fully signed onto this Geneva process, which made no mention of Assad at all.

Likewise, the G8 communiqué of June 2013, while re-stating the Geneva parameters and again not mentioning Assad, added a call on both the regime and the rebels “to commit to destroying and expelling from Syria all organizations and individuals affiliated to al-Qaeda and any other non-state actors linked to terrorism.”

Western governments believed that Assad himself, and his immediate entourage, would not be part of the transitional regime, because otherwise the opposition would not take part, there would be no “mutual consent;” likewise, the regime could decide which members of the opposition were unacceptable. However, the US did not use this to sabotage the process. On the contrary, the US put great pressure on the opposition to attend the January 2014 Geneva II conference, but around half of the Syrian insurgency’s representatives rejected this pressure and refused to attend merely due to Assad’s presence there to negotiate, never mind his presence in a hypothetical transitional government.

In any case, in the late Obama period, the US, closely cooperating with Russia in the diplomatic field, decided that even Assad himself could remain during the “transitional” period.

US: Assad step aside, but who are the rebels?

The US never intended to apply any serious military pressure to bring about even the limited objectives outlined above. Only a strengthened opposition could exert such pressure, but the rebels were fighting to overthrow the dictatorship and were no proxies; if strengthened enough they would push beyond the US-imposed limits.

It was one thing to decide the regime’s slaughter had become too destabilizing, but quite another to support the rebels. Despite the constant discourse about “US-backed rebels,” US leaders continually made clear what they thought of them.

In early 2012, Hillary Clinton stated that to arm the rebels would effectively be to support al-Qaeda, and even Hamas, which “is now supporting the opposition.” If “you’re trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable, that we don’t see.” The Republican arch-neocon John Bolton warned of “an imminent risk of humanitarian disaster if Assad falls,” adding that “we must not permit terrorists like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah in next-door Lebanon, rogue states or a radical Syrian successor regime to acquire” Assad’s advanced weaponry.

On August 13, 2013, CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said that the potential overthrow of Assad was the largest threat to US national security, and that Assad’s chemical weapons “are going to be up for grabs and up for sale” in the event of his ouster. Several days later, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said that the Obama administration was opposed to “even limited” US military intervention in Syria as no side represented US interests.

Morell further elaborated, in a September interview, that any political transition must “keep the institutions of the state intact” because “it’s going to take the institution of the Syrian military and the institutions of the Syrian security services to defeat al-Qaeda,” but due to Assad’s intransigence and the ongoing war, “every day that goes by, those institutions are eroded.” Therefore, “enough support has to be provided to the opposition—to put enough pressure on Assad—to bring him to the negotiating table, but not enough support provided to the opposition so that they feel that they don’t need to go to the negotiating table.”

Later that year, voices grew among establishment figures declaring an Assad victory the most preferable outcome: former CIA head Michael Hayden and former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Dan Halutz, said as much just days apart.

In early 2014, looking at a variety of possible outcomes, the Rand Corporation think-tank concluded that “the collapse of the Syrian regime would be the worst of all possible outcomes from the point of view of US interests.” In early 2015, CIA Director John Brennan declared that the US does not want to see a chaotic collapse of the Syrian regime, as it has reason to worry about who might replace Assad, indeed the US needs Assad in power “for now” to help fight ISIS. Believing Russia saw things similarly, Brennan stated that “None of us, Russia, the United States, coalition, and regional states, wants to see a collapse of the government and political institutions in Damascus.” Soon after, the New York Times ran an editorial which proclaimed that “Mr. Assad has become a necessary, if still unpalatable, potential ally in combating the Islamic State.”

Obama’s famous dismissal of the rebels as a bunch of farmers, teachers, dentists, pharmacists and radio reporters crystallized the US view of the rebels.

Providing and blocking arms

Why then did the US eventually begin to provide arms to the opposition? Most observers recognize that US military aid was never of the quantity or quality necessary to enable the rebels to win, but, moreover, it was not even at a level sufficient to enhance tactical rebel victories on the ground, nor to create a permanent “balance” with the regime so that “no-one wins,” as is often claimed; even such limited objectives would have required a more consistent amount of better weaponry, given what the regime possessed militarily.

The reality is that the bare survival of the FSA was the purpose of US aid under Obama.

Western policy-makers understood that Assad could not completely crush the uprising, given the real divisions among the population and the regime’s sectarian exploitation of them. Therefore, if the FSA were destroyed, many among the dispossessed Sunni majority might gravitate to Sunni Islamist and jihadist forces.

Therefore, it was preferable that the ideologically heterogeneous FSA should survive, but be sufficiently weakened to facilitate the co-optation of moderate political leaderships as partners for the political solution. Backing the FSA was thus similar to backing the ideologically heterogeneous Fatah in Palestine; if weakened enough, a Syrian Mahmoud Abbas may emerge.

So, what kind of military aid did the US provide to the anti-Assad rebels?

Despite Bâli and Rana’s assertion that “beginning in late 2011, the Obama administration pursued a strategy of arming local proxies” to defeat Assad, the US in fact provided no arms to the rebels in the first two years of the war; most weaponry in the hands of the FSA was gained by capture or made in back-yards. As one (more honestly titled) article put it: “Syria’s ‘Western-Backed’ Rebels? Not in Weapons.”

Until late 2013, the US provided only non-lethal aid (which was regularly cut off), such as binoculars, radios, “ready-meals,” and tents.

By mid-2012, however, a flow of weapons from former Libyan rebels began to reach the Syrian opposition via Turkey, involving Qatari and Muslim Brotherhood networks. Later that year the US began its first significant intervention in Syria, positioning CIA agents on the Turkish and Jordanian borders to restrict the quality, quantity, and destination of these arms.

While warplanes and helicopters had replaced tanks as the main tools of regime slaughter by mid-2012, both anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry were denied the rebels by this US embargo. For the most part, only relatively light weaponry was allowed through, in the face of a massively armed regime continually supplied by Russia and Iran. At times, the US blocked any and all weapons getting to the FSA from its regional allies.

The US embargo on anti-aircraft weapons remains in place to this day; given that Assad has been waging an air war since 2012, this is a fundamental aspect of US intervention. Even when FSA groups tried to buy portable anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS) on the black market, “somehow, the Americans found out and our purchase was blocked.”

The CIA and Pentagon arms programs

Beginning in late 2013, however, the US did begin supplying some “vetted” anti-Assad rebel groups with light arms under the CIA’s “Timber Sycamore” program. As these were arms of the quality they already had via manufacture or capture, the US could attempt to contain and co-opt the uprising without any “danger” of strengthening it.

Importantly, this needs to be distinguished from the Pentagon’s program to arm and train some rebel groups to fight ISIS, beginning with a $500 million program in late 2014. The Pentagon’s number one condition for participation was that fighters give up the fight against Assad, and agree to fight ISIS only; that is, “rebels who don’t rebel.” This is the reason the US was only able to attract a few miniscule groups, such as the ill-fated “Division 30,” whose sum total of 54 troops were captured by Nusra as soon as they arrived in 2015. Therefore, the only significant force the Pentagon ended up working with was the Kurdish-led YPG, which already met the precondition of not fighting the Assad regime.

As we have seen above, claims that the CIA program cost billions of dollars are too inconsistent to be of much value; the program after all was secret. As we will see below, the ultimate aim of the program was not all that different to that of the Pentagon. For now, though, it is worth examining what this program actually meant on the ground.

In the first place, there was often a difference between what weaponry reached storehouses on the borders, and what was actually dispatched to the rebels. The fact that the aim was little more than ensuring bare survival is exemplified by reports of rebels being supplied 16 bullets a month. In the town of Ibdita in Idlib, rebel leader Abu Mar’iye complained “we are licking our plates. We beg for salt. It’s not enough. Even the weapons that arrive, it’s like a drop, just enough so the fighting continues, so we can kill each other but not win.”

A CIA training program accompanied the supply of light arms. While much has been made of the alleged training of several thousand rebels, what this was actually about has been little studied.

The first training began before the arms program. The Guardian reported in mid-2013 that “western training of Syrian rebels is under way in Jordan in an effort to strengthen secular elements in the opposition as a bulwark against Islamic extremism, and to begin building security forces to maintain order in the event of Bashar al-Assad’s fall.” However, there had been no “green light” for the trainees to be sent into Syria, because their purpose was not to fight the regime. Rather, “they would be deployed if there were signs of a complete collapse of public services in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, which could trigger a million more Syrians seeking refuge in Jordan… The aim of sending western-trained rebels over the border would be to create a safe area for refugees on the Syrian side of the border, to prevent chaos and to provide a counterweight to al-Qaeda-linked extremists who have become a powerful force in the north.”

From late 2013, it was nonetheless alleged that trainees were being sent back to Syria; by 2015, there were claims that some 3-5,000 had undergone training. However, many rebels felt the main American interest in this was surveillance—of them. Abu Matar, a fighter with the FSA’s Harakat Hazm coalition, received such training in Qatar. Claiming he had already spent more than two years fighting, and so “didn’t learn anything new,” he asserted “they just wanted to see us.” “See what our thinking is,” added his comrade Abu Iskandaroon.

In a Frontline documentary about an unnamed rebel group that received three weeks of training in Qatar, the commander explained that “their American contacts had asked him to bring 80 to 90 members of his unit to Ankara” before being flown to Qatar. “Once in Ankara … they were interrogated for days about their political leanings and their unit’s fighting history.” After learning how to conduct ambushes and the like, the fighters explained that “they cannot win without anti-aircraft missiles against Assad[‘s] superior air war,” one adding that, “when I saw there was no training in anti-aircraft missiles, my morale was destroyed.”

The rise and fall of the TOW

The program took a more significant turn during 2014, when the US lifted its embargo on anti-tank weapons and some rebel groups began receiving US-made TOW anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), mainly from pre-existing stocks held by Saudi Arabia. Officially, all foreign recipients of US arms require Washington’s approval before transferring them to third parties; this approval had been withheld until 2014.

Of course, to begin this two years after tanks had been superseded by aircraft as the main killer was doubly too late; nevertheless, ground warfare continued to play a crucial role, so this may be seen as a significant improvement in the quality of US-supplied weaponry.

Why was the embargo lifted? In fact, the same pattern applied as with small arms. By the time the first TOWs were sent, the rebels had already acquired a large range of ATGMs, which had already taken out 1,800 tanks by late 2013. Nearly all were Russian or East European made, which is to say that, for the most part, the rebels had captured them from the Syrian army.

So again: as the rebels were already acquiring them, opening an official supply allowed for influence for future co-optation and some US control of who gets what, while not qualitatively upping the supply of rebel weaponry. In fact, the TOW is reportedly less efficient than Russian-made Konkurs and Kornets which the rebels had captured from the regime.

The first reports of TOWs supplied to the FSA’s Harakat Hazm emerged in April 2014. Groups received only three or four at a time, which Hazm cadre reported were “no better than the Russian weapons” they captured from the regime; they had to apply for them for specific operations, and return the shells to make a claim for more, which may or may not be approved. The number of “vetted” groups receiving TOWs soon spread to nine, who received “a few dozen” between them, “resulting in a minimal effect on the battlefield.”

Even favored groups soon found supplies dwindling, and by the end of the year it was down to only four groups, with few weapons actually being delivered to anyone. What occurred in between?

The US diktat: fight the jihadists

To understand this, we need to take a step back. In late 2012, rebel commanders met US intelligence officers to discuss receiving arms, but the US officers only wanted to discuss drone strikes on Nusra, and enlisting the rebels to join the attack. The FSA members said that unity against Assad’s more powerful forces was paramount at present, but the US officers replied, “We’d prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad’s army” [later].

The FSA in fact fought many defensive battles against Nusra, but did not want to open a full front against it, as in the context this would lead to mutual destruction, and only the regime would gain. FSA Colonel Abd al-Jabbar al-Akaidi remarked that the US wanted to turn the FSA “into the Sahwa,”1 but “if they help us so that we kill each other, then we don’t want their help.”

1. Referring to the Iraqi militants who fought off al-Qaeda in western Iraq with US support in the late 2000s.

In the event, the FSA needed no encouragement to fight ISIS, against whom it “declared war” in July 2013. In January 2014, Syrian rebels launched a nation-wide coordinated attack on ISIS, driving it permanently from the whole of western Syria, and temporarily from parts of the east.

At this point, however, the CIA program began imposing the same condition on arms recipients as the Pentagon: that the rebels fight ISIS only, and “suspend” their fight with the regime. It thus appears that the main difference is that the Pentagon programs began with this condition, thereby greatly limiting potential recruits, whereas the CIA program recruited larger, genuine anti-Assad groups, later using this support to push them in the same direction.

In a video depicting cadre from the al-Ghab Wolves Brigade (part of the large Idlib-based FSA coalition known as the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, or SRF) training in the use of TOWs, a fighter reveals that Washington “only give[s] weapons to those who specifically fight ISIS. They are not giving us weapons to fight Assad, they give us weapons to fight ISIS.”

The problem was that the anti-Assad rebels rejected such diktats. Even though both the SRF and Harakat Hazm had ended all cooperation with Nusra during 2014, they refused to launch a frontal war on it, still less to stop fighting Assad.

A former Hazm member explained: “By September 2014, the United States started to pressure us to leave the battlefield against Assad and to send all our forces to fight ISIS. We had no problem to go fight ISIS, but wouldn’t agree to stop fighting Assad. From then on, our relations with the Americans went from bad to worse and eventually they stopped backing us. When Jabhat al-Nusra attacked us, we had already lost all foreign support … because we dared to disobey the Americans.”

This was further highlighted in September 2014 when the US began bombing ISIS (and also Nusra and even other Islamist rebels such as Ahrar al-Sham). Despite their own war on ISIS, most rebel groups condemned the one-sided American war, which essentially gave Assad a free hand. The first TOW recipient, Harakat Hazm, released one of the strongest statements, declaring the US air war to be “an attack on national sovereignty harmful to the Syrian revolution.”

It is therefore little wonder that by refusing to be co-opted as proxies by US arms, these northern FSA groups were thrown to the wolves. When Nusra attacked the SRF and Hazm in late 2014, they were crippled by the burden of their former association with the US, which was now bombing Nusra, but with reduced means to resist: “we have a huge US flag on our backs, but not a gun in our hand,” reported one rebel leader as both FSA coalitions were forcibly disbanded.

2015: Supply rebels with TOWs and bomb them?

The TOWs that did reach Idlib’s rebels appeared to make a difference, as the latter seized the city of Jisr al-Shughour and made other substantial gains in early 2015. Much media has blown this phase up as evidence of the decisiveness of the TOW. While there is no doubt that the missiles (like other ATGMs) were effective against regime tanks (dozens of regime tanks and vehicles were taken out in this offensive), other factors also came into play in that arena, including the unity in action achieved by the Idlib rebellion and its regional backers in early 2015, as well as the element of surprise. A few dozen ATGMs can hardly have been the decisive factor when the regime itself possessed not only around 9,500 tanks and armored vehicles, but also some 5,000 ATGMs, far more than the rebels could ever hope to acquire through their drip-drop supply.

As the TOW-possessing FSA units involved in this offensive fought alongside the Army of Conquest—a coalition of Idlib-based Islamists that included Nusra—much media also tried to make the case that the US, by supplying TOWs, was in effect supporting Nusra. Apart from the fact that it was almost certainly the Saudis who supplied any new TOWs in the north in early 2015, what this discourse neglects is the almost full-scale war the US was then waging against the Army of Conquest. As if to balance the impact of the TOWs, throughout the first half of 2015, the US engaged in an air war that mostly targeted Nusra, which was hit dozens of times, but also hit Ahrar al-Sham, even destroying its headquarters, as well as even more mainstream rebels.

Betrayal in the south

Meanwhile, after the TOW program largely dried up in the north, the US and Saudis began increasing their support to the FSA’s Southern Front (SF) operating in Daraa and Qunaitra provinces in the south, through the Military Operations Center (MOC) in Jordan, including the supply of significant numbers of TOWs. For example, McClatchy claimed that while only “12 to 14 commanders” in the north were receiving military and non-lethal aid in 2014, “some 60 smaller groups are recipients in southern Syria.” A 2015 Washington Post article quoted US officials saying the CIA program intended “to bolster a coalition of militias known as the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army.”

This shift was seen as arising from US and Western preferences for the democratic, and highly secular, Southern Front, which was overwhelmingly dominant in the south compared to Islamist brigades. This increased support aided the SF in its string of victories in the south in early 2015.

However, soon after these victories, the US and MOC imposed a series of “red lines:” the SF was ordered not to advance into the central Daraa city, into neighboring Suwayda, or anywhere north towards the key town of Sasa, and not to advance on Damascus or attempt to link up with its rebel-held outer suburbs (according to some reports, violating this last “red line” would result in US air strikes). By mid-2015, the MOC had scaled back support for the SF. Offensives to take Daraa city, and the al-Tha’la airbase on the Suwayda border, were unsupported, or even blocked, by the MOC.

Moscow’s military intervention, starting September 2015, did lead to a momentary reversal of this trend, when in response Saudi Arabia sent some 500 TOWs to Syria, which led to the famous “tank massacre.” The furious Saudis had promised a swift response to the Russian invasion, so it is likely they would have sent these TOWs regardless of US permission. Even if the US did give permission for a large supply in this instance, to remind Russia it was there, it was a one-off; the US and Russia rapidly negotiated “deconfliction zones” and intelligence sharing, and supplies of TOWs trickled off in late 2015 “and totally vanished in the first two weeks of 2016.”

The US-CIA attempt to co-opt the SF had similar aims to the program in the north. In early 2016, MOC officials told the SF to stop fighting the regime and to focus their efforts on the jihadists, both Nusra and ISIS, and were promised new weaponry if they did so. In May, the MOC warned it would cut cash flows until they started scoring victories over ISIS in the Yarmouk valley.

In March 2016, the SF took part in the US-Russia-facilitated nation-wide ceasefire. In reality, however, while the regime continued bombing at lower intensity, “maintaining the ceasefire” became the new rationale for holding back the SF from that point on.

As the distance between the FSA-controlled south and the “Damascus suburbs” is not great, the Southern Front could have pushed towards Damascus and linked up with the rebels in East Ghouta and South Damascus.

Instead, the US “red-line” against moving in that direction facilitated the regime’s 2016 subjugation of the southern Damascus town of Darayya, an iconic revolutionary town in the best democratic traditions of the original uprising. The 2017 “de-escalation zone” converted this US red-line into international policy, helping seal the fate of Ghouta and the greater Damascus rebellion in 2018. Finally, despite this enforced passivity, the SF itself was betrayed later that year in a global deal involving Assad, Russia, Israel, and the US.

By 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the US tightened its arms embargoes on all weapons against the rebels, while more or less openly collaborating with Russia against them. Declaring that the US was “not seeking so-called regime change as it is known in Syria,” US Secretary of State John Kerry added that the US and Russia see the conflict “fundamentally very similarly.”

Trump

And that was all before Trump. While ending the now-paltry assistance to anti-Assad rebels, Trump upped the Pentagon program. On the one hand, the bombing of ISIS reached terrible heights; yes, the US largely defeated ISIS in Syria (and Assad has the US to thank for that), but at the cost of the complete destruction of Raqqa, and the killing of some 2,000 civilians. The number of civilians killed by US bombing in Iraq and Syria in Trump’s first six months was higher than in all of Obama’s eight years combined, including 472 killed by US airstrikes in Syria between May 23 and June 23 alone.

Yet, curiously, it is Trump’s two minor strikes on the Assad regime, rather than the enormously destructive war on ISIS, that are widely seen as “escalation,” even though both were explicitly in response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons (the regime has been free to use every conceivable “conventional” weapon), neither caused any significant damage to Assad’s war machine, and neither resulted in any casualties.

In April 2017, Assad risked the use of Sarin in Khan Shaykhun, in Idlib, as he was encouraged by the Trump administration’s orientation: in the very weeks before this atrocity, three prominent US leaders made Trump’s pro-Assad position even clearer.

When Assad took this to mean that even Sarin could be legitimized, the US struck Assad’s Shayrat airbase for the sake of its own “credibility.” As Trump had tipped off Putin, who likely tipped off Assad, the base would have been cleared of better aircraft, and suffered minimal damage.

In the follow-up, US leaders scrambled to emphasize the one-off nature of the hit; National Security Advisor Herbert McMaster clarified that the US had no concern that the base was being used again the very next day, as harming Assad’s military capacities was not the aim of the strike; and that far from “regime change,” the US desired a “change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular.”

Trump also intensified Obama’s bombing of Nusra in Idlib. Over December 2016 and January 2017 the US killed hundreds of its cadres, while also bombing Ahrar al-Sham, Nusra’s main rival. A comparison between the US bombing of a mosque in Idlib in March (allegedly targeting Nusra), where 57 worshippers were killed (Russia defended this as aimed at “terrorists”), and the US strike on the regime air base a few weeks later, which killed no-one, highlights the real focus of the US war.

In July, State Secretary Rex Tillerson clarified that the only fight in Syria is with ISIS, and that Assad’s future is Russia’s issue, while discouraging the opposition from fighting Assad: “We call upon all parties, including the Syrian government and its allies, Syrian opposition forces, and Coalition forces carrying out the battle to defeat ISIS, to avoid conflict with one another.”

In the southeast desert, where the US was arming and training two “vetted” brigades for the war against ISIS, US Central Command stated that “vetted Syrian opposition groups all swear an oath to fight only ISIS,” leading one of the brigades to end its relationship with the US; the US even threatened to bomb them if they didn’t return their weaponry. When the remaining loyal faction responded militarily to pro-Assad forces which had attacked them inside a US-declared safe zone, the US Command gave permission to Assad to bomb its own proxy forces inside its zone!

Indeed, despite the harsh anti-Iran rhetoric of the Trump administration, it is notable that the decision to scrap the nuclear accord and impose harsh sanctions on Iran did not occur until mid-2018, that is, after Assad, with the aid of Iranian forces, had reconquered Deir Ezzor from ISIS, and East Ghouta and the entire south from the rebels. Notably, despite US bombing mainly supporting the SDF against ISIS in Deir Ezzor, US bombing also directed aided not only Assad’s forces but even Iran-led forces over many months in 2017.

Where to from here?

Bâli and Rana assess that the US must now “engage in both immediate and more long-term efforts to find an inclusive political settlement.” They don’t explain why the regime—the prime obstacle to any such an “inclusive” settlement—would agree to one without significant pressure; indeed their thesis claims there has already been too much pressure on Damascus. In any case, it is precisely such an “inclusive political settlement” that renewed US pressure is aimed at achieving.

It may seem ironic that, after all these years of essentially facilitating Assad’s victory, right up to the reconquest of the south in mid-2018, the US government soon after appeared to articulate an unusually firm-sounding policy on Assad’s future. In September, the aforementioned US special representative for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, threatened harsh sanctions against the regime (and potentially even its backers in Iran and Russia) if it holds up the process of political transition, and re-stated the Western consensus that “there will be no reconstruction assistance … for the Syrian government absent irreversible progress in the UN-sponsored political process.”

The argument of this essay is not that US leaders loved Assad, whose actions have bred massive instability, but rather that they feared the “instability” of revolution more. With the revolution now largely crushed (or at least no longer posing any danger to the regime), Jeffrey’s tough-sounding approach may indicate that the US now considers it safe to resume the search for a transition to a less destabilizing version of the regime, carried out “from above.” However, with the military crushing of the opposition ensuring that it lacks bargaining power; with hundreds of revolutionary councils disbanded; thousands of civil leaders murdered in custody; a quarter of the population residing outside the country; and with Russian, Iranian, American, and Turkish forces occupying substantial parts of the country, this will likely be a particularly conservative version of “inclusivity.”

Moreover, while the apparent toughness of the approach sounds novel, in reality this is well within the parameters discussed. Jeffrey’s threat concerns any attempt by Assad to block the formation of a “constitutional commission” to re-write the constitution before future elections; i.e., the process launched by Assad’s allies Russia and Iran, along with Turkey, at the Sochi conference in January 2018, consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2254 (a resolution endorsed by Russia and China in 2015). The regime is also officially on board and has already sent the UN its list of nominees, though of course it is also trying to stall the process. It is somewhat ironic that the US now offers muscle to help push through a Russian-led process; the key difference appears to be that the US is critical of delays in forming the committee, while Russia wants to give Damascus more time.

Compare this tactical difference to the view of the Syrian opposition, which has been only lukewarm, at best, on both the constitutional commission process and Resolution 2254. The former head of the of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, Moaz al-Khatib, has noted that the acceptance of “the meager demand of a mere constitutional committee” is a major step down from the key long-term component of the Geneva process, namely “the demand for a transitional ruling body.” He described the obsession with the constitution as a priority of Western governments rather than the Syrian people. Essentially, the regime itself will be expected to ratify the new constitution after the lengthy process of its creation, and then organize “elections” under the new rules.

The Trump administration’s position is therefore only “tough” in the context of a policy that already represents a marked shift towards accommodating the regime, compared to the Obama era, when the idea of a transitional ruling body still held nominal sway. Indeed, later in 2018, Jeffrey’s own tone began to be modified markedly. In his November 29 address to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Syria, he stressed that the US was committed to a political process that “will change the nature and the behavior of the Syrian government … [but] this is not regime change, this is not related to personalities.” When it comes to the change in “behavior,” Jeffrey’s overwhelming stress was on the removal of all “Iranian-led” forces from Syria, which he assessed threaten “our friends in the region, principally Israel.” This is very different to his attitude to Assad’s other main ally, Russia; Jeffrey states that “we seek common ground with Russia in order to resolve the conflict in Syria” and called on Russia to “join efforts to counter Iran’s destabilizing actions and influence in Syria to remove all Iranian-commanded forces from the country.”

This points to the obsessive anti-Iranian stance of the Trump administration: threatening talk from the likes of National Security Advisor John Bolton and State Secretary Mike Pompeo focuses heavily on the Iranian presence rather than the regime itself (indeed, as noted above, Bolton has always opposed removing Assad), highlighting geo-strategic rather than human rights motivations. This raises the possibility of another deal, such as that in the south. Commenting on Bolton’s assertion that the US will not pull its 2,000 troops out of Syria until Iran withdraws, Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Karem and Brig. Gen. Scott Benedict recently told a congressional panel that while the US presence was limited to defeating ISIS, the troops in northeast Syria provide the “secondary benefit” of expanding US “leverage” in the Syrian outcome. As Spencer Ackerman writes, “their testimony in the context of Bolton’s comments suggested that at some point, the U.S. will seek to barter that territory to Assad in exchange for some form of Iranian withdrawal.” Such a deal may serve as part of an anti-Iranian war drive that has little to do with Syria and serves alternative interests.

Still, it would be one-sided to focus solely on these cynical motivations of the most rabid war-loving leaders in the Trump regime. Around the same time as the above was going on, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee cleared the way for the “Caesar” sanctions to hold Assad accountable for his war crimes and impede his ability to use funds from elsewhere to continue his oppression, though the bill still needs to get through the Senate and the president.

Credit for this bill—named after the alias of the Syrian regime defector who leaked tens of thousands of photos of detainees tortured and mass-murdered in Assad’s gulag—must ultimately go to the years of democratic activism by Syrians and their supporters pressuring Western governments to take the same kinds of actions that activists have previously pushed for against Western-backed tyrannical regimes, from the likes of Pinochet and Suharto to Israel’s bloody occupation. As such, the bill is entirely supportable.

Despite Norton’s absurd claim that the $7.7 billion in US humanitarian aid should be considered part of “regime-change” funding, in reality most US aid goes through the UN, and, for too many years, international aid via the UN has in fact bolstered the Assad regime.

A regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed countless cities and towns across the country through years of attacks with barrel bombs, cluster munitions, napalm, ballistic missiles, and chemical weapons, uprooting over half its population, including 6.5 million refugees residing outside the country, should not be legitimized with funds to allegedly “reconstruct” what it has destroyed. Apart from the fact that a regime so completely corrupt and dysfunctional to its core would fleece a great proportion of any such funding for its cronies, the record of “reconstruction” to date has included erecting monuments to itself and building new luxury cities on the ruins of former working-class shanties the residents of which have been dispossessed.

Instead, humanitarian aid should be the focus. Full humanitarian access to all of Syria must be demanded, and funding to democratic councils and civil society in the northwest should be restored and bolstered, while the two main regions outside regime control—the rebel-controlled northwest and Kurdish-controlled northeast—should be protected. At present they remain free due to the somewhat conflicting interests of Turkey in the northwest and the US in the northeast, but this leaves them at the mercy of these powers’ interests should deals be done. The principle of the right of self-defense of civilian populations—especially against air power—should be enshrined, and all necessary means to enable this delivered to popular democratic forces in these regions.

By Michael Karadjis

In the days since Donald Trump’s announcement that the US was to rapidly withdraw its 2000 troops from Syria, an enormous amount of speculation about what this means has taken place. In my initial piece, I expressed a number of views that are not widely shared.

First, I gave more credit to Trump having a valid position, from the point of view of US imperialism, than what was generally conceded. Overwhelmingly Trump’s move has been viewed as a pure personal whim, which is allegedly in conflict with what all other US ruling class circles prefer to happen.

Secondly, while almost every analyst claimed this move was a sell-out of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to the Erdogan regime in Turkey, I stressed that it was just as much, if not more, a green light for the Bashar Assad tyranny to take control of the SDF-controlled regions.

With masses of contradictory information, it has been difficult to make coherent sense of the developments; none of us are seers. In this follow-up piece, I hope to shed more light on what I think is occurring.

Did Trump’s move contradict US ruling class interests?

On the first question, it is of course true that Trump acts on whim, and has a tendency to speak jibberish, which might well suggest that his orders came from a place of complete ignorance and be at variance with US ruling class interests. However, the idea that momentous decisions are made entirely by one guy with quasi-dictatorial powers is problematic. I will argue here that, Trump’s idiosyncrasies aside, the decision to withdraw, and the consequences thereof, are entirely within the bounds of US ruling class interests, so whether or not it was entirely accidental is not so material.

As Steven Simon, who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations, puts it succinctly, Trump’s “impulsive and uncoordinated move” nevertheless “coincided with strategic imperative, even if the president himself was unaware of it.”

Of course, one could argue that a 24-hour withdrawal would indeed be destabilising, but it was naïve to believe that an order to withdraw would automatically mean that all US forces, weaponry, bases, aircraft and intelligence are gone the next day, whatever a tweet may say. Between Trump’s impulsive statements and the realities and complexities of actually withdrawing, there was plenty of wiggle room for Trump’s “immediate” withdrawal to turn into a four-month timetable, involving negotiation between Trump and other ruling class figures, such as Senator Lindsay Graham.

Graham got Trump to agree that complete withdrawal should only take place once ISIS is totally defeated in Syria, which has always been Trump’s own condition (though Trump is basically correct that the US and SDF have driven it from 99 percent of the country), and that “our Kurdish allies are protected.” Similar statements were then made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Meanwhile, the US military is reportedly establishing new military bases just across the Syrian border in Iraq, from where it can continue to bomb the last tiny piece of ISIS remaining. Despite alarmist forecasts that Trump was even selling out to ISIS, “between December 16 and December 29, US-led coalition military forces conducted 469 air and artillery strikes targeting ISIS in Syria.” The last major towns occupied by ISIS, Hajin and Kashmah, were captured by the SDF on December 25 and January 2 respectively.

Of course, none of the statements extending the withdrawal said anything whatsoever about pressure on the Assad regime. That has simply never had anything to do with the US presence, one way or another.

‘Withdrawal’ a green light to Assad, not Erdogan

On the second question, I am now even more convinced of the correctness of my initial view, that the ‘green light’ is mainly aimed at the Assad regime, and its Russian backers, rather than Erdogan, as I will explain in detail below.

However, some clarification may be in order: how can a US withdrawal favour Assad and Russia if the US presence in Syria was never opposed to them in the first place? Here we need to understand the US relationship with its ground ally, the SDF, which controls northeast Syria since driving out ISIS. The key basis of the US choice of the SDF, rather than Syrian rebels, as its ally against ISIS was that the SDF does not fight the Assad regime; and dropping the fight against Assad was the key demand the US had put on FSA units if they were to be armed against ISIS, a condition the FSA, while actively fighting ISIS itself, refused to accept.

This meant the US and SDF could fight ISIS in the east in a war completely separate to Assad’s counterrevolutionary war against the rebellion in western Syria. But while the SDF was not anti-Assad, nor was it pro-Assad; rather, it was interested in building its own project, the ‘Rojava revolution’, in its own space, separate to both Assad and the rebels. Therefore, the US was maintaining a region outside Assad’s direct control; but it is important to understand that this was never the ultimate US aim; the US aim was merely to use the SDF to defeat ISIS. Therefore, the current processes of the US abandoning the SDF to Assad, and the SDF itself trying to negotiate a deal with Assad, are essentially in perfect harmony, but in these “negotiations” it is the regime, not the Rojava project, that will eventually come out on top.

Israel, Gulf states, welcome back the Assad regime

According to a recent article entitled ‘We had an opportunity to assassinate Assad, top ‎Israeli official reveals’:

“…prolonged conflict in ‎Syria saw Israel often hold negotiations with the ‎regime in Damascus in order to reach an agreement in ‎Syria. … the (Israeli) Diplomatic-Security Cabinet held extensive ‎discussions on the situation in Syria and decided ‎that Israel would not allow an Iranian military ‎presence there. Since then, Israel has invested ‎considerable efforts in preventing Iran and ‎Hezbollah from establishing themselves in Syria, ‎while making sure it [Israel] inflicts minimal ‎damage to the Damascus regime.”

This long-term Israeli position – yes to Assad, no to Iran – was stressed even more strongly last year as the Assad regime reconquered the south from the FSA Southern Front. While Israeli prime minister Netanyahu declared “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights,” and Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”, ultra-right defence minister Avigdor Lieberman told the full truth that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, where the central rule under Assad leadership.”

Returning to the ‘assassination’ article, the senior Israeli official “refused to comment on ‎the decision by some Arab states, such as Bahrain ‎and the United Arab Emirates, to reopen their ‎embassies in Damascus, saying only that the ‎rapprochement between Arab states and Syria was ‎‎“less dangerous for Israel because these Arab states ‎also want to see Iran out of Syria.”‎

This Israeli strategy of trying to separate Assad and Iran, in collaboration with Assad’s major patron, Russia, is now in line with the increasingly assertive position of the Gulf, as seen in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – always a bastion of regional counterrevolution – being the first to re-open its embassy in Damascus on December 27. Actually, the UAE has been pushing for this for over two years but tried not to act unilaterally, till now; last June 8, UAE Foreign Minister Dr. Anwar Gargash declared “I think it was a mistake to kick Syria out of the Arab league,” referring to the Syrian opposition as “al-Qaida-based.” The UAE was followed almost immediately by Bahrain, which referred to “brotherly Syria,” with similar hints coming out of Kuwait; these moves were preceded by the visit to Damascus by Assad’s fellow tyrant, Omar al-Bashir, fittingly the first Arab head of state to visit since 2011, along with the high-level visit to Cairo by Assad’s security chief Ali Mamlouk on December 22 (though in any case al-Sisi’s brutal Egyptian dictatorship has been pro-Assad ever since the UAE-backed bloody coup in 2013), and Jordan’s re-opening of its border with Syria. Meanwhile, these states are pushing to have Syria’s membership of the Arab League restored.

Therefore, while Trump’s “withdrawal” may have been a mere personal whim, it happens that it is fully aligned with this trend, with the strategy of these states which have been strongly allied with Trump since the onset of his presidency. Not coincidentally, all these states – UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain – also have close ties with Putin’s Russia, and first three welcomed the Russian invasion of Syria in 2015, as did Israel of course.

In retrospect, the well-publicised semi-secret meetings that took place before and since Trump’s election, between Trump and Putin personnel and involving the UAE, the UAE-backed Palestinian thug Dahlan, Israeli officials and even Blackwater folk had a clear logic: push back the oversized Iranian influence by moving to bolster the Assad regime’s counterrevolutionary “stability” so that it is no longer in need of so much Iranian rabble to do its fighting for it. According to David Hearst writing in Middle East Eye, a more recent meeting between intelligence officials of Israel, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia “hatched a plan to welcome Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab League to marginalise the regional influence of Turkey and Iran.”

Or, perhaps, this is not so clear after all; because maybe it is the reverse: use the rhetoric of pushing back the Iranian “threat” (really, as if the Iranian contra gangs were ever a threat to anyone but the Syrian people) to justify their main aim anyway, ie, bolstering Assad’s victorious counterrevolution, putting the final nails – or what they hope to be final – in the coffin of the Arab Spring, which Assad, Sisi, the UAE, the Saudis, Netanyahu, Trump, Putin and the Ayatollahs are all united in hating with a passion.

This is even more significant now with Assad’s need for “reconstruction” funding, which neither Russia nor Iran will be able to provide enough of, while western countries are (currently) sticking to the line that the Geneva process of political settlement needs to get off the ground first. The move by the Gulf is a signal to Damascus, push Iran aside somewhat, we’re here to provide the funds you need. A recent high-level visit by one of the UAE’s largest real estate companies to meet Syrian partners in Damascus underlines this dynamic.

The wild card is the big state behind UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait: Saudi Arabia. Gang-land leader Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) is strongly aligned with his UAE counterpart and the Sisi dictatorship, and cares nothing about either the Syrian or the Palestinian people; these more forward moving states almost certainly have Saudi backing, and there have been hints coming out of Riyadh that it is also willing to accept Assad without Iran, with MBS stating that “Bashar is staying … I believe that Bashar’s interests are not to let the Iranians do whatever they want they want to do.”

However, Riyadh is more tempered about this due to its special position as religious head of the Sunni world, and the fact that it has more at stake in its regional rivalry with Iran than its underlings do. The UAE for example has a raging economic relationship with Iran, and only uses the ‘push Iran aside’ rationale to butter up its Saudi allies; and there are no Shia in Egypt for Sisi to care anything about Iranian influence. But there is little doubt that MBS is behind the scenes part of the picture.

“Analysis” that may have been useful about half a century ago

Much binary, mechanical “geopolitics” in recent years imagined the moves by some of the Gulf states to mend ties with Israel as representing a “US-backed axis” as opposed to a “Russian-backed” Iran and Assad etc. Imagine, this even passes for “analysis” in some quarters. Take a breath, dear Manicheans: exactly the same Gulf states and their regional allies that are carrying out rapprochement with Israel are carrying out rapprochement with Assad. The closest to both Israel and Assad is al-Sisi’s Egypt; the race to the finish-line states in both cases include the UAE and Bahrain; the more cautious behind-the-scenes power is Saudi Arabia, again in both cases.

This even includes the less expected: Sudan’s reactionary ‘Islamist’ regime that just visited Assad, and that fights for the Saudis in Yemen, has also been moving towards normalisation with Israel; three delegations from the pro-Assad Iraqi regime recently visited Israel; while the strongly pro-Iran and pro-Assad Sultan Qaboos of Oman recently hosted a state visit from Netanyahu.

It is something of a pity that countless left analysts, alongside much of the mainstream media, continue to write things that suggest they are living about 50 years in the past, even now, 30 years into the post-Cold War world. It is mind-boggling how such “analysis” imagines it can deal with such elephants in the room as the raging Israeli-Russian relationship (especially Putin-Netanyahu), not only over Syria but also Crimea etc; the raging Egypt-Russia relationship (discussion about Russia building a nuclear plant for Egypt); the UAE concluding a declaration of “strategic partnership” with Russia; the growing Saudi ties with Russia, especially over oil politics; and the US-Iranian joint-venture regime in Iraq, a key Assad ally. Really, why should Trump’s alliance with Putin seem odd?

Forget absurd Cold War fantasies; what we’re dealing with here are not even clashes of “rival empires.” As always, imperial rivalries do explain some of what is going on, of course. But even this is essentially a sideshow compared to the principle dynamic, the alliance of counterrevolutionary powers, for counterrevolution, the burial of the Syrian revolution symbolising the burial of the Arab Spring.

Where does Iran fit in?

One problem with this analysis, however, is that both Turkey and Iran are also counterrevolutionary powers, yet both are seen as enemies by these Saudi-aligned states, and by Israel. Let’s take them one at a time.

If Iran is to be pushed aside – regardless of whether one believes this is due to it being a genuine “danger” to these states, or merely as an excuse to bolster Assad – then certainly, it is the fall guy.

However, on the one hand, Iran has overreached anyway; what has caused the heightened rhetoric of Iranian “threat” in Israeli and Saudi discourse is quite simply that a large regional rival, which uses a particular rhetorical flourish, however toothless, that targets these regimes, has become too big for its boots; pushing it back will therefore be their “victory.” But it will be impossible for Iran to dominate Syria anyway, let alone afford the costs of reconstruction; it will have to be satisfied with some presence, and some reconstruction contracts, whatever its Russian rival doesn’t edge it out of. Iran is much more heavily invested in neighbouring Iraq, yet even there Iran is unable to exercise economic domination.

On the other hand, we have continually heard warnings that Iran will not leave “completely,” and so the Gulf states and Israel are kidding themselves by relying on Assad. This however reveals some fundamental misunderstandings. As stated above, Iran is just another counterrevolutionary state; it is a threat to no-one except the Syrian people who it has helped brutalise on behalf of the Assad’s genocide regime. Iran’s rivals do not need all Iranian forces, companies and influence to leave Syria “completely,” as if Iran were some kind of unique virus; “victory” in such “wars” of position is gained via the clipping of wings; victory is symbolic, about prestige, about appearance.

According to David Hearst, the Israeli, Egyptian, Emirati and Saudi intelligence chiefs at the alleged ‘welcome back Assad’ meeting discussed above, “did not expect Bashar to break relations with Iran, but they wanted Bashar to use the Iranians rather than be used by them.”

Israel has reacted to Trump’s withdrawal threat by announcing it will step up its bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria, tolerated as always by the Russian air defences in Syria. The idea of an “Iranian threat” takes on its most laughable version when it comes to Israel; the nuclear-armed First World state has hit hundreds of Iranian-backed targets in Syria (while being careful always to not weaken Assad in the process), while the far weaker Iranian regime has almost never even returned fire, let alone initiated it, yet Iran “threatens” Israel? Extraordinary imagination. Iran doesn’t even threaten the illegal Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan (which is often now referred to as “Israel” in much commentary), let alone Israel.

Israel hits Iranian targets because the biggest bully on the block doesn’t like the affront to its power of a bunch of unruly militias running around its “backyard” shouting empty “death to Israel” slogans, not because these, relatively speaking, street thugs are actually a threat to the regional crime boss.

A gift to Erdogan?

Meanwhile, states such as the UAE, Egypt and Jordan are far more invested in confronting Turkish influence than in confronting Iran (and the Saudis are equally interested in confronting both). These states view the Sunni-populist Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – connected to Qatar, Turkey and Hamas – as their key enemy, rather than Iran. Notably, the intelligence officials at the alleged ‘welcome back Assad’ meeting “considered Turkey, rather than Iran, to be their major military rival in the region … the Israelis told the meeting that Iran could be contained militarily, but that Turkey had a far greater capability.” There is some logic in this. Iran’s rhetoric is loud in proportion to its hollowness; as an outsider to the Arab world, its only real influence has been gained on sectarian grounds, among the Shia populations of Iraq and Lebanon. The only place Iranian influence was ever a danger was among the Shia majority that rose up against the minority Bahraini monarchy at the onset of the Arab Spring, swiftly crushed by the Saudis. By contrast, by playing the populist card via the Muslim Brotherhood, especially throughout the Arab Spring, Turkey and Qatar were engaged in what these other conservative states consider a dangerous game among the Sunni masses of Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and the Gulf.

For his part, Trump has been strongly associated with the Saudi-UAE-Egypt axis, while the US alliance with the YPG-SDF in Syria placed it in conflict with their Turkish opponent. The Saudi pledge to provide $100 million to the SDF-ruled, US-occupied zone of northeast Syria several months ago was considered an affront by Turkey.

Yet Trump’s sudden announcement of withdrawal has been widely seen as a pro-Turkey move, enabling Erdogan to attack the Kurds. This interpretation is understandable; it was preceded by Turkey’s decision to buy US patriot missiles, widely believed to have sealed the deal.

Of course, this does not have to be a contradiction; after all, Putin’s Russia has been coddling both Erdogan and MBS-Sisi, and Iran and Israel, at the same time. Larger imperialist powers are quite capable of playing with both or all sides among regional rivals.

Turkey, an outlier from the counterrevolutionary dynamic?

Moreover, despite the rivalry between the Saudi-led and Turkey-led blocs, Putin’s coddling of Erdogan highlights the fact that Turkey’s own direction regarding Syria is not that different.

It is true that Turkey is still supporting the Syrian opposition’s control of much of northwest Syria, and therefore may be seen as an outlier in the regional counterrevolutionary dynamic. And certainly Turkey’s pro-rebel position appears positive in comparison to the UAE’s role in cynically encouraging the rapid surrender of the FSA Southern Front to Assad. While Turkey’s aim there is hardly to encourage revolution, nevertheless it wants to avert a brutal Assadist conquest that would send hundreds of thousands more Syrian refugees into Turkey, which already accommodates 3.7 million refugees.

But Turkey’s current main use for many of its weakened and dependent rebel allies is to use them as cannon fodder for its threat to drive the YPG-SDF out of northeastern Syria, as many were earlier used in the plunder and “cleansing” of Afrin. From Putin’s point of view, as long as the rebels are held back from any active front against Assad, Turkey is effectively doing much the same as the Gulf; and by setting the rebels and the YPG-SDF against each other – a dynamic which the YPG has also been guilty of feeding – both can be weakened against Assad in the long run.

Indeed, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s recent oxymoronic statement that Turkey can “work with Assad” if he wins a “democratic election” represents Turkey’s own overture to the regime; and in any case, its close ally Qatar is following the same path of accommodation with Assad as its Gulf rivals, while the MB-ruling party in Tunisia is now in discussions with the Sisi regime – ie, the regime that slaughtered thousands of MB supporters in streets and outside mosques – about inviting the Assad regime to the Arab League summit in Tunis in March.

Or a green light to Assad?

But while these moves parallel those from the Saudi-led coalition, this does not reduce their rivalry, and thus would hardly placate Turkey’s regional rivals if Trump’s move really were primarily a gift to Erdogan. And here we return to where we started; the idea that Trump’s withdrawal is mostly a gift to Erdogan, rather than to Assad, is seriously misplaced. Being a green light to Assad, rather than primarily to Erdogan, puts Trump’s move more clearly in line with the new moves from the Gulf and Trump’s traditional allies.

Trump’s initial withdrawal tweet even suggests this: “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there (sic) work.” In other words, the Assad regime should be allowed into the east to continue supposedly “fighting ISIS.” This was soon followed by movement of Assadist forces towards eastern Deir-Ezzor to “fight ISIS,” ie confront the SDF. However, the main theatre of interest was in Manbij in the north.

As Trump’s announcement was followed by Turkey’s threats to enter northern Syria and expel the YPG from the Arab-majority city of Manbij (the only SDF possession to the west of the Euphrates river), the SDF, feeling vulnerable to abandonment by the US, called in the Assad regime to try to thwart Turkish intervention. The regime then sent troops to nearby Arima to block a possible Turkish offensive against SDF-held Manbij.

To this, Erdogan’s reaction was most interesting. Basically, Erdogan indicated that he has no real problem with Assad taking over Manbij, as long as it means the YPG are gone! And the regime claimed that the YPG had left Manbij upon their entry into the region, though the YPG itself claims to have left the city in 2016, leaving behind only Arab members of the SDF.

This suggests is that both the Turkish-backed rebels and the SDF were being played; Trump’s withdrawal threat merely strengthened Assad’s hand in the region vis a vis the SDF, and the great rebel-backer Erdogan is OK with that!

The SDF holds a vast area of northeast and central-east Syria; it is not as if Turkey was ever likely to invade as far south into Syria as Raqqa, let alone Deir Ezzor! Turkey would face massive difficulties trying to occupy such a large region, confronting widespread resistance; it is not like isolated Afrin. The focus on this move being a green light to Erdogan only, rather than above all to Assad, is therefore misplaced. And this development in Manbij suggests that even in the northern border region where one might expect a withdrawal to favour Erdogan, it looks more like a stunt to browbeat the SDF – never particularly anti-Assad in the first place – into caving in further to Assad.

Possibly some small-scale Turkish operation may still take place in some part of the northeast close to the border, so that Erdogan’s rhetoric does not appear too hollow, but even this could only occur if coordinated with Moscow, which also happens to be coordinating with both Assad and the SDF. This is because, as with both other Turkish operations in northern Syria, it will be essential to acquire Russian permission to use Syrian air space (assuming, that is, that US forces do actually leave). This will give Russia to ultimate control over the extent of such an operation.

‘Protect the Kurds’ as they go under to Assad?

The ‘re-balancing’ of Trump’s order has made all this clearer, with the arch-hawks, Bolton and Pompeo, both warning Turkey not to attack the SDF and declaring defence of the SDF a red line; Pompeo even spurted out most undiplomatically ‘Don’t let the Turks slaughter the Kurds’, for which both he and Bolton were roundly scolded by Turkey. Meanwhile, the Pentagon will allow the SDF to keep US-supplied weaponry when it withdraws.

Another clue to this general orientation is the discussion over many months, since Trump first raised the issue of withdrawal almost a year ago, of Arab troops from the Gulf replacing US troops in eastern Syria. At that time, the Assad regime reacted with hostility. In the context of the current Gulf recognition of Assad, however, this idea takes on a new meaning, especially as the discussion allegedly involves pro-Assad Egyptian and Emirati troops alongside Saudi troops. This is even more significant considering these states’ hostility to Erdogan’s Turkey, giving the notion of US “withdrawal” a whole new dynamic. There is also discussion of an upgraded role for the Saudi/Egyptian-backed Elite Forces in the largely Arab-populated Deir Ezzor province, led by SDF ally Sheikh Ahmed al-Jarba.

Of course, US calls to protect its Kurdish-led allies, and the continued delivery of arms to the SDF, potentially pose a problem for Assad as well as Erdogan. Currently, however, Assad’s strategy is not to openly attack the SDF – a massive operation which the regime does not likely have the capacity for at present – but rather use the atmosphere of the Turkish threat and US withdrawal to “negotiate” with the SDF from a position of strength. With Assad-SDF negotiations likely to be overseen by Russia, which wants Assad to recover control of all of Syria, the flavour of such negotiations is obvious.

And this is also the SDF strategy; and in case anyone might think this was due to having few options at the present juncture, some SDF leaders have sought to clarify that they aim for deal with Assad regardless of US moves. Essentially, the US, its Gulf allies and the SDF leadership are on the same wavelength when it comes to the Assad regime, preferring a ‘soft reintegration’ of the northeast into the Assadist state. SDF spokesperson Jia Kurd explained that the main enemies that a joint Assad-SDF state needed to defeat were Turkey and the remaining rebel-held northwest: “This [agreement with Assad] will give a big push towards ending the occupation and terrorism in Syria” (the PYD leaders of the SDF generally refer to anti-Assad rebels collectively as “terrorists,” and rarely list the regime as an enemy).

Of course, at this stage the SDF hopes to maintain some degree of autonomy for its Rojava statelet, and that this policy will save them the fate that they offer to the rebel-held northwest. However, Assad’s bargain will be for significantly reduced autonomy now, and then once his state is more secure and ‘normalised’ and the opposition in the northwest crushed, he will turn and crush Rojava and any hint of autonomy as well, as he has always promised to.

But surely, this is conspiratorial – why would the US want to hand back Syrian territory to the Assad regime? To ask such a question reveals fundamental misunderstandings about US policy in Syria. Why wouldn’t Trump want Assad to reconquer Syrian territory, is a better question; at times, the US has directly helped Assad do so. The mistake was to assume that the US presence in northeast Syria, aiding the SDF, had any purpose other than that endlessly stated by all US leaders – to defeat ISIS. “That’s it,” as Trump has continually said. While of course the US presence never had anything to do with putting pressure on Assad, and still less helping the rebels, nor was it ever aimed at helping the SDF build its own alternative.

Returning to former Obama advisor Steven Simon, he explains what he believes the US needs to do to enhance its interests at present:

“ … persuade the Kurds to get rid of non-Syrian operatives, while shrinking their military capacity, and accept that they are not going to get the same deal that their Iraqi cousins have won from Baghdad. The imminence of an American withdrawal, combined with Mr. Erdogan’s suggestions that he could soon invade the Kurdish regions of Syria, will probably convince the Kurds that they have little choice. But the Syrian regime could provide meaningful incentives, such as integrating the Kurdish forces into Damascus’ chain of command …. then, either directly or through the United Nations, the United States will have to talk to the Assad regime on the premise that a restoration of Syrian state authority in northeast Syria, including the re-entry of Syrian government forces, is required to stabilize that part of the country over the long term. To this end, the United States will have to deal with the Russians as well, so there is a coordinated approach to both the Turks and the Syrian regime.”

Right now, US leaders fear the loss of US credibility that would result from the US precipitously dumping its SDF allies in the face of any brutal attempt at reconquest, either by Assad or Erdogan, while Assad also wants to avoid direct confrontation until other enemies are defeated; but eventually the SDF’s usefulness to both US imperialism and Assad’s tyranny will run its course.

The inability of both major rebel and Kurdish leaderships to patch up their differences and present a united front against all the enemies of the popular masses has been a decisive card in the hands of Assad and the regional counterrevolution

by Michael Karadjis

Trump’s sudden decision to get US forces out of Syria is a green-light to both Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and Turkish ruler Erdogan to move into the northeastern part of Syria currently controlled by the (until now) US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and of course also a nod towards the big ally of both Assad and Erdogan, Trump’s friends in Russia, who of course praised Trump’s decision. Of course, a US betrayal of its Kurdish allies was always a matter of time.

It should be noted that, while the Kurdish and other people living in the northeast will be the main group negatively impacted, US withdrawal will also leave tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the Rukban camp on the Jordanian border directly exposed to Assadist conquest, especially as Jordan refuses to take them. The US base at al-Tanf, where the US had armed some ex-rebel groups to fight ISIS, offered some protection to the camp residents, although the US and Jordan were no better at providing food than was the Assad regime, which engaged in its time-honoured tactic of the starvation siege.

It is no surprise that virtually none of the commentary on any side has had anything to say about the Assad regime; take this Washington Post editorial as an example, not a mention. Of course, the entire question of Assad is and always has been irrelevant to the question of the US either staying in or leaving Syria.

I suppose it is no coincidence that Trump’s order to withdraw comes a few days after his special envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, declared that while the US wants to see a regime in Damascus that is “fundamentally different,” nevertheless, “it’s not regime change” the US is seeking, “we’re not trying to get rid of Assad.”

However, I say “I suppose” because it is not as if this is the first time the US declared it was not trying to get rid of Assad or carry out regime change. Those statements have been going on for years (especially under Trump, but also before). Of course, even before US leaders began declaring this openly, “removing Assad” was never the US policy at any time, that was only ever the figment of feverish alt-left and far-right imaginations, but let’s just focus on the open declarations, because the curious thing is that, on every such occasion, the media pumped out the same discourse of “surprise” and “policy reversal” and the US being “no longer” (!) focused on “regime change” (I wonder how many times you can “no longer” be doing something you’re already “no longer” doing?).

Here’s a few snippets:

• In 2016, declaring that the US was “not seeking so-called regime change as it is known in Syria,” Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry added that the US and Russia see the conflict “fundamentally very similarly.”
• In March 2017, Trump’s UN representative, Nikki Haley, despite her own tendency to spout anti-Assad rhetoric, declared that the Trump administration was “no longer” focused on removing Assad “the way the previous administration was.”
• The same month, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, noted that “The United States has profound priorities in Syria and Iraq, and we’ve made it clear that counterterrorism, particularly the defeat of ISIS, is foremost among those priorities. With respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept.”
• In July 2017, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson clarified that the only fight in Syria is with ISIS, that Assad’s future is Russia’s issue, and he essentially called the regime allies: “We call upon all parties, including the Syrian government and its allies, Syrian opposition forces, and Coalition forces carrying out the battle to defeat ISIS, to avoid conflict with one another …”
• Following the one-off US strike on an empty Assadist air-base after Assad’s horrific chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib, US National Security Advisor HR McMaster clarified that the US had no concern with the fact that the base was being used to bomb Syrians again the very next day, because harming Assad’s military capacities was not the aim of the strike; and far from “regime change”, the US desired a “change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular.” [note: not a change in the nature of the regime, a change in the nature of the Assad regime].
• Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s speech in January 2018 focused on supporting the Geneva process for a “political solution,” but now the US no longer expected Assad to stand down at the beginning of a transition phase as under early Obama, or even at its end as under late Obama; rather, US policy was to wait for an eventual “free election” under Assad: “The United States believes that free and transparent elections … will result in the permanent departure of Assad and his family from power. This process will take time, and we urge patience in the departure of Assad and the establishment of new leadership.”
• Even before his most recent, more blatant, statement, Jeffrey had already made a similar statement in his November 29 address to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Syria, declaring that the US was committed to a political process that “will change the nature and the behaviour of the Syrian government … this is not regime change, this is not related to personalities.”

Should I stay or should I go? Dispute within the US ruling class

Note that the arrival mid-year of Jeffrey was widely heralded as a “toughening up” of the Trump regime’s stance on Assad. In reality, it was only ever really about Iran; and was in full accord with the Israeli and now Gulf-state view of separating Assad from Iran by relying more on Assad’s other key ally, Russia.

And it is not only the idiosyncratic Trump, but the rational-sounding Jeffrey, that pushes this Russia line. When it comes to the change in “behaviour”, Jeffrey’s overwhelming stress was on the removal of all “Iranian-led” forces from Syria, which he assessed threaten “our friends in the region, principally Israel.” In contrast, Jeffrey states that “although our objectives and Russia’s are not aligned, we seek common ground with Russia in order to resolve the conflict in Syria” and called on Russia to “join efforts to counter Iran’s destabilizing actions and influence in Syria to remove all Iranian-commanded forces from the country.”

Indeed, the most vociferous anti-Iranian voice, National Security Advisor John Bolton, has always opposed removing Assad, believing this would lead to “al-Qaida” taking power. Hence the stance of those in the Pentagon and security apparatus opposed to withdrawal are not opposed because they want to stay to “topple Assad”, a completely laughable idea that none of them have ever suggested; rather, they want to stay as a block to Iranian influence.

Much of the commentary is declaring Trump some kind of traitor to “US interests” by selling out to both Iran and Russia in withdrawing. In my opinion, this is mistaken on both counts. There is also the accusation that he is selling out the US’ Kurdish allies, the YPG/SDF, whereas the “remainers” want to honour commitments to allies. However, the “remainers” (both Bolton and State Secretary Pompeo are understood to be in this camp) care no more about Kurds or anyone else than does Trump; but they want to make their deal with Russia/Assad first: ensuring Iranian-led forces are expelled from Syria, in exchange for the US allowing Assad to reconquer northeast Syria. A “Kurds for Iran” deal, similar to the US-Israel “rebels for Iran” deal with Assad in the south. As Jeffrey states, this deal includes Russia; the US has simply never at any stage of the conflict aimed at removing Russia from its leading position in Syria.

Trump, by contrast, is jumping ahead; yes Russia, Assad and Erdogan can gobble up the northeast, relying on an understanding he has with Russia (as do Israel and Saudi Arabia) that Russia’s own rivalry with Iran in Syria will lead to a Russian wall against Iranian influence; and that a more solidified Assad regime is in less and less need of the destabilising Iranian-backed rabble. And to the extent that Russia isn’t strong enough to do this alone, Israel has threatened to up its strikes on pro-Iranian forces in Syria; the current visit of Russian senators to Israel to discuss the “joint struggle against terrorism” seems part of this same process.

Of course, there is also the issue of whether or not ISIS has been defeated, as Trump claims. Much commentary says this is not so, that Trump is allowing ISIS to return. In reality, the US-SDF alliance has driven ISIS almost entirely out of Syria, other than a tiny remaining pocket. Trump always said the only reason to be in Syria was to defeat ISIS, and his claim that ISIS has been largely defeated is correct (from a purely military point of view); moreover, there is no other legal mandate for the US to be in Syria. In announcing withdrawal, Trump tweeted that “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there (sic) work.” While some may interpret this in conspiracist terms, that he wants to bog them down in the fight against ISIS, Russia’s welcome of the announcement belies this interpretation; what Trump means is that Assad now has the go-ahead to seize the rest of Deir Ezzor region from the SDF in order for his regime to use the excuse of completing the “fight against ISIS” there so as to consolidate his victorious counterrevolution over Syria.

Proxification and Betrayal

There is little doubt that the SDF is being betrayed by Trump, and would eventually have been by the “remainers” as well. One possibility however is of the SDF following the same path; after all, the basis of the US-SDF alliance against ISIS was that both the US and the SDF had a neutral policy towards the main war in Syria, between the Assad regime and the rebels. If the US can accommodate Assad, so can the SDF. However. There is a major difference in power here. While the SDF leadership has made moves in this direction, they are likely to get little; Assad is powerful now, having largely defeated the opposition; therefore, his regime has no reason to concede anything. Assad may temporarily agree to a deal with the SDF to stave off Turkey (Assad is less enamoured of Erdogan than his Russian and Iranian allies are), but the conditions for such an alliance will involve such a complete reduction in autonomy to figleaf status that the SDF could not agree without liquidating its cause.

Both the SDF and the Kurdish populations must be defended against any pending Erdogan/Assad assault. Supporters of the SDF project, however, need to reckon with the historic betrayals of the YPG/SDF leadership, which cut the Kurdish populations off from the rest of the revolutionary process, and at times directly attacked the revolution in collaboration with Assad and Russia, especially during the SDF’s Russian-airforce-backed attack on the rebels in the Arab-majority northern Aleppo/Tal Rifaat region in early 2016, and its subsequent aid to Assad’s final assault on rebel-held Aleppo.

These short-sighted (to put it mildly!) policies have led to the isolation of the SDF, and the Kurdish people, in their hour of need. For example, many of the rebel troops that took part in Turkey’s bloody invasion of Kurdish Afrin (Operation ‘Olive Branch’) early this year were former residents of the Tal Rifaat region who had been uprooted in the SDF’s own Russian-backed version of ‘Olive Branch’ two years earlier.

This has now led to rebel promises of participation in the threatened Turkish invasion of the northeast. While there may be some regions of Arab majority that welcome an FSA entry – something that cannot be determined merely by ethnic composition, but only if we see attempted uprisings against Rojava authorities – overwhelmingly this invasion is likely to be resisted, turning whichever rebel groups take part into an army of occupation, like in Afrin. This is especially the case if Turkey and any rebel allies invade the actual Kurdish-majority regions.

The fact that the SDF has done the same makes no difference; years of bloody counterrevolution by an overwhelmingly military dominant regime, backed by massive foreign intervention and otherwise international indifference, has partially proxified both the main Arab and Kurdish leaderships. It may often have seemed like they had “no choice,” and it is very difficult to criticise from afar. Really, who can blame the rebels for their alliance with Turkey when Turkey almost alone in the world was willing to provide some support to the people facing genocide, along with accommodating 3.7 million Syrian refugees, by far the biggest refugee population in the world? Who can blame the SDF for allying with the US against such a monstrous enemy as ISIS, especially when faced with extinction in Kobane?

However, the hard reality is that the resulting division between the Arab and Kurdish populations outside Assadist control is the death-knell of both, leading them into further dependence on, and the threat of abandonment by, foreign interests, to the benefit only of the regime.

Moreover, it is unlikely that Putin and Assad will give Erdogan the go-ahead to attack the SDF in northeastern Syria without some quid pro quo in the northwest, ie rebel-controlled Greater Idlib. Probably not all of it just yet – neither Turkey nor the West can agree to a total Assadist reconquest that would send hundreds of thousands more refugees across borders – but possibly allowing Assad to gobble up enough of southern Idlib to ensure control of the main thoroughfares between Aleppo and Latakia, which would mean wiping out some key revolutionary centres. It would be the ultimate irony to watch rebel (or ex-rebel) troops attacking the SDF in the northeast as part of a Turkish operation while Assad and Russia further slice into the last part of free Syria in the northwest.

The bankruptcy of “anti-imperialism”

It is somewhat surreal to watch countless “anti-imperialists” denounce Trump’s “betrayal” of the Kurds to Turkey (they tend to not be so loud about the betrayal to Assad), while other “anti-imperialists” applaud Trump’s move as a step towards something they call a “peace process”. How to explain such dissonance?

Throughout the last 8 years, the Manichean version of “anti-imperialism” spouted by an alt-left and far-right convergence has given support to a reactionary genocidal tyrant, backed by a murderous aerial invasion by the world’s second imperialist superpower, destroying his entire country to squash a popular uprising on the false altar of opposing “US-backed regime change” and the like.

The fact that there was never any US “regime-change” operation was irrelevant, as were most facts; while the Kurdish-led SDF has received over 4 years of US air power at their service, which has killed thousands of civilians, the Syrian rebels never received any such support (indeed, they have often enough been bombed by US warplanes); while the SDF was blessed with the support of thousands of US troops (who are now being withdrawn), there was never a single US troop in support of the rebels; while there are a dozen or so US bases in SDF-controlled Rojava there are none in any rebel-controlled zone; while the US ensured key Kurdish centres such as Kobane did not fall, no rebel-held centre, whether overrun by Assad or even by ISIS, ever received such defence. Yet for most “anti-imperialists”, the rebels were still the “US proxies” while the SDF were brave “anti-imperialist” fighters. It is difficult to explain how it was possible to reverse reality in such a total way; part of it was perhaps the YPG’s connection to the PKK in Turkey, given its ancient anti-imperialist history from another era, among other psychological motivations.

What to say then when the US withdraws? Praise the end of “imperialist intervention”? Or protest the betrayal of the Kurds, meaning, perhaps, the dreaded “US intervention” should continue? How ironic that it is often (of course, not always) the same people attempting to say both things. But while there are many confused anti-Assad people stuck in this quandary, in too many cases, this “anti-imperialism” involved those who wanted to be “anti-imperialist” as long as it meant scabbing on the Syrian people’s uprising and supporting the most tyrannical oligarchic dictatorship of the 21^st century; every tiny hint of limited US support to the rebels was denounced as evidence of “regime change”. Yet once it became clear that the US saw its key ally in Syria as the SDF, many went silent; four years of massive US bombing of ISIS (and also of Nusra and sometimes even the rebels), killing anywhere between 4800 and 13,500 civilians, has largely been met with embarrassed silence by the “anti-war” movement around the world, while the abstract trope of “opposing US intervention” is still kept in the cupboard in case it needs to be occasionally dusted off, to protest the odd one-off US strike on some empty Assad airbase, that kills nobody at all, when Assad indulges in chemical warfare.

In recent weeks and months, US air-borne terror has been increasing. In mid-December, US airstrikes hit a mosque in Syria, killing 17 people. The response? Deafening silence. Between US terror from the skies and a monstrous regime like that of ISIS, it is better to admit there is an ethical dilemma, rather than be so certain you are “against intervention”, especially when for the most part you are actually not against it at all. And you ought to also be consistent in relation to the imaginary, never-existing “threat” of US intervention against Assad, whose regime has killed about 100 times more people than ISIS could ever manage, and admit that the main role of this particular version of “anti-imperialism” – the anti-solidarity version – over the last 8 years has been that of scabbery on the Syrian people.

The debate in US imperialist circles between staying in Syria or quitting Syria is not one with a more progressive side; in this case, Trump’s withdrawal is for entirely reactionary reasons.

by Michael Karadjis

As the forces of Bashar al-Assad, backed by the Russian air force, reconquered Daraa city, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution, an aid worker reported to Kareem Shaheen in The Guardian that “people have accepted the reality that the entire world is fighting against the revolution, and therefore it cannot continue.”

Shaheen is correct; the realisation however is late. The “the entire world” – all the major imperialist and regional reactionary powers – has been against the revolution since its outbreak in March 2011. Their differences have been entirely tactical.

The crushing of heroic Daraa involved an unwritten agreement between the Assad regime, Russia, the US and Israel. Four ‘heroes’ of today’s global ‘alt-right’ – Assad, Netanyahu, Trump and Putin – have emerged triumphant over the corpse of the Syrian revolution.

Much commentary proclaims that all global and regional powers are responsible for the catastrophe, backing “different sides” to pursue their “rival interests.” All these powers are indeed responsible, but the direct and massive Russian and Iranian intervention on the side of the regime contrasts sharply with the indirect role of the United States, the pretence of friendship to the anti-Assad opposition by neighbouring Arab regimes, and the cynical connivance of Israel, in bringing about the same goal. “Rivalry” and “different sides” had remarkably little to do with it.

The end game shows that inter-imperialist cooperation, rather than the much heralded “inter-imperialist rivalry,” was the major dimension of the foreign intervention in Syria. While it is understandable for beleaguered and outgunned revolutionary forces to take advantage of whatever tactical differences existed among the global and regional powers, there was never any real doubt that they were all ultimately on the same side, that of counterrevolution.

Conventional “geopolitics” emphasises rivalry between imperialist and sub-imperialist powers as the driving force of world politics. This leads to the conclusion that the US was “weak” or “hesitant” for allegedly “giving in” to Russia or “letting Assad off lightly” over his genocide. Repeated ad-nauseum for seven years, this entirely misses the point.

Inter-imperialist rivalry is a major factor in world politics, but confronted with revolution – like the region-wide Arab Spring – states that otherwise hate each other quite easily join forces against their common enemy – the revolutionary populace.

The Linux Beach blog of writer Clay Claiborne ends each piece with the slogan: “Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!”. This analogy is relevant here; the rival ruling classes of France and Germany, after their Franco-Prussian war, united to smash the insurgent working class of Paris. “Love of Nation” is good when the ruling class wants workers to kill each other, but its hollowness is revealed when their fundamental interests are challenged.

The geopolitics of counterrevolution trumps other issues that divide rival powers. Regardless of whether or not US imperialism is “in retreat” globally, this has been irrelevant to the Syria issue; there was never any US “weakness” or “hesitance” over Syria; rather, under both the Obama and Trump administrations, the alliance with Russia over Syria has been an alliance for counterrevolution; the US has acted consistently in its own interests. The differences have been over the tactical approach to counterrevolution.

Despite some early US rhetoric about taking “firm and appropriate measures” if Assad were to violate the US-Russian declared “de-escalation zone” in southern Syria, once the offensive got underway the US made clear to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) that “you should not base your decisions on the assumption or expectation of a military intervention by us.” The US also told the rebels not to “be provoked” by the regime’s barrel bombs into responding.

As for Israel, it has made clear all along that it is fine with Assad retaking the south as long as Iran and Hezbollah are not involved. Some anti-Assad Syrians and their supporters had developed illusions that the early US language, and Israel’s interest in keeping Iranian forces away from occupied Golan, might for the one and only time in the war restrain Assad’s hand. It is understandable to want to have hope; moreover, illusions were rarely expressed about any US or Israeli “humanitarian” motivation, but rather a belief that their pragmatic interests may intersect with the needs of Syrian people in the south.

As we will see, however, it was precisely strategic agreements between Israel and Russia, with US approval, that paved the way for this Assad offensive. A major part of this essay, therefore, is concerned with the evolution of Israeli policy on Syria. This is not because Israel can be assigned blame for the Syrian disaster; Assad, Russia and Iran are fully responsible for their actions, just as the US and Israel, not Russia or Iran, are primarily responsible for the Palestinian catastrophe. But the agreement between Israel and Russia – powers popularly thought to be in “different blocs” – will be the main case study through which the broader counterrevolutionary agreement will be demonstrated.

Israel has always preferred dictators to democracy in the Arab world; only a democratic Arab world can really challenge Israel’s anti-democratic rule over Palestine. And in the first few years, Israeli policy was resolutely pro-Assad and hostile to the Arab Spring generally.

Yet some Israeli interests did have the potential to bring about conflict with Assad: the desire to keep Iranian forces away from the Golan, to prevent any mass influx of refugees from Syria, or to build support on the Syrian side of the Golan among civilians terrified of Assad, in order to use them as a “border force” to protect the stolen Golan. Yet none of this ultimately led to any Israeli aid in preventing the fall of Daraa; on the contrary, an even more open embrace of Assad than previously manifested itself, highlighting again the tendency of revolution to push oppressive powers to line upon the same side.

First, however, the essay will look at the centrality of Daraa to the Syrian revolution, and the loyalty which the revolutionary forces there maintained to the original goals of the revolution – as well as the starkness of their betrayal by alleged “supporters,” beginning several years before the final act.

The horrific toll in the south

Having completed its subjugation of rebel-held East Ghouta, at the cost of some 1700 lives in four-weeks, then having also expelled the people of smaller rebel-held enclaves in Homs, East Qalamoun and South Damascus, the Assad regime turned its attention south, to Daraa and Quneitra provinces, which straddle the border of Jordan and Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The new horrific attack on Daraa’s 750,000 people began on June 19.

Hundreds of air strikes, rockets, and barrel bombs launched into various population centres across the province; in June alone, 413 barrel bombs were dropped on Daraa. On June 25, 40 missiles were fired into Daraa city itself.

Once again, the Assad regime and its Russian imperial backers made hospitals and schools special targets. Three hospitals were hit overnight June 26-27, reportedly by Russian warplanes, bringing to six the number hit since the offensive began, killing medical and staff and patients. According to the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), Al-Giza hospital’s emergency department, which was completely destroyed by six regime airstrikes, had been providing services to 200,000, treating on average 10,000 patients per month. Syrian Civil Defence centers, field hospitals and paramedics were also put out of service in eastern Daraa. On June 28, the regime bombed a kindergarten in the town of Nawa.

By early July, the UNHCR announced that the number of displaced had risen to 330,000 people, pushed up against the Jordanian border and the Golan fence, while  the Daraa Martyrs Documentation Office reported that by July 22, 492 people had been killed.

Daraa: Birthplace of the Syrian revolution

Daraa is the birthplace of the Syrian revolution, which opened with high school students, influenced by the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, spray-painting walls with the slogan “you’re turn is next Doc”, referring to Bashar al-Assad, a medical doctor when not in the role of murderous tyrant. While 23 children detained were being tortured over the next month, demonstrations in Daraa and elsewhere broke out demanding their release.

On March 15, 2011, demonstrations hit Damascus and Aleppo, and three days later the ‘Day of Rage’ in Daara was met by bullets. On March 23, 15 were shot dead in Daraa – at protests around the Omari mosque, at funerals for the first victims, and people from surrounding towns marching towards Daraa to offer support. Here is more footage from Daraa showing peaceful protest and massacre, and here is some great footage of the massive ‘Friday of Steadfastness’ demonstration on April 8, shouting “Get out! Get out!” at Assad.

As deaths from bullets and tanks around Syria rose from dozens to hundreds to thousands, events such as the return to his family of the horrifically mutilated body of 13-year old Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb – arrested at a peaceful protest on April 29 – made the savage blood line between the tyranny and the people of Daraa irreversible.

The Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army

Like elsewhere in Syria, after months of peaceful protests were continually met by massacre, people began to take up arms to defend themselves, and Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops began defecting to protect the people rather than killing them; the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was born. The Southern Front (SF) of the FSA, based in Daraa and Quneitra, has remained the most trenchantly democratic-secular and anti-sectarian part of the rebellion.

Much anti-Syrian revolution propaganda focuses on reactionary Islamist groups such as Jaysh al-Islam in East Ghouta or HTS (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) in Idlib. This ignores the continued existence of the FSA throughout the country (it was always far more significant than western media and its leftist echo made them out to be), the ongoing unarmed dimension of the uprising and the elected revolutionary councils, but also the fact that these reactionary forces have been unable to fully impose their will on the revolution, as I have shown here regarding Ghouta, or has been widely shown regarding Idlib. Nevertheless, they do exist, the FSA does have to share their space with them, and they are a major problem for the revolution. In the case of Daraa, however, the Southern Front was more or less completely dominant, reportedly containing some 35,000 troops; describing Syrians fighting for freedom in the south with orientalist epithets such as ‘jihadists’ was an outright lie.

When over 50 FSA brigades in the south formed the Southern Front military alliance in February 2014, its founding statement declared:

“We are the farmers, the teachers, and the workers that you see every day. Many of us were among the soldiers who defected from a corrupt regime that had turned its weapons around to fight its own countrymen. … There is no room for sectarianism and extremism in our society, and they will find no room in Syria’s future. The Syrian people deserve the freedom to express their opinions and to work toward a better future. We are striving to create in Syria a government that represents the people and works for their interest. We are the Southern Front.”

The Southern Front believed that the collapse of the Assad regime “will not be the end of the Syrian people’s revolution” but “the start of a new and, hopefully, final phase of the people’s struggle for freedom.” During this ‘Transitional Phase’, the Front (which would transition into a civilian protection force) declared its first task would be “the protection of all Syrian citizens, their property and their rights without any distinction of religion, culture, ethnicity, or political affiliation in accordance with International Humanitarian Law and the international standards of Human Rights.”

In 2015 the Southern Front declared that it would no longer coordinate even on a simple military level with Jabhat al-Nusra, due to fundamental ideological differences (though it also stressed that this was not a declaration of war, rejecting the long-term US demand that the FSA launch frontal war on Nusra rather than the regime). Like all revolutionary organisations in Syria, the Southern Front vigorously condemned the massacre of 23 Druze villagers in northern Idlib by a mafiosi Nusra unit in 2015.

US “support” full of strings and red lines

Between 2013 and 2015, the US and Saudi Arabia sent a certain amount of aid to the SF via the Military Operations Centre (MOC) in Jordan, aiming to control the SF’s movements and co-opt it in future. This “support” was rather modest, compared to the need in confronting the massive arsenal of advanced killing equipment used by the regime, continually re-supplied by Russia and Iran, not to mention the actual Russian airforce and thousands of Iranian-allied foreign troops. At times, the US refused to supply even “a single rifle or bullet to the FSA in Daraa” and “actively prevented deliveries” of Saudi arms and ammunition.

However, even when it did get through, the political purpose of such “support” became apparent whenever the SF started winning. In May 2013, for example, MOC deliberately held back arms to rebels facing a strategic battle in the southern town Khirbet Ghazaleh, leading to its capture by Assad.

In late 2014 and early 2015, Saudi Arabia delivered significant numbers of US-made TOW anti-tank missiles to the Southern Front from its stocks, allegedly as part of the CIA’s ‘Timber Sycamore’ program. This may have aided the SF in its string of victories in the south in early 2015, taking the last Jordanian border crossing at Nasib, the Sheik Miskeen and Nawa regions, the historic town of Bushra al-Sham and the decisive regime base 52. This was widely viewed as a US shift to supporting the more democratic-secular SF, after its attempt to co-opt northern factions with TOWs in 2014 failed; this phase ended when the main FSA factions receiving TOWs, such as Harakat Hazm, refused to bend to US demands “to leave the battle field against Assad and to send all our forces to fight ISIS,” because, according to a Hazm commander, although “we had no problem to go fight ISIS, [we] wouldn’t agree to stop fighting Assad.”

However, the reality of this “support” to the SF was of the same nature. Following this string of victories, the US and MOC imposed a series of “red lines”: the SF was ordered not to advance into the central al-Mahata area of Daraa city, into the neighbouring province Suweida, anywhere north towards the key city of Sasa, and not to advance on Damascus or attempt to link up with its rebel-held outer suburbs (according to some reports, violating this last “red line” would result in US air strikes). The US-CIA attempt to co-opt the SF, in other words, was aimed at bringing its fight against Assad to an end, to push it to turn all its guns against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra only.

By mid-2015 the MOC had scaled back support for the SF, SF offensives to take Daraa city, and the Thala airbase on the Suweida border, were unsupported, or even blocked, by the MOC, and use of TOW missiles trickled off in late 2015 “and totally vanished in the first two weeks of 2016.” By early 2016, Jordan had “forced the Southern Front to halt all military actions”; in January, MOC officials told the SF to stop attacking the regime and to focus their efforts on the jihadists, both Nusra and ISIS, and were promised new weaponry if they did so. In May, the MOC warned it would cut cash flows until they started scoring victories over ISIS in the Yarmouk valley.

In March 2016, the SF took part in the US-Russia facilitated nation-wide ceasefire. In reality, however, while the regime continued bombing at lower intensity, “maintaining the ceasefire” became the new rationale for holding back the SF ever since.

Trump: “Assad fights ISIS”, the rebels “dangerous and wasteful”

The idea that the US supported the rebellion or pushed “regime change” have been trenchant myths with little base in reality. While the initial declaration by Hilary Clinton that Assad was a “reformer” as he gunned down the first protestors later gave way to Obama’s call on Assad to “step aside” (after months of mass killing), the US strategy was aimed at regime preservation, via cosmetic change at the top, and the preservation of Assad’s military-security apparatus, via the “political solution” involving Russia and the Geneva process.

But the US never wanted to put any serious military pressure to bring about even these limited objectives, because a strengthened opposition would push beyond those limits. The first US intervention was to place CIA agents on the Turkish and Jordanian borders in mid-2012, tasked with preventing anti-aircraft missiles (and for the next two years, anti-tank weapons) from reaching the rebels; this has been the most effective US intervention. By the last year of the Obama-Kerry administration, the US and Russia were signing agreements to jointly bomb Nusra, and even the previous US policy that Assad should stand down at the beginning of a negotiated regime-opposition “transition” government was shelved.

Before his election, Donald Trump proclaimed that the US should be aligned with Assad and Putin because, in his opinion, they “fight ISIS”; Trump has essentially lived up to this promise.

As the Pentagon armed some ex-FSA factions in the south-eastern desert to fight ISIS, the diktat that US-backed forces fight ISIS only became even clearer. Statements continually released by the US Command stressed that its only fight was with ISIS and that other forces fighting ISIS, including the Assad regime, were allies. When one ex-rebel faction “went rogue,” declaring it would re-start fighting Assad, the US threatened to bomb them; at one point, the US Command even gave permission to Assad to bomb its own proxy ex-FSA forces inside a US-declared safe zone, because this loyal faction (ie, not the “rogue” one) had responded to pro-Assad forces which had attacked them inside the zone!

Moreover, as he had promised before his election, last July Trump formally ended even the limited support the US had been providing to “vetted” FSA groups (including the SF), which Trump described as “dangerous and wasteful.” As seen above, this “support” had long ceased to have any meaning; as I analysed here, the difference between this CIA support to anti-Assad forces, and the Pentagon’s backing of strictly ‘fight-ISIS-only’ groups, was superficial, as the former aimed at co-opting the anti-Assad groups in the same direction. However, the continuation of some support had allowed survival in the face of Assad’s international backing from Russia and Iran. Trump’s government also ended a $200 million program funding civil programs in the opposition-controlled regions.

Former Secretary of States Rex Tillerson’s speech in January focused on supporting the Geneva process for a “political solution,” but now the US no longer expected Assad to stand down at the beginning of a transition phase as under early Obama, or even at its end as under late Obama; rather, Tillerson adopted the regime’s program that Assad could be voted out in a “free election,” which would presumably occur with him in power:

“The United States believes that free and transparent elections … will result in the permanent departure of Assad and his family from power. This process will take time, and we urge patience in the departure of Assad and the establishment of new leadership.”

Trump and Iran

While the Trump administration has pursued a seemingly opposite course in relation to Assad’s ally Iran, throughout 2017 this rhetoric had little connection to policy. In Iraq, the US defeat of ISIS in Mosul was carried out in alliance with the pro-Iranian forces; in Syria, the US is allied to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in its war on ISIS around Raqqa, but the unofficial alliance with Assad in this war around Deir Ezzor also involved Iranian forces. At times the US and Assad-Iranian forces were directly involved in the same battles against ISIS, for example in Assad’s second reconquest of Palmyra, on the road to Deir Ezzor.

In 2017 and early 2018, securing Assad’s counterrevolutionary victory throughout the country was the first priority of the US and regional reactionary powers. As long as Assad needed Iran-backed cannon-fodder to do much of his fighting on the ground (while Russia carried out the terror from the sky), the anti-Iran issue took back seat.

Only after Assad’s throne was fully safe, following the crushing of Ghouta, was the stage set to deal with the Iranian issue; so May 2018 witnessed Trump’s scrapping of the Iran nuclear deal and his new State Secretary Pompeo’s extraordinarily aggressive anti-Iran tirade listing US demands to end the new sanctions on Iran.

Trump’s promotion of right-wing extremists Pompeo and Bolton was widely seen as a step towards war with Iran. Whether this eventuates remains to be seen, but both distinguish between Assad and Iran. In July, Pompeo noted that “the Assad regime has been enormously successful … but from America’s perspective it seems to me that Iran is the greatest threat and we ought to focus on that.” As for Bolton, this long-time apostle of regime-change war against Iran was always opposed to “regime change” in Syria, which he thinks would bring “al-Qaida” to power.

Southern ‘de-escalation zone’

These issues came to the fore with Assad’s reconquest of the south, due to the specific issues raised by neighbouring Jordan and Israel, both traditional US allies. The outline of the final “solution” in the south had already been heralded in July 2017, with the US-Russia-Jordan agreement to make Daraa and Quneitra a “de-escalation zone.”

This prevented both regime and the FSA from opening the front; but as the regime was busy elsewhere in Syria, the main impact was on the FSA. This cannot be underestimated: the distance between the FSA-controlled south and the eastern and southern ‘Damascus suburbs’ is not great, but separated by Assad-controlled territory, both are isolated. If the Southern Front had had support from across the Jordanian border, it could have pushed towards Damascus and linked up with the rebels in East Ghouta and South Damascus.

The US “red-line” against moving in that direction thus contributed to the regime’s 2016 subjugation of the southern Damascus town of Darayya, an iconic revolutionary town in the best democratic traditions of the original uprising; the 2017 “de-escalation zone” converted this US red-line into international policy, helping seal the fate of Ghouta and the greater Damascus rebellion. As the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood put it, the de-escalation zone was “the gate that brought the regime back to the south under international supervision and acceptance.”

The other side of the de-escalation agreement was to keep Iranian forces at least 10 kilometres away from the Israel’s Golan occupation line, a minimal Israeli demand; the outline of the “solution” in the south was thus already a deal that aided Assad and Israel to the disadvantage of both the rebels and Iran.

Israeli policy on Syria 2011-2013: Resolute support for Assad

In the early years of the Syrian conflict, the majority of Israeli political, military and “security” spokespeople pushed an essentially pro-Assad line, preferring “the devil we know,” especially as Assad had kept the occupied Golan line quiet for 40 years. Israel had less reason to trust the rebels to do the same; Netanyahu called them among “the worst Islamist radicals in the world.” ‘Israel’s Man in Damascus – Why Jerusalem Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall’ was the title of an article in Foreign Affairs (May 10, 2013), penned by Efraim Halevy, the head of Mossad from 1998 to 2002. Whenever any Israeli leader discussed the possibility of intervention in Syria, they stressed that this would only happen should the Assad regime fall; defence minister Ehud Barak stated “the moment Assad starts to fall we will conduct intelligence monitoring and will liaise with other agencies” regarding intervention. As defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad explained, while Israel would “resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, it was not at present interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons because “the good news is that this is under full control (of theSyrian government).” Yuval Steinitz, Israeli Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs, also stressed that Israel “was not urging the US to take any military action ‘whatsoever’ in Syria.”

This excellent study by the Doha Institute weighs up the differing views within the Israeli security establishment, concluding that, on balance, Israel preferred Assad in power. More generally, Israel was hostile to the Arab Spring as a whole: it had always preferred Arab dictators that “it could do business with” over democratic revolution, as a revolutionary people may find themselves in natural solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians, as compared with a regime like Assad’s which offered rhetorical “anti-Zionism” alongside decades of slaughter of the Palestinian people.

The election of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government in Egypt in the first democratic elections after the revolution also influenced this early Israeli policy. Israel was reportedly “dismayed” by Morsi’s election, with the MB allied regionally to both Hamas in Gaza and to many of the Syrian rebel groups and opposition politicians. With Hamas breaking with Assad and declaring its solidarity with both the Egyptian and Syrian revolutions, Israeli leaders saw a region-wide coalition of hostile Sunni-based governments and movements surrounding them and directly connected to the Palestinian struggle, the only fundamental threat to the Zionist regime.

A wikileaks cable from 2012 spells this out:

“… senior Israeli Intelligence and Military commanders state … that they have long viewed the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, while hostile, as a known quantity and a buffer between Israel and the more militant Muslim countries, a situation that is threatened by the growing success of the rebel forces of the Free Syria Army (FSA). … these Israeli leaders are now drawing up contingency plans to deal with a regional structure where the new revolutionary regimes that take over the various countries will be controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and possibly more problematic groups such as al Qa’ida, which doesn’t bode well for the Israelis.”

Israeli policy on Syria 2013-2015: Bomb Iran and Hezbollah, both sides bad

But events in late 2013 changed this dynamic. First, the MB government in Egypt was overthrown in a military coup, bringing to power the brutal dictator General Sisi. Sisi adopted a viciously anti-Hamas policy, stiffened the blockade of Gaza, and repaired relations with Israel. This removed the southern tier of the great Arab Spring/Sunni “threat” to Israel, though it did not in itself cause Israel to shift to an anti-Assad policy; after all, Israel’s friend Sisi declared solidarity with fellow tyrant Assad against “Islamic extremism.”

When in August 2013, Assad launched his sarin attack on East Ghouta, Israeli leader Netanyahu got together with Russian leader Putin to help Assad escape from Obama’s threat to strike the regime for violating the “red line” against the use of chemical weapons. They put forward the solution of Assad getting rid of his chemical weapons under international supervision. Obama’s backdown heralded a new more accommodating US policy towards the regime, partly due to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) in later 2013; western leaders and ideologues, one after another, came out with the view that a collapse of the Assad regime would embolden ISIS, the main issue now was to defeat the latter.

The problem for Israel however was that this new western accommodation with the Assad regime had a second track: a new US opening to Iran, sparked by the election of “moderate” president Rouhani. This is the opening that later led to the famous nuclear deal. This also corresponded to a sharp increase in Iranian, pro-Iranian and Hezbollah support to the Assad regime; thousands of Shiite sectarian troops poured into Syria, helping defeat the rebels in a number of important battles.

While this never led Israel to a “regime-change” or pro-rebel position, leaders now emphasised that Israeli interests were served by both sides killing and weakening each other; Israel, according to Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, does not “want to interfere in Syria, not for Assad or against Assad.”

At the same time, Israeli rhetoric more and more highlighted that Iran in Syria was the “main threat”, and the IDF noticeably stepped up the number of pinprick strikes on Iranian-backed targets, usually Iranian missiles destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the buildings storing them. In early 2015 there was even a strike that killed half a dozen important Hezbollah cadres, leading to Hezbollah’s one and only response strike in the entire war. Such strikes had no impact on Assad’s ability to wage war on his people; Israel never struck pro-Iranian forces in battle with the rebels. However, given Assad’s increasing reliance on pro-Iranian forces to make up for the depleted ranks of the SAA, the potential for clashes with Assad’s forces emerged.

This was by no means straightforward, however. In contrast with the Netanyahu government’s shrill anti-Iran rhetoric, useful for public consumption, members of the military-security apparatus continued to push in the opposite direction. In January 2015, Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, claimed that Assad was the least harmful choice in Syria, so western powers and Israel “should strengthen the Syrian regime’s steadfastness in the face of its opponents.” Allowing Assad to fall would be “the most egregious mistake.” Meanwhile, Israeli military analyst Roni Daniel claimed that Israel had demanded the US-led coalition against ISIS “expand the list of targets to include all Sunni jihadist organizations” in Syria.” Soon after, Brigadier General Itai Baron, head of the Military Intelligence and Research Division of the IDF, claimed “it is just a matter of time” before Syrian Islamist organisations “begin to target us from the Golan Plateau according to their radical ideology.”

Israeli policy on Syria 2015-2017: The Putin-Netanyahu love-fest & being a ‘Good Neighbour’

The onset of Russian intervention in support of Assad in September 2015 was an opportunity to resolve these contradictions in Israel’s Syria policy. The devastating Russian air war was more decisive in saving Assad’s regime than the Iran-backed ground troops, whose early successes stalled while the rebels scored major victories in early 2015; Assad’s victories in the last two years would have been impossible without this massive intervention by a global imperialist power.

But unlike Iran, this decisive Assad ally was on good terms with Israel. During Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge massacre in Gaza, Putin declared “I support the struggle of Israel”; for its part, Israel refused to take part in western sanctions on Russia over its illegal annexation of Crimea. Israel and Russia are major trading partners, and are involved in dealing in everything from gas pipelines to military drones (some of which have turned up in Assad’s hands on the battlefield). In 2010, the two states signed a 5-year military agreement.

For Israel, this was an opportunity to support a Russian-led, rather than Iran-led, Assad-rescue operation. Putin and Netanyahu began a series of high-level, high-publicity meetings and summits, declaring their resolve to jointly fight “terrorism.” A military coordination ‘hotline’ was established, as were joint air exercises. Putin declared his understanding of Israel’s “security” concerns in Syria, ie, recognised Israel’s “right” to bomb pro-Iranian assets in Syria; Israel shared its intelligence on Syrian rebel groups with Russia to aid Russia’s war for Assad. Russia and Israel coordinated closely on the Golan front, even as Russia bombed Syrian rebels very close to the Israeli-occupation lines.

This apparently schizophrenic Israeli policy – warm embrace of Russia combined with anti-Iranian frenzy – was reflected in contradictory statements and actions regarding the Syrian side of the Golan Heights (Quneitra province). On the one hand, in March 2017, Israel’s Maariv new site reported that Israeli leaders had indicated that they would be agreeable to the return of Assad’s forces to the Golan ‘border’ as long as Iran, Hezbollah and their allies were kept away. More recently, Haaretz reported that “position papers drafted by the Israeli army and the Foreign Ministry over the past two years didn’t actually voice support for the Syrian president, but their assessments show that they viewed his continued rule as preferable or even vital for Israel’s security.”

In May 2017, the ‘Begin-Sadat Centre’ think tank published an article that said that with Israel “surrounded by enemies,” it “needs those enemies to be led by strong, stable rulers who will control their armies and prevent both the firing on, and infiltrations into, Israeli territory,” noting that both Assads had always performed this role. The fact that “Syria is no longer able to function as a sovereign state … is bad for Israel” and therefore “a strong Syrian president with firm control over the state is a vital interest for Israel. Given the Islamist alternatives to his rule, Syria’s neighbors, including Israel, may well come to miss him as Syria is rapidly Lebanonized.”

Its call for Assad’s rule to be “strong” is significant, because most commentary that does recognise Israel’s preference for Assad maintaining power usually adds the adjective “weakened” to the kind of Assad Israel prefers – based on faulty logic.

Yet this continuing fundamental undercurrent of Israeli policy appeared to contradict the increasing number of attacks on pro-Iranian assets. Despite the close coordination with Russia, the quantity of Israeli strikes on Iran-backed forces shot up markedly. Yet this merely underlined the fact that Israel saw Russia as a means of replacing Iran as the main booster of Assad, rather than it reflecting anti-Assad policy.

The myth of Israel arming “Syrian rebels” in the Golan

Israel’s preference for the Assad regime retaking the Golan armistice line also appeared to contradict a new quiet track of Israeli policy, and one that led to some illusions that Israel may end up a saviour for the people in the south.

Around mid-2017 it was reported that Israel was sending non-military aid to Syrian villages in the vicinity of the Golan fence in Quneitra, and even providing some $5000 a month to one Syrian ex-rebel brigade, Fursan al-Jawlan (the Golan Knights), which it uses to buy arms; research by Elizabeth Tsurkov claimed that Israel was supporting seven rebel groups in this region, but other than the Golan Knights, most wished to remain anonymous.

A closer look shows that the aim of this aid to several armed groups was not to help them fight Assad, but rather to use them as “border guards” on the Golan. Still less did this have any relation to “regime change”; on the contrary, it is the existence of the Assad regime’s terrifying repression that has allowed Israel to gain influence among fearful villagers near the Golan fence. But carrying out this pragmatic policy in itself resulted in a new, if temporary, pressure on Israeli policy.

It is first important to understand the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights adjoining the Israeli occupation. Most of the line adjoins the tiny Quneitra province, but the southeast corner of the region, the Yarmouk valley, is in Daraa province. While most of Daraa was controlled by the FSA Southern Front, this small section along the Golan fence was held by an ISIS franchise, Jaysh Khalid ibn al-Walid (JKW), one of the few tiny spots of Syria still held by ISIS. North and west of this, most of the Golan line is held by a range of armed groups – the Israeli-backed groups, the mainstream FSA/SF, and Islamists like HTS. Then in the far northwest is the small pro-regime Druze enclave of Hader.

We will first look at Israel’s military aid to several groups in the main mid-Golan region. The first thing to note is that the Golan Knights brigade is not part of the FSA Southern Front, and it had also withdrawn from the local rebel Military Council in Quneitra in mid-2015, before beginning to receive Israeli support. Moreover, the Golan Knights are based in Jubatha al-Khashab, a Quneitra town inside the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) zone; as such, it is a local force that has little chance of coming into conflict with the regime. Its arrangement with Israel was similar to the kinds of ‘reconciliation’ arrangements other ex-rebel brigades have made with the regime ie, based on survival, where the rebel brigade is converted into a local police force. According to a Southern Front spokesperson, the Knights are only in possession of light weaponry, “so they act predominantly as border guards and patrol the area they’re in.”

According to the Southern Front, “there’s nothing we can do about them, they are from the local population … we’ve been having our own problems in the area, and so we cannot clash with them.” This hardly appears a ringing endorsement. Some rebels were even less favourable; this video shows a rebel protest in the south against ties between Israel and ex-rebel factions; while this gathering of Golan refugees in besieged rebel-held south Damascus, protesting statements by some non-representative, exile-based “oppositionists” who called for trading the Golan Heights for Israeli support, points to the political and ethical dilemmas involved: the Golan is occupied and dispossessed Syrian people, not mere real estate.

The confusion around the regime siege of the rebel-held town of Beit Jinn, near the Golan fence, in late 2017, highlights apparent contradictions in Israeli policy. In November, the Syrian opposition announced that Israeli forces had directly intervened on the side of pro-Assad militias besieging the town, targeting the reinforcements the FSA had sent to relieve the siege. This action was connected to Beit Jinn’s proximity to the Druze town of Hader, where Israel helped the regime fight off an FSA siege (see below). It is significant that the only case of actual Israeli military intervention on the ground in the entire Syrian conflict was one to aid the regime against the rebels. 

However, according to Tsurkov, Israel also “provided cash to Iyad Moro, a former rebel commander and Israel’s contact person in Beit Jann,” and permitted “several dozen” rebels to cross through to aid besieged Beit Jinn in December. While this may appear to contradict what it had done the previous month, the outcome was the town’s surrender; some rebels were evacuated to elsewhere in southern Syria or to Idlib, while the main group “reconciled” with the Assad regime. According to Tsurkov, Israel was involved in this “reconciliation”, and its man, Moro, now commands a regime-approved militia “tasked with keeping both rebels and Iranian proxies away from the border fence.”

Tsurkov explains that “this agreement could possibly serve as a blueprint for future deals in southern Syria, which would aim to secure regime and Israeli interests, at the expense of both Iran and the rebels.” Indeed, it is precisely this “blueprint” now being implemented throughout the south, putting a significantly different slant on the discourse of “Israel arming Syrian rebels” as the headlines exclaimed.

What then of the northwest and southeast corners of the Golan?

Israel intervenes against rebels in Hader

In Hader, a town in the northwest part of the Golan fence, Israel’s policy has been to support the Druze enclave against the rebels, although the town is aligned not only with the regime but also with Hezbollah. This is partly connected to Israel’s policy of favouring Israeli Druze (many of whom serve in the military) over Palestinians and thus treating them as non-Arabs.

As rebels besieged Hader in November 2017, IDF spokesman Brigadier General Ronen Manelis declared Israel ready to protect the regime-held town, “as part of our commitment to the Druze population.” Israel’s National Security Adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, assured Israel’s Druze community that “Israel would not allow “jihadists” to take over the village.”

According to the Syrian Opposition National Coalition, “the Israeli occupation forces opened the border and supplied the pro-Assad militias in Hader with arms and ammunition, thus enabling regime forces to regain control of the areas they lost to the FSA fighters.”

… and bombs ISIS in Yarmouk valley

In the southeast, Israel has launched “drone strikes and shelling with high-precision missiles on ISIL targets” over the last year. Israeli strikes “killed multiple ISIL fighters near al-Jabiliya” when ISIS struck against the Daraa rebels in January, and then the IDF fired precision-guided anti-tank missiles at ISIS targets on February 1, “helping the rebels with another failed offensive.” An Israeli air strike last July also killed a number of important leaders of JKW, and further Israeli strikes in October killed at least 10 JKW cadres.

Thus in this region, Israel was cooperating with the actual FSA Southern Front (as opposed to the ex-FSA “reconciliation” brigades it has promoted), which has continually been at war with JKW. But of course this is US policy: no support for the FSA to fight Assad, only to fight ISIS. With the SF battle lines with Assad frozen for two years, Israel supported it against ISIS only, while not giving it the decisive support needed to evict ISIS; Israel wanted to leave that to the regime.

Israel’s ‘Good Neighbour’ policy in the Syrian Golan

Israel’s non-military support to some Golan villages goes back some years. In 2014, Haaretz reported that Israel had been assisting villages near the Golan fence in exchange for them keeping “extremist Islamist groups” away. This evolved into the ‘Good Neighbour’ policy which significantly expanded over the last two years.

Tsurkov’s research showed that this support – “including fuel, generators, food, clothes, baby formula, medicine, diapers and hygiene products” – along with the policy of providing hospitalisation to injured fighters and civilians, was allowing Israel to gain a level of acceptance within that region that was unusual elsewhere in the Arab world (including in Syria). This ranged from a warm embrace to a continuing suspicious but pragmatic acceptance.

While Assad’s slaughter and dispossession greatly amplifies Israel’s own actions towards the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, it is Assad who is the immediate danger in the Syrian Golan. Therefore, it is logical both for local people to seek safety for their families from anyone who can protect them, and for Israel to gain influence by posing in the unusual role of protector; not so different to past Iranian backing for Palestinians in Gaza under Israeli slaughter. Alongside influence, Israel also gained a potential buffer for its Golan occupation, among local villagers and militias, against either Hezbollah or Iranian-backed forces, or Sunni jihadists.

While this began as a policy contingent on the ongoing crisis, it had the effect of giving Israel a new interest in the outcome of the war that seemed to contradict its more long-term interest in seeing the return of the Assad regime. While Israel’s own actions elsewhere highlight the absence of humanitarian motives, nevertheless, once a power has established influence via even opportunist humanitarian gestures, it has an interest in maintaining it; and in not being seen as abandoning those it has supported.

Writing in Haaretz, Amos Harel explained the “dilemma”:

“Some of Israel’s politicians and defense establishment figures regard the new developments with a cold analytical view. The return of the Assad regime to border areas could ensure greater stability and block the flood of Sunni jihadists into the area. According to one analysis, the convergence of interests between Syria and its Iranian allies may be weakened the more the Assad regime is strengthened.”

However, given the “respect” that Israel has gained in the region, if the regime “adopts its usual methods for retaking these villages,” Israeli credibility will be at stake “for not lifting a finger to stop the massacre taking place only a few miles from its border.”

As we will see, Israel decided strongly in favour of the first option, but with some concessions.

Israeli strikes on Iranian targets follow pattern

Meanwhile, Israeli Air Force chief Major General Amir Eshel revealed in August 2017 that Israel had launched around 100 strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria over several years. However, by 2018, these strikes revealed a clear pattern. On February 10, Israel struck an Iranian control center at the Tiyas (T4) airbase in Homs, in response to an Iranian drone allegedly straying across the Golan line. On February 18, Assad and Russia began their month-long ‘final solution’ in Ghouta. Officially, Iran was kept out of this campaign, while Russia took the lead role. In reality, Iranian-backed forces played an active, if low-profile, role, but despite this there was no peep from Israel (or the US) during that month.

Yet on April 9 – the very day of the final capitulation of Douma, following Assad’s chemical attack – Israel again attacked the same base in Homs. Several days later, in response to the chemical attack, the US, Britain and France carried out a theatrical strike on some warehouses and facilities connected to Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities; since Trump had reportedly warned Putin in advance, the facilities were likely emptied. Fortunately, there were zero casualties, either military or civilian. But the Israeli strike, while also following the chemical attack, was seemingly unrelated to it. A former Israeli security operative told Middle East Eye that “This air strike has nothing to do with the chemical attack, but if it is interpreted as such, then fine. Israel will benefit and be seen as the good guy.”

Israeli strikes, therefore, completely bracketed, at both ends, Assad’s genocidal attack on Ghouta, were completely absent during that month, hit in Homs rather than Damascus/Ghouta, and hit Iranians, not Assad.

Israeli policy on Syria 2018: Go Assad Go!

The chronology of a number of events in May is interesting. On May 8, the Trump administration rescinded the Iran nuclear deal, despite furious objection from Europe. Israeli leaders had been demanding this for years, and coming soon after the move of the US embassy to illegally occupied Jerusalem, in a public spectacle while Israel was mercilessly gunning down peaceful Palestinian protestors on the Gaza fence, this was a strong show of support for Israel’s position. Within hours, Israeli jets struck a number of depots and rocket launchers belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Kisweh, south of Damascus.

The next day Netanyahu flew to Moscow for yet another high-level meeting with Putin (they have met three times this year and spoken by phone 10 times), as guest of honour at the anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis. Standing next to Putin, Netanyahu watched a display of the latest Russian military equipment. That evening, Iranian forces, for the first time ever, retaliated for the Israeli strike by firing rockets at Israeli forces in Golan; the next day, Israel launched its most massive attack ever on Iranian military assets in Syria, hitting 50 “weapons storage, logistics sites and intelligence centers used by Iranian forces in Syria.”

Lieberman claimed that Israel had hit “almost all of the Iranian infrastructure in Syria” – in a couple of hours. Netanyahu had tipped off Putin, ensuring that the Russian-controlled anti-aircraft system did nothing to protect the Iranians.

The Russian-Israeli deal

News now began to appear about a deal between Russia and Israel, whereby Russia would ensure that Iranian-backed forces distance themselves from the south, and Israel would give the go-ahead for Assad’s army to crush the Southern Front and return to its role as security-guard of the Israeli occupation; and Russia would not oppose Israel continuing to bomb pro-Iranian forces anywhere in Syria, as long as Israel didn’t touch Assad’s forces in the process. The deal was reported by Israel’s Channel 2 News.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that only regime troops should be on the southern borders, and all “non-Syrian” forces must leave the region, clearly aimed at Iranian-backed forces. Russia reportedly asked Israel not to respond to any shells which might enter the Golan, as the regime “does not want a war with you and if a shell falls on your side of the border, this is by accident.”

The deal was consecrated at a meeting between Israeli ultra-right Defense Minister Lieberman and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoygu on May 31. According to Yedioth Aharonot, at the meeting the two agreed to coordinate the Assad regime’s offensive on southern Syria.

Lieberman appears to be a particularly strong advocate of the new deal with Assad: on May 10, he addressed the Syrian tyrant: “Assad, get rid of the Iranians … they are not helping you … their presence will only cause problems and damages.”

One casualty of the latest Putin-Netanyahu love-fest was the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system Russia was planning to provide Assad – the plan was shelved. The rebels do not have aircraft – so Assad does not need these missiles, except to down Israeli jets attacking Iranian targets. To kill Syrian people, Assad has his airforce, and Russia’s. In any case, Russia has deployed its own more advanced S-400 system in Syria, which Israel has no objection to.

One of the more intriguing stories was the report that Israel and Iran themselves held indirect negotiations in Jordan. Iran reportedly agreed to not take part in Assad’s southern offensive, while Israel agreed to not to intervene against Assad. The negotiations allegedly involved the Iranian ambassador and security officials in one room, and Israeli security officials in the next room. They “arrived at a quick agreement that even surprised the Israeli representatives.” To facilitate the deal, Iranian and Hezbollah forces began withdrawing from parts of Daraa, according to the opposition Al Souria site on May 24.

Israel: “no problem” with Assad regime “for 40 years”

Once the Assad-Putin offensive was underway, the US and Israeli facilitation of the operation became more blatant, while Israeli declarations of support for Assad moved from a wink to a stampede.

Israel’s National Security Adviser, Meir Ben Shabat, declared in early June that Israel has no problem with Assad remaining in power as long as the Iranians leave; Knesset member Eyal Ben Reuven, of the Zionist Union, stressed that the stability of the Assad regime was “pure Israeli interest.” Another Israeli politician told Al-Hurra TV that “There’s no animosity nor disagreement between us and Bashar al-Assad … he protects Israel’s interests … We now will return to the situation as it was before the revolution.”

Not to be outdone, Netanyahu declared “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.” In case this was not yet clear enough, at a July meeting with his US counterpart, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”.

As usual, the fascistic Lieberman went furthest. After noting that “the Syrian front will be calmer with the return of the Assad rule,” Lieberman stressed  that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, where the central rule under Assad leadership.” Further, he noted that “we are not ruling anything out” regarding the possibility of Israel and the Assad regime establishing “some kind of relationship.”

At a July 1 Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu even dropped the former pre-condition about no “non-Syrian” forces in Assad’s offensive. This was one of the more confusing developments, given the general understanding that Israel was backing Assad precisely to separate him from Iran, as if Israel was only backing Assad as some kind of bargain. As will be explained below, this is a mistaken view.

Despite the reports of Iranian forces moving out of Daraa, as the offensive got underway, evidence of involvement of Iran-backed forces grew. The Iranian-backed Iraqi Zulfiqar Brigade officially announced it was taking part in the offensive. The civil society-linked Etana site published this map showing locations of Iranian-backed militias across south-west Syria. Yet Lieberman explicitly rejected the claim that Iranian and Hezbollah troops who left the region had now returned in Syrian army uniforms, claiming there were only several dozen Iranian “advisors” operating in the region.

Israeli’s propaganda war against Iran still needed to produce fireworks, however, so while ignoring the Iranian-backed forces in the vicinity, Israeli leaders started shouting that Iran must leave “all of Syria;” while Assad pulverised Daraa, Israel took shots at Iranian forces at the opposite ends of Syria – on the Iraqi border and in Aleppo!

What though of the influence Israel had gained in the Quneitra villages, and of the militias it had armed? Was it going to simply throw away the gains it had made in the region?

On the one hand, the region where Israel had gained this influence was tiny; Israel was not throwing away a great deal to get back the pre-2011 certainty of Assad as border-guard. So, as 160,000 refugees gathered at the Golan fence, holding demonstrations to beg for refuge, Lieberman declared that Israel “will not accept any Syrian refugee into our territory”. On July 17, the Israeli army warned displaced Syrians moving towards the Golan fence to “go back before something bad happens.” Israel thus denied the right of Syrians fleeing Assad’s terror to enter occupied Syria. Jordan took the same stance, but at least it is already housing 700,000 Syrian refugees, compared to Israel’s zero.

On the other hand, the sheer viciousness of Assad’s attack still allowed Israel to come off as relatively “humanitarian”. Israel sent humanitarian aid to these refugees, including 300 tents, 13 tons of food, 15 tons of baby formula, three pallets of medical equipment and medicines, and 30 tons of clothing and shoes.

Moreover, Israel’s influence in Quneitra helped in bringing about a relatively “soft landing” for these villages; a Russian and Israeli negotiated “reconciliation” agreement with Assad rather than a massacre. This “reconciliation” of the Israeli-backed groups was uncomplicated; as explained above, a regime-Israel deal to exclude rebels and Iranians had already been negotiated over Beit Jinn. In the final agreement, the Golan Knights are still able to operate in the UN zone, as long as they do not clash with Assad’s forces.

Subduing the real rebels of the Southern Front was more complex, but the “reconciliation” road was also offered by Russia as the carrot to Assad’s stick (ironically, given that Russia itself used the “stick” of terror-bombing to force these “reconciliations”). Russia engaged in secret negotiations with the Southern Front from the start; it took several starts and stops, as the FSA rejected the most outrageous conditions, Russia went back to mass murder, then turned on its “friendly” face again, until there was little choice but to capitulate.

Notably, in the final agreement Russian military police will join the UN forces in the demilitarised zone, and on the Syrian side, they “will hold Tel al-Harra – at 1,200 meters above sea level the highest of the hills overlooking the Golan. From there they will be able to monitor implementation of the separation-of-forces agreement.”

Russia, in other words, is now stationed in Syria both to protect the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan!

As Zvi Bar’el summarised the situation in Haaretz on July 22:

“Military coordination between Israel, Russia and Jordan, Israel’s involvement directly or indirectly in discussions on Russia’s plans for alleviating the Syrian crisis, and Israel’s ability to influence tactical moves in the Golan make it an indirect but significant partner of the Assad regime, which can now rest assured it’s in no danger from Israel.”

Why Israel never supported the FSA

We have discussed why Israel dropped its tiny proxy groups and came down hard in support of Assad re-taking the Golan. But it is interesting turning the question on its head – if Israel’s region of influence was tiny, yet seemingly successful within those limits, why didn’t Israel try to extend this influence, by arming the Southern Front against Assad, and becoming a “Good Neighbour” throughout Daraa?

As noted above, Israel prefers Arab dictators in power; they may use anti-Israel rhetoric, but their conservative interests are served by maintaining the oppressive status quo, which includes Israel. Moreover, when Israel’s own anti-democratic policies are highlighted, its leaders claim to be better to their Arab subjects than various Arab tyrants are to their own.

A democratic Syria would undermine Israel’s justifications for its oppression of the Palestinian people. While Israel and the US are more publicly hostile to the Islamist currents in Syria, in fact the most democratic and non-sectarian solution in Syria would have been the most antithetical to Israeli interests. Imagine a victory of the vision in the image above from the Southern Front – “Syria is for all: Druze, Kurds, Alawi, Assyrians, Sunni, Christians.” What message would that have had for a sectarian state like Israel?

However, as the length of the war eroded the possibilities of democratic change, forced liberated communities to fight for survival, and led to corruption and authoritarianism among many rebel groups, could not Israel have developed relations with armed groups motivated by survival and power, who had little potential to bring about democratic change anyway?

Perhaps; but if Israel was going to take the risk of supporting a real rebel group (as opposed to its pacified proxies) – not for “regime change”, but merely for a larger friendly ‘buffer’ to protect its existing Golan ‘buffer’ – then it would require the group to capitulate to Israeli terms. Since Assad had been the perfect “border-guard” for the Israeli occupation for 40 years, a rebel group would need to go beyond that, to officially accept the Golan as Israeli.

Yet, for all the slanders that have been heaped on the FSA and other rebels, there has never been any movement whatsoever by the Syrian rebels to accept the Israeli theft of the Golan. They are fighting a liberation war; it goes against everything they are fighting for to sell out to the state occupying their territory and oppressing their Palestinian brethren.

Following Netanyahu’s assertion last year that the Golan will remain forever Israeli, Riad Hijab, head of the Syrian opposition National Coalition, responded that “we won’t give up on our territorial completeness or on the unification of our social fabric. We won’t concede a single grain of soil. The Golan is Syrian land and it will be returned to Syria.”

This was in accord with opposition policy. The opposition Higher Negotiations Committee, in its ‘Executive Framework for a Political Solution Based on the Geneva Communique’ in September 2016, declares that “Syria is an independent sovereign state. No part of its territories may be separated or conceded. Nor can its right to regain its occupied territories by all legitimate means guaranteed in the UN Charter be waived.”

The FSA has also constantly rejected giving up the Golan. When exile-based oppositionist, Issam Zeitoun, attended a ‘security’ conference in Israel, he was initially mistakenly billed as a representative of the Southern Front, causing a storm as the Front furiously rejected having anything to do with the visit.

Similarly, when asked about their stance on Israel, Ahmad Al-Sa’oud, head of FSA Division 13, answered “we are for the return of all Syrian land occupied by Israel.” This “caused concern among terrorism experts, who have long warned that US arms could fall into the hands of radical militant groups” according to the right-wing Free Beacon, quoting “terrorism analyst” Patrick Poole, who claimed “This is precisely the problem we’ve faced in arming the Syrian opposition … there’s no confidence that … the US government has any idea who they’re dealing with or what their agenda might be.” Apparently, international law on the Golan is equivalent to “terrorism”.

In similar vein, when Trump recognised Israeli-occupied Jerusalem as the “capital” of Israel last December, demonstrations condemning this move and in solidarity with the Palestinians broke out all over opposition-controlled Syria, from Daraa through East Ghouta and south Damascus to Homs and Idlib and northern Aleppo. Here protesters in camps for displaced Syrians in northern Idlib hold signs stating “Sanaa, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus are occupied by Iran, Jerusalem occupied by Israel”; and here Syrians and Palestinians are demonstrating in besieged southern Damascus against the Jerusalem decision, chanting “Oh shame, oh shame, We won’t sacrifice the Golan” and “We’ll sacrifice our blood & soul for Aqsa.”

And here are the Palestinian and the Syrian revolution flags painted on a wall in Kuftkharim in Idlib during May, to show solidarity with Gaza during recent Israeli attacks; the phrase “From Syria to Gaza, we share the same wound” is written on it.

Clearly, these are not the kinds of people Israel was ever going to form an alliance with.

Russian-Iranian rivalry and Iran’s growing dispensability

A number of issues emerge that are connected to these agreements to facilitate Assad’s victory. For one, while Russia’s close connections to Israel have been discussed, why was it so enthusiastic about moving against Iran, supposedly its ally in support of Assad?

Essentially, now that Assad has been saved, his two key allies now emerge as rivals to be the more dominant power over Assad’s blighted little satrapy in the post-war era.

According to the Syrian Observer, the regime and Russia signed a “roadmap” for 2018 and beyond, including “the stages of implementing strategic projects related to reconstruction and renewing Syrian energy facilities.” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s statement that “Russia’s presence in reconstruction does not mean Iran has no presence” hinted at the rivalry.

Henry Rome, Iran researcher for the Eurasia Group in Washington, noted that “Iran fought a very difficult war … and expects long-term concessions out of that in terms of energy contracts and so on,” claiming there was “consternation in Tehran that Russian and Turkish firms are winning key contracts instead of them.”

This rivalry is also being expressed in the cultural sphere, particularly in Russian and Iranian school building, with rival ideological overtones.

Some of this is now emerging more openly. In late June, advisor to the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Khorram, claimed Russia “stabbed Iran from behind in Syria.”

A related issue is that, the more Assad is victorious on the ground, the less the presence of global pro-Iranian Shiite cannon-fodder remains essential.

The current consensus – Russian-backed Assad and Israel win with US support, rebels and Iran both lose – seems too obvious. Why has it taken until now to bring it into operation? Essentially, Assad needed this Iranian-backed cannon fodder to help defeat the rebels, given the weakness of his own forces. Therefore, while Russia has actively courted Israel, it needed to give more time for the Iran-backed forces to do Assad’s dirty work. Even Israel essentially recognised this; it acted more impatiently, but none of its pinprick strikes on Iranian-backed assets were designed to put a dent on the ability of the regime to win its war.

The biggest Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, Trump’s scrapping of the Iran deal, Pompeo’s vicious barking, and Putin’s more open collusion against Iran all came in the period after Assad had subjugated East Ghouta, which established his regime as safe.

At some point, the “secular” Baathist tyrant will be just as bothered by these unruly troops loyal to a foreign theocracy. In early July, Iranian parliamentarian Behoruz Bonyadi accused Assad of tilting in Russia’s direction: “Today we see Assad increasing his harmony with Putin with all brazenness. He not only demeans the importance of the role of the martyrs of the Maraked (Shia Imam Tombs) in Syria, but also denied this role sometimes.”

The US: Bombastic irrelevance or new war-maker?

As a partner in this regional counterrevolutionary deal – even if taking a relative backseat while the Russian-Israeli gendarme regimes do the dirty work – the Trump administration as also drawn a firm distinction between the Assad regime and Iran. It is no coincidence that it began upping the ante with Iran – scrapping the nuclear agreement, Pompeo’s extraordinarily aggressive speech – in the period following Assad’s crushing of Ghouta, as Iran was becoming more dispensable to Assad. Whether the end-game is a catastrophic attack on Iran, or the symbolic victory of a slightly “better” nuclear accord achieved through “strength”, remains to be seen.

But one reality not commonly noted is that this new rhetoric – for example Pompeo’s demand  that Iranian forces leave Syria, Iraq and Yemen (Iranian forces are not in Yemen) – is that these matters already had a life of their own: the Russia/Israel deal partially evicted Iran from southern Syria; Iraqis voted for a movement that opposes the Iranian presence in Iraq (and the US presence!), while the Iraqi masses protest in the streets against Iran; the Houthis in Yemen weakened themselves by going to war with their key ally, former dictator Saleh; the Arab minority in Iranian Ahvaaz has been in uprising; and Iranian people have also been in various forms of uprising throughout this year. Pompeo’s bombast may have aimed at making it sound like the US had something to do with all this.

Is this more evidence of alleged US “weakness”? While the US was less directly involved, the Israel-Russia agreement was fully in accord with US interests; there is no evidence of US leaders seeing it otherwise.

On the other hand, despite rhetoric, the US is likely to be rather wary of the revolutionary ferment across Iran, Iraq and Ahvaaz, which have a life of their own and cannot be attributed to US pressure on the Iranian regime. The real US ‘contribution’ has only now begun with the re-imposition of harsh sanctions on Iran in early August. While much analysis sees this as part of a build-up towards a war, this is only possibility. More likely, this is a device for the US to attempt to exert some control over the situation in the increasingly unstable eastern end of the region.

Trump’s call for the US to leave Syria, versus the Pentagon’s demand that it stay, is an issue that is unrelated to that of Assad versus the rebellion, except that now that Assad has mostly won the counterrevolutionary war against the rebels, Trump sees no problem left in Syria.  In February, he declared “We’re there for one reason: to get ISIS and get rid of ISIS and to go home. We’re not there for any other reason.” In April he repeated that “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS, we’re coming out of Syria very soon.” However, this is contradicted by the Pentagon, which is unwilling to give up the gains the US has made in northeastern Syria, where it has some 11 military bases and is in a position to influence the outcome in Syria.

However, it goes against the history of the last seven years to imagine that ‘influence on the outcome’ means ousting Assad; the basis of the US alliance with the Kurdish-led SDF in the northeast is precisely that the latter does not fight the regime. A US withdrawal would sell out its Kurdish allies to Assad and Erdogan, but is irrelevant to the anti-Assad rebellion one way or the other; and one line of discussion towards a possible outcome is allegedly a “Kurds for Iranians” swap: the US leaves Rojava for Assad, on condition Assad kicks out Iranian forces.

Apart from wanting to complete the defeat of ISIS, by remaining the Pentagon aims to be in a position to put a dent in the Iranian project of an unbroken Tehran to Beirut road. This is of largely symbolic value, however, since, despite the over-hyping of this “land-bridge,” Iran sends arms to Hezbollah via air or sea, it does not need a rickety 2000 kilometre “road” for that; and with allied governments in Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut regardless, the “taming” of Iran on behalf of rival regional interests should not be confused with outright defeat: unless defeated by the popular uprisings, Iran will still exert its hegemony over the northern tier of the Levant as its reward for its role in the Syrian counterrevolution.

… and the “reactionary Arab states”?

The popular discourse that “reactionary” Arab states supported the Syrian rebellion only ever really meant Saudi Arabia and Qatar, fierce rivals for the Sunni “vote”. With the US-backed Iraqi regime in Assad’s camp, alongside al-Sisi’s brutal Egyptian tyranny, Sisi’s close allies Jordan and the UAE, while less blatant, were never onside with the revolution: their hostility to democratic revolution matched only by their hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood. The three states welcomed the Russian intervention in Syria as a chance to fight “terrorism”; Jordan and the UAE both drew up lists of “terrorist” organisations in the Syrian rebellion. Now the UAE has come out more clearly: on June 8, UAE Foreign Minister Dr. Anwar Gargash declared “The choice between an Al-Qaeda based opposition or Assad is a false choice … I think it was a mistake to kick Syria out of the Arab league.”

Saudi Arabia, while closely allied to these three states, was the exception, as its geopolitical-sectarian rivalry with Iran overshadowed the hatred of democracy and the MB it shared with them; and given Assad’s genocide against the Sunni Muslim population, it was more difficult for a regime seeing itself as leader of the Muslim world to separate Assad from Iran than it was for the US or Israel to do so. But that point eventually arrived, with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman stating that “Bashar is staying. But I believe that Bashar’s interests are not to let the Iranians do whatever they want they want to do.”

Israel and Iran: War of rhetoric

Given the centrality, however, of making Iran the “fall guy” to the Trump-Netanyahu agreement with Putin to save Assad, the nature of this great Iran-Israel “conflict” is worth exploring. What is behind Israel’s campaign against pro-Iranian forces in Syria, and its wild anti-Iranian rhetoric in general?

Does nuclear-armed Israel really view Iran as a “threat”? This laughable proposition should have been put to rest when Israel claimed to have wiped out half the Iranian military capacity in Syria in one afternoon in May. So, instead, are Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria rather a “nuisance” to the Israeli occupation of the Golan, by firing rockets across the fence?

The problem with this assumption is that the Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria never fire anything into the Golan. Whatever rhetoric, their entire role in Syria has been to kill Syrians for Assad, not to be even a nuisance in the Golan, let alone to “liberate Jerusalem.” Of the one hundred times Israel claims to have struck pro-Iranian targets, Iran and Hezbollah have only even responded once each. So the pro-Iranian forces have not been one iota more “steadfast” against the Golan occupation than the Assad regime which kept the “border” quiet for forty years.

Unless one believes that Iran’s theocratic tyranny has any interest in “liberating Palestinians” (assuming “liberation” were possible via the Iranian military conquest), or liberating anyone; or unless one thinks that conquering and subjugating Israel (if that were in the realms of possibility) were an imperial aim of Iran, then we need a better explanation for Iranian noise.

And given this reality, we also need an explanation for why Israel keeps hitting these Iran-backed forces which have no interest in hitting them.

The common answer would be that Iran and Israel are regional rivals, just as medium-sized powers Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are rivals for regional hegemonic influence. However, there are also problems with this explanation.

Saudi Arabia, for example, wants to restrict Iran’s regional influence because the two countries are actual rivals for influence in the Arab and Muslim world; their geopolitical rivalry is often fought with sectarian overtones. In contrast, Israel is capable of gaining next to zero influence anywhere in the Arab or Muslim world (unless it came to some kind of just arrangement with Palestine). As we saw, even the influence it had begun to gain in the Syrian Golan was tiny and expendable.

Rather, Israel and Iran are engaged in a war of rhetoric. The racist, colonialist project of Zionism is ideologically invested in the existence of an alleged “Fourth Reich” in the region which supposedly aims to “drive Jews into the sea.” And Iran projects baseless “radical” bombast for the same reason: its own reactionary theocratic project, in a non-Arab and non-Sunni state, can be enhanced if it similarly has an evil “enemy” that it “leads resistance” to, even if this amounts to nothing. The “liberate Jerusalem” noise is a mobilisational device to hoodwink the masses as Iranian sub-imperialism attempts to project its power over the northern tier of the Levant.

This ideological war for preservation of the twin sectarian-theocratic projects can continue for decades without “accidents” due to the geographic distance between the two states. The Gaddafi regime in Libya similarly used to be the most furious “fighter against Zionism” from the middle of north Africa.

However, with Iranian-backed forces now all over Syria, the game cannot be played as before; rhetoric requires some kind of action, lest its hollowness be exposed. A bunch of unruly militia in its “backyard” shouting rhetoric about “destroying Israel”, however baseless, is something that Israel needs to show it can blast away. However, by doing nothing, Iran undermines its own ideological bluster; until now, it could claim this was because it first needed to defeat the “CIA-Mossad-Wahabbi-ISIS” conspiracy to overthrow Assad’s “resistance” regime, but this excuse is rapidly wearing thin.

As the only First World state in the region, Israel asserts its hegemony in a different way to the regional powers. One role for a small imperialist state is that of regional gendarme, which is also important for maintaining its position as most favoured nation by its US benefactor, and the billions in arms that come with it. Seeing that it is actually Saudi regional influence that is threatened by Iranian competition, Israel currently aims to demonstrate that it can defeat the “Iranian threat” and in exchange win Saudi-Gulf agreement for a more official betrayal of Palestine. This however is more easily imagined than done.

What now for the Syrian revolution?

The military defeat of the Southern Front and Assad’s reconquest of the south, following the subjugation of the Damascus region, cannot be underestimated in terms of the blow it delivers against the revolution. While outright military victory by the opposition was never on the cards, holding territory where they had a base among the population was necessary to be able to build semi-democratic institutions as an alternative to the regime, and to have something to bargain with.

The only area still under rebel control is ‘Greater Idlib’ (Idlib province, southern and western Aleppo and northern Hama and Latakia). Here ongoing contestation exists between the majority of rebels and town councils on the one hand, and the jihadist HTS on the other; while often depicted as HTS-run, the revolutionary situation is highlighted by this resistance to HTS, and the latter’s inability to fully impose its program in areas it does control.

However, pressure also comes from Turkey, which supports the anti-HTS rebels, but in doing so tries to keep the front quiet with the regime and use them as proxies as part of the Astana process, which Turkey is involved in alongside Russia and Iran. This may be more easily said than done; these rebels are unlikely to take orders to give up Idlib, if they were handed down. Russia has given conflicting messages, sometimes indicating an attack on Idlib is imminent, other times, denying it, but the Assad regime is already involved in significant bombing. More likely, Russia and Turkey will team up to “solve the HTS problem” by using the just opposition to HTS to push the rebels into a fratricidal war against HTS, for the wrong reasons at the wrong time, from which only the regime would gain.

In northern Aleppo, Turkey has already enlisted many rebel groups as proxies for its anti-Kurdish designs, when they jointly invaded Afrin and expelled the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, led by the Peoples Protection Units, YPG) – and 170,000 Kurdish civilians. The Turkish occupation and their proxy militia are carrying out extensive theft, looting and war crimes, further driving in the wedge between the Arab and Kurdish populations. The Afrin YPG played its own part in this, when two years earlier it attacked the rebels in the Arab-majority Tal Rifaat region of northern Aleppo, supported by Russian air strikes, and expelled the populations. The divisive handiwork of the imperial powers is evident from the current map: while Turkey and its proxies occupy Kurdish Afrin, the Arabic Tal Rifaat region is still under YPG control.

In the northern Aleppo borderlands, Turkey occupies the region between Azaz and Jarablus, via al-Bab, in an uneasy alliance with the local rebel forces, who jointly evicted ISIS in 2016. Given the largely Arab-Turkmen population, this is a different situation to that of Afrin. Nevertheless, there again exists an ongoing contestation between Turkish hegemony and local rebels asserting their own authority. Given the alternative of the regime’s return, however, the population sees the current situation as vastly preferable.

The SDF rules over the northeast with the support of the US, with its own style revolutionary structures, while there is contestation between the SDF and local Arab populations in some places, especially in Raqqa. However, both the US and the SDF, each for their own reasons, are likely to try to do some kind of deal with the Assad regime. Nevertheless, this again may turn out to not be so simple, if the Kurdish and Arab people there resist such an eventuality.

But aside from the military situation, the other question is whether the regime’s military victories can be translated into a new counterrevolutionary stability, or the liberation of Syrians from fear results in ongoing protests, underground resistance, instances of guerrilla warfare and so on.

At this stage, there is not a great deal positive to be said. While it would be premature to declare it all “over,” analysis needs to reckon with the reality of mass exhaustion and desire for some kind of stability, even one where people have to return to keeping their mouths shut. The option of being endlessly bombed and having everything around them destroyed is not an attractive one, especially now that the regime has turned the tide.

But even such stultifying “stability” may not be good enough for the regime, which is determined to violently crush any sign of opposition, even if that means millions of people; and it may also be much less stable for those in former rebel strongholds who were forcibly “reconciled” with the regime. It is good not to be bombed; but the uprising did not start with regime bombing, but out of revulsion against the regime’s practices of detaining, torturing, killing and “disappearing” people. The regime’s recent issuing of thousands of death certificates for those it has held in captivity for years (and the likelihood that we are looking at tens of thousands), highlights that being bombed is not the only life and death concern of Syrians: having your son or daughter “disappear” is not the “stability” that people long for.

This dilemma was played out in the south. While some criticised the Southern Front for surrendering too quickly, after fighting for “only” a few weeks, others suggested they should not have fought at all, since the certainty of defeat would mean more civilians being slaughtered by the regime for no reason. However logical this second view may seem from a distance, it is up to those on the ground to make such life and death decisions. In fact, when the SF did sign the surrender agreements, many civilians condemned them for giving up, and even organised new civilian militia to keep regime forces out. Given that the regime has repaid the ‘reconciliation agreement’ in Daraa, as with Ghouta and elsewhere, with betrayal, arrests, killings, detentions and so on, this desire to resist was understandable; especially among those who already knew they were wanted: “Everyone in the village is wanted. I don’t expect anyone to return,” reported a former resident of the Daraa village of Kheil, who had escaped with 22 relatives. Yet with their backs to the Israeli-Jordanian wall, the SF ultimately had little choice but to sign on.

It is a particularly dark day for the world when the survival of such a regime is seen as a mark of the new order in the region, a signifier of “peace.” There was never going to be a successful “democratic revolution in one country” once the rest of the Arab Spring was put down. But with continual outbreaks of popular resistance in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and elsewhere, a re-opening of resistance in Syria cannot be ruled out. Given this, holding on to whatever pieces of Syria remain outside Assad’s control – even in situations where other foreign powers and their proxies, or local reactionary forces such as HTS, or forces that have stood apart from the main theatre of revolution, such as the SDF, are playing important roles in contested environments – may be of great importance as future bases if the ferment returns to Syria.

By Michael Karadjis

Below is a reply I wrote to an old friend who asked some questions about Syria. He is far from being an Assadist, indeed he notes that Assad is a horrible dictator, and states that the Assad-Russia-Iran alliance should not be given any support at all. However, like a great many who don’t have time to read deeply on the issue, his view is partially informed by the simplistic geopolitics as presented in the mainstream media, and unfortunately, by much of the “alternative” media that should know better. I have decided to put my Facebook reply up here as an article because, in order to reply, I wrote a substantial summary of the Syria issue, both challenging the idea that geopolitics can be our main guide to analysing Syria, but also showing how much more complex the actual geopolitics of Syria is. In fact, these two aspects are related: it is precisely because of the fact that in Syria we are dealing with real social forces, with real revolution and counterrevolution, that the geopolitics is messy, because all the different imperialist and local reactionary states seek to crush, control, co-opt or divert the revolution in different ways, which end up having little to do with traditional “alliances”.

As initially a Facebook reply, I have not filled this article with referencing as I usually do; those who read my work know that everything I write is normally fully referenced, and most of what I write here has already been covered in countless articles on this site.

First, the question I am replying to:

“Give us some more backgound on this Mike. I see the US supporting Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Russians supporting Assad and Iran. Neither are right or supportable in any way. While Assad is a horrible dictator, at least some among the Syrian opposition are Jihadists, and not a good alternative. Let me know if this is not correct mate.”

My response:

I’m not sure how to summarise the last 7 years in one Facebook reply, but I’ll give it a go and provide you some links to articles on my site below.

The first thing is that Assad is not merely “a horrible dictator” like countless others; this is a tyrannical regime that has bombed every city and town in its country to pieces, including all the surrounding (ie, working class, semi-proletarian, semi-rural) suburbs of the capital, reduced its entire country to rubble, in its attempt to keep itself and its narrow oligarchic clique in power. I’m not sure when we’ve ever seen such massive and long-term use of an air-force by a regime against its own people; not that it is better when it is used this way against another country (eg the US in Vietnam), or people under occupation (eg, Israel in Gaza), or a secessionist part of a country; just that precisely this underlines the nature of the conflict in Syria: to the regime, the people are an enemy nation, to the people, the Assad clique is similar to a foreign occupation – even before it in fact became little more than the local sheriff for Russian imperialism and the Iranian theocracy. The last count of 470,000 killed was from January 2016, so we need to stop quoting this ancient figure as if no-one had been killed in the last two plus years; one can only imagine how high the figure must be by now. Half the population has been uprooted from their homes, including 5.5 million (a quarter of the Syrian population) outside Syria, mostly in massive concentrations in neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, a new al-Nakbah on a colossal scale.

The second thing I want to say is that there is a problem with method: while I disagree with your presentation of the geopolitics of the conflict (as I will outline below), even if I agreed, I think it is the wrong way to analyse Syria. The fundamental issue is that the Syrian people rose up against a bloodthirsty tyrant, who used massive murderous violence against them for months until some started taking arms to defend their demonstrations and their communities, and some troops began deciding to protect their brothers and sisters instead of killing them, ie, defecting, and formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA). After that the regime upped its violence to genocidal levels, and as you note, this also provoked a degree of Islamic extremism on the fringes of the anti-Assad movement as well (similar to what previously happened in the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq, in Palestine and so on). But the fundamental issue is the people’s uprising; the rebels merely arose as the armed reflection of it. But armed struggle in itself then creates its own issues, and so many rebel groups are often a very imperfect reflection of the uprising, which nevertheless continues behind armed conflict and is its beating heart. Overwhelmingly, the armed formations play a defensive role, defending the revolution-held towns against being overrun by the regime; there is no “military solution” by which they would ever be able to “take power” in their own name (any more than the democratic-secular Palestine we aspire to will come about by a military conquest of Tel Aviv by Hamas from Gaza), and indeed they have never claimed that is their aim. The aim of the military struggle is two-fold: firstly, as I pointed out, defensive, and secondly, to pressure the Assad regime into honest negotiations, from a better bargaining position. Therefore, exaggerated and often wildly inaccurate descriptions of the politics of the rebel leaderships (which in fact vary widely from democratic-secular to hard Islamist) have much less relevance than is often made out.

By the way, just on that question, when you say that at least part of the armed opposition are “jihadists”, I can only assume you mean Jabhat al-Nusra (now HTS) and ISIS – other Islamists range from very moderate to much harder but are not in any sense “jihadists”. Of these, only Nusra can be considered to be in any sense a part of the armed opposition, and even that has always been at an arm’s length. ISIS of course has nothing to do with the anti-Assad rebellion, rather it is an open enemy of it – it always fought the rebels much more than it fights Assad; and the rebels have fought ISIS much more than Assad ever has. In fact, for the first year and a half of ISIS in Syria (essentially an invasion from Iraq), from March 2013 to September 2014, the Assad regime barely touched it; rather, both Assad and ISIS overwhelmingly fought the rebels, often enough in tandem. In January 2014, the rebels launched a coordinated nationwide attack on ISIS, driving it out permanently from the whole of western Syria (and as they did, the regime stepped up its bombing of the rebels) and temporarily even from most of north-eastern Syria (briefly even from its capital Raqqa). ISIS only made a comeback in north-eastern Syria after it captured the entire US-supplied military arsenal of the US/Iran-backed Iraqi army, which ran away, in Mosul in June 2014.

In September 2014, the US began bombing ISIS in Syria, and has been bombing them for 3.5 years, finally driving them almost completely from Syria late last year. However, the US also began bombing Nusra from Day One, and has since launched hundreds of strikes against Nusra. Nusra is a sectarian and reactionary organisation which the rebels will need to deal with in the time of their choosing, but is nothing remotely like ISIS, and is a little mouse compared to the genocidal Assad regime; and unlike ISIS, they are usually in areas adjacent to the rebel groups, so when the US bombs them, it effectively weakens the rebel front militarily against Assad. The rebels themselves often fight Nusra, in acts of resistance against their attempts to impose their reactionary program, and many liberated towns in rebel-held regions also resist Nusra encroachment. However, Nusra (unlike ISIS) focuses on fighting Assad, so when the US bombs Nusra, it is seen as an attack on the rebellion, and so it in fact boosts Nusra’s standing as a force seen to be resisting both Assad and US imperialism. Last March, the US bombed a mosque in Idlib, targeting Nusra, and killed 57 worshippers; this was just before the first ever US strike on the Assad regime, when it bombed a half-empty airbase in response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons; no civilians were killed in the strike on Assad. Yet the response of the fake western “anti-war” movement to the murderous strike on the mosque was, meh, whereas when Assad was struck for the first time ever, it rose up in horror. In any case, the US bombs have also struck mainstream Islamists and even the FSA many times.

In fact, it was only after the US began bombing ISIS that the Assad regime also began bombing ISIS at all, in order to show it could be a partner of the US “war on terror” (officially Damascus welcomed the onset of US airstrikes); often enough they began bombing Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and other places in tandem. But it remained overwhelmingly a US war. It was only really in 2017 that Assad and Putin, having crushed rebel-held Aleppo, joined this US war on ISIS on a large scale, after the US had done most of the softening up. Assad has the US to thank for allowing him to re-take the east of the country from ISIS.

So, does the geopolitical take which you outlined (and I’m not blaming you for it – this is the simplistic way it is often presented in mainstream and “left” media) take into account that the US has actually been bombing Syria for years, just not bombing Assad, but rather bombing enemies (or in ISIS’ case, ‘frenemies’) of Assad, often enough in semi-alliance and at times in open coordination with Assad? Of course, the US war in eastern Syria has mostly been in alliance not so much with Assad directly (and never with the rebels), but overwhelmingly with the Kurdish-led YPG (ie, the PKK-connected Kurdish militia in Syria); the US chose them as a partner not out of love, but because the YPG prefers to only fight ISIS and not the Assad regime, which thus fits US policy perfectly. The US war on ISIS (and Nusra etc) has killed thousands of civilians, and destroyed 90% of the city of Raqqa, more or less completely. By contrast, this recent US strike on Assad’s chemical plants was over in an hour or so, killed zero civilians, and probably destroyed nothing much anyway, because Trump and Macron had tipped off their mate Putin who tipped off his mate Assad, days before, so the plants were almost certainly emptied (just like the airbase had been, that the US hit a year ago, after Assad’s chemical weapons attack last April). In short, the “anti”-war-o-sphere has been up in arms about this brief piece of elaborate theatre, warning about … “World War III”, while none of them ever had anything to say on the last 3.5 years of actual US war in Syria, including the slaughter of civilians, even the use of white phosphorus etc (needless to say it has had even less to say about the real war on Syria waged for years by Assad and Putin). That is not anti-war, or anti-imperialist, rather it is just pro-Assad, even those who do not claim to be. Otherwise, how can we explain this blatant contradiction?

So again, how can this overall US role fit with the geopolitics outlined above? Yes, the US is allied to Israel and to Saudi Arabia. So what? Yes, the Saudis used to support the Syrian opposition, for their own reasons; partly due to be their geopolitical-sectarian struggle for regional leadership with Iran; and partly because once Assad’s slaughter of mostly Sunni Syrians became a region-wide Nakbha, the supposed head of the Sunni Islamic world felt the need to take a stand or get swept aside by its Sunni jihadist enemies. However, it is unlikely that an absolute monarchy ever actually wanted a people’s victory over Assad (indeed, in the first 6 months of the uprising, the Saudi regime strongly supported Assad, as did Qatar and other Gulf monarchies); they wanted to pressure Assad to compromise, because his war on Syrians was causing massive destabilisation to the entire region. Since they launched their own bloody war on Yemen in 2015, however, the Saudis have shown far less enthusiasm for Syria, and over the last couple of years have essentially lost all interest in helping evict Assad, as is widely recognised.

But the Americans were much less enthusiastic than the Saudis even from the start (absurd leftist myths about “regime change” aside), and often held them back, sometimes blocking them from shipping any arms. Of course, the US also wanted some (milder) pressure on Assad to compromise (a little), and so their aims partly corresponded with Saudi aims; but the US’ main reason for doling out some arms with an eye-dropper to some select rebel groups was much more about co-opting them in order to divert them from fighting Assad into fighting ISIS only. Actually, it is not even clear how much the US has provided at all, despite the hype; for a time the issue was only what kind of arms and how much the US would allow the Saudis or Qatar to send and what and how much it blocked; when the US allowed the Saudis (or Qatar) to send more, that was often interpreted as US arms.

The main US role, apart from pushing rebels to quit fighting Assad in order to only fight ISIS, was to block, from 2012 till today, anyone – Saudis, Qatar, Turkey, former Libyan rebels, the black market – from sending defensive anti-aircraft weaponry to the rebels, in a war that has been, since 2012, overwhelmingly an air war. I’m not sure what one is to make of this elephant in the room – I see this as a much more decisive intervention than any other in the war, and I’m unsure why not many others see it the same way, including many anti-Assadists. Of course, anti-aircraft weapons are not a panacea to end all suffering, but the fundamental fact is that in the era of modern air-forces, it is very difficult for a revolution to resist; if the rebels had these decisive defensive weapons, it would not allow them to seize Damascus or any region where Assad has a support base, but it would allow the battle on the ground to be on a slightly more levelled playing field (the regime would still have overwhelming military superiority), without the overwhelming suffering caused to the rebels’ civilian base by Assad’s air-power.

We can romanticise the Vietnamese victory over US imperialism as much as we want, as long as we remember that at least when the Soviets were also doling out military “aid with an eye-dropper,” as we complained at the time, that at least the “eye-dropper” then allowed through decisive anti-aircraft weapons that the Vietnamese used to great effect, especially during Nixon’s horrific Christmas bombing of 1972, when the skies were filled with fireworks displays of exploding US warplanes.

As for Israel, it has never aided the rebels, and has since the outset adopted a rather standoffish, if not hostile stance towards them (and the rebels have never shown any interest in gaining Israeli support either, have always insisted that the Golan is Syrian, and rebel-held Syria erupted in anti-Trump demonstrations when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s “capital”). Israel prefers Assad keep power, but has been increasingly drawn in to attacking Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria. Of course, Iranian-backed forces and Hezbollah are major backers of the largely collapsed Syrian army; but Israel has tended to strike in a way narrowly focused on its own interests, taking on the nature of a parallel war. It has never targeted the regime or Iran or Hezbollah in the context of a battle with the rebels (and, to be fair, the rebels probably didn’t want it either); in fact, the one time Israel intervened directly in battle was in late 2017, near the Golan, when it prevented the rebels taking a town from the regime. After an Israeli strike on Iranian assets in January 2018 in central Syria, we saw the whole genocidal Assad bombing of Ghouta, killing 1700 people in 4 weeks, with “conventional” weapons of mass destruction rather than chemicals, and so there was not a peep out of Trump, the US, France, the UK etc, and neither was there another peep from Israel – this was of no concern at all. In fact, when Israel did just recently hit Iranian assets again in central Syria, it was after the end of the Ghouta battle, as if this bracketing of Assad’s decisive showdown with the Ghouta opposition, at both ends, was deliberately aimed at symbolising that this fight was of no concern to Israel at all, if not that it preferred Assad’s victory there.

This shows my problem with a discussion that says on one side is the US allied with Israel and Saudi Arabia and on the other is Russia and Iran allied to Assad!

Moreover, we should add that while Israel targets Iran, it has excellent relations with Assad’s other major backer, Russia, the imperialist state engaged in a massive air war against the Syrian people on behalf of the tyrant, much like the US in Vietnam or elsewhere. After Russia invaded, Putin and Netanyahu had so many high-level love fests that I lost count – Israel clearly saw the opportunity for Russia to replace Iran as Assad’s main backer; the reason this hasn’t (yet) come to pass is that Assad and Putin still need Iranian, and Iraqi and Afghan Shiite, and Hezbollah cannon fodder on the ground. Of course, Russia’s advanced anti-aircraft system that it provided to Assad and which it operates never downs Israeli warplanes that attack Iranian and Hezbollah targets, knowing full well that these strikes do little damage to Assad. And a major piece of US-Russian collaboration last year, involving Israel and Jordan, was the southwestern “de-confliction zone”, which while banning rebel moves against Damascus, also ensured that Iranian and allied forces were to be nowhere near the Golan (this obviously did not apply to Assad’s own forces).

Further to the geopolitical problem is that the US is also allied with the Egyptian dictatorship of al-Sisi, to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, smaller Gulf sheikdoms like Bahrain, and to the Iraqi regime, which it installed via invasion and still provides massive military backing to. Yet Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain and Iraq are strongly pro-Assad, while Jordan has also been mending ties with the Assad regime had in any case cut off arms to the southern-based rebels in advance of Assad’s reconquest of the south in 2018.

To elaborate: Saudi Arabia helped overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt in 2013; that regime had been supporting the Syrian uprising; despite the Saudis own support for the anti-Assad uprising, from the very start the new al-Sisi tyranny clearly identified Assad as a kindred-spirit, and sends not only arms but even fighter pilots to aid his regime. Egypt, Jordan and the UAE put out a joint statement when Russia began bombing Syria on behalf of Assad in 2015, welcoming the Russian intervention! Bahrain soon after put out its own statement welcoming Russia. By late 2018, the UAE and Jordan were the first Arab states to officially restore diplomatic relations with Assad, while Jordan also began signing border agreements with Assad; Egypt under Sisi had essentially retained relations anyway. So, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain – the advance guard of Arab reaction reconciling with Assad; Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain – the advance guard reconciling with Israel, in much the same period. Coincidence? I think not. Contradiction? I think not. Different camps? I think we can see that that does not make sense here.

As for Iraq, the regime is a US-Iranian joint-venture, a gigantic hole in the geopolitical theory if ever there was one! The Iraqi regime has poured thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Shiite sectarian militia into Syria to prop up Assad; if the US had not been actively arming the Iraqi regime and providing large scale military intervention to help it against ISIS, all those Iraqi forces would have been needed in Iraq. In a sense, the US directly aided the mass Iranian-Iraqi Shiite sectarian intervention in Syria.

Anyway, I guess by now you get my drift.

_{School basement used as underground bomb shelter, before and after bombed by Russian airforce on March 20 (Mohammed Abdullah)}

By Michael Karadjis

In early April 2011, shortly after the start of the Syrian uprising on March 15, people poured into the streets in Ghouta, peacefully chanting “The people want the fall of the regime.” Watch this video, and see what happened next: this slaughter of peaceful protest throughout Syria continued for the next six months before some citizens began defending their protests with weapons, and some regime troops began to protect their brothers and sisters rather than kill them; thus was formed, organically from the struggle, the Free Syrian Army.

As the Assad regime, backed by Russian terror-bombing, today closes in on rebel-held East Ghouta, where 400,000 reside among the bombed-out ruins of this vast working-class district, it is important to consider what is at stake. As we will see, beyond the stick-figure style analysis in both the mainstream western media and, generally worse, in the woke “alternative” media, that speaks of a battle between the regime and “terrorists” or “militants” holding East Ghouta, the reality is that a powerful civil side to the revolution continues to exist, a Free Syrian Army also continues to exist alongside better-known Islamist brigades, and even the most odious of the Islamist brigades has been unable to completely dominate over the organs of the revolution, including the democratic local councils.

As we will see, what is at stake in the crushing of Ghouta are the hopes and dreams of millions of Syrians to live with basic freedoms without being saddled by one of the world’s most savage dictatorships.

The Assad-Putin Armageddon

Ghouta has been under horrific siege, with every conceivable weapon of mass destruction bar nuclear poured into the region, with an ongoing war against hospitals and medical centres, and with starvation used a key weapon, for some six years. However, the current offensive that began on February 18 is possibly the worst to date.

According to the Violations Documentation Centre (VDC), 1678 people were killed in East Ghouta in the four weeks between February 18 and March 17, of whom 91.4 percent were civilians, and 230 were children. By way of comparison, 1462 civilians were slaughtered by Israel in Gaza during the seven-week period of its ‘Operation Protective Edge’ massacre in 2014.

These horrendous figures are consistent with those of other monitoring bodies, for example, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF):

“In the two weeks between the evening of 18 February to the evening of 3 March 2018, the medical data reveals 4,829 wounded and 1,005 dead – or 344 wounded and 71 dead per day. … Two of these facilities have yet to submit data for 3 March, so this is an underestimate. There are many other medical facilities in East Ghouta that are not supported by MSF, so the overall toll is significantly higher.”

If over 1000 killed in two weeks was an underestimate on March 3, by March 17 the MSF figures would be at least as high as those of the VDC, given death tolls of anything up to 100 on many days; for example, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, on March 7 alone, 93 were killed.

The people of Ghouta have been attacked by barrel bombs, cluster bombs, surface-to-surface missiles, napalm, thermobaric bombs, chlorine among an enormous array of killing equipment. MSF reports that “of the 20 hospitals and clinics MSF is supporting, 15 have been hit by bombing or shelling, with varying degrees of damage … Four of the medics MSF supports have been killed and 20 wounded.” This is leaving “the capacity to provide healthcare is in its final throes.”

As much of the Ghouta population hides in underground shelters, the bloodthirsty Russian airforce is now using bunker-busters to penetrate these last havens. On March 20, the Russians bombed an underground school in Arbin, killing 15 children and two women. “They used a rocket which went through 3 floors & exploded in the basement.”

As Robin Yassin-Kassab wrote, rightly noting the whole world’s abandonment, and the loss of all humanity of the so-called “anti-imperialist” left:

“Do you remember how the American bombing of the Ameriyah shelter in Baghdad in 1991 became an image of imperialist evil? Today the Russians hit an underground school turned shelter in the Ghouta. Seventeen corpses have been pulled from the rubble so far. Almost all are women and children. At other times Assad drops chlorine – which is heavy and gathers in basements – to force the people up to the surface. Then Russia incinerates them with napalm. But none of these events will be fixed as images of imperialist evil. Nobody is even noticing.”

Mass starvation has been a weapon of this war since 2013. On 27 October 2017, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, warned that “the deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law” and called for access of humanitarian workers to deliver aid to Ghouta. To date, however, the regime has barely allowed in any relief. The first 46-truck relief convoy that was allowed in on March 5 was stripped of 70 percent of its medical supplies by the regime, including trauma kits, surgical kits, insulin and other vital material, according to the World Health Organization.

As Mark Boothroyd writes, “the UN and World Food Programme (WFP) carried out over 257 air drops of food to Deir Ezzour, a regime controlled city in north eastern Syria that was besieged by ISIS from 2015-2017, yet the UN and WFP has carried out zero air drops” to any areas besieged by the regime, including Ghouta, despite the apocalyptic situation.

For those even remotely aware of this “outrageous, relentless mass casualty disaster” as MSF calls it, to continue providing horrific data would be redundant; only the most politically and morally corrupt are pretending otherwise in an effort to make an adversarial name for themselves. For good overall descriptions of the Ghouta conflict, the latest UN Human Rights Council report is a useful start; but the voices of those within Ghouta – for example here and here and here and here and here, or the many voices here, or this collection of voices from the wonderful Karam Foundation – provide a truly genuine account of the daily horror, a far better way of understanding the reality than listening to western-based conspiracist theorists and ritual apologists for murderous dictatorships.

At the same time, certain others who are well-aware of this tragedy draw an equals sign between “two sides” who both kill, focusing on some of the less savoury rebel groups in Ghouta. This article will show why this is an invalid way of looking at Ghouta.

Attacks out of Ghouta

Before moving on however, it is worth noting one valid point often made: the Ghouta rebels also sometimes kill civilians in regime-held Damascus by firing imprecise rockets into the city. According to the UN Human Rights Council report, the numbers killed by rebels in recent months is in the “dozens.” All killing of civilians, whether intentional or unintentional, should be vigorously condemned. Civilians, who include children, are not the enemy, are not responsible for the actions of regimes or of militias. In the spirit of the revolution for freedom against dictatorship, targeting civilians ought to be seen as not only morally wrong but also in fundamental conflict with that spirit.

Nonetheless, it is a hypocrisy of the tallest order when supporters of the Assad regime claim that their slaughter of thousands of civilians is in “defence” against the killing of some dozens by rebels. Chronologically it is sheer nonsense, given the years of siege, slaughter and starvation Ghouta has been subjected to; clearly these desperate acts of firing unguided rockets at Damascus are the misguided attempts at “defence” against the regime’s massacre. Even if the chronology were somewhat grey, it is sensational hypocrisy to accept the killing of thousands of civilians by an airforce and advanced weaponry as “defence” against the killing of dozens, but to not accept the reverse.

In all civil conflicts, civilians get killed on both sides. During Israel’s various Gaza massacres, for example, Hamas has similarly fired imprecise rockets into Israel which have sometimes killed civilians – at a similarly tiny rate compared to the civilians killed by Israel. In most cases of such desperate firing out of a besieged ghetto, supporters of human emancipation, while condemning any attack on civilians, do not put an equals sign between these acts and the systematic crimes of the massively armed oppressor. Not only are the numbers so vastly different, but it is this systematic mass violence that creates the overall atmosphere in which small-scale crimes from the side of the oppressed also take place. It is only in Syria that some who have always understood this have reversed their thinking and adopted “war on terror” justifications for mass killing.

“Terrorists” in Ghouta?

To listen to supporters of the regime, and their echo chamber in the western far-right and alt-left, Ghouta is full of “terrorists”, “al-Qaida” and “head-choppers.”  Therefore, the regime has no choice but to bomb the region into oblivion.

Even many non-supporters of the regime buy into this grotesque propaganda. For example, in a recent exchange, I challenged a supporter of the Rojava Kurdish struggle on his assertion leftists “would be the first to be beheaded” if they were to enter Ghouta. Asking for a single instance of rebel beheading in Ghouta, his response was “Ghouta is full of all these al quaida [sic] and other headchopping organisations.”

On the one hand, even if there were a smidgeon of truth in this, it is difficult to see how anyone on the progressive side of politics could use this to justify this all-out slaughter of the civilian population. Surely this is the kind of argumentation that imperialist invaders and oppressive regimes have always used to justify slaughter. The Assadist justification for the slaughter in Ghouta is identical to the Zionist justification for the slaughter in Gaza, the American justification for Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, the Russian justification for Grozny, the Saudi justification for Yemen, the Turkish justification for its decades-long war on the Kurds in the east, and the list goes on.

This desire to justify the Assad regime by exaggerating the role of reactionary jihadists among the opposition also overlooks the detail that the Assad regime has slaughtered, gassed, starved, raped and tortured at a rate that leaves even the worst jihadists a very distant second. It is equivalent to defending the Nazi invasion of Greece in 1941 on the basis that Greece was then ruled by a dictatorship.

That said, there is no truth in these assertions whatsoever; the essentialist, racist labelling of a whole population as “head-choppers” is based on nothing other than prejudice.

The horrific practice of head-chopping is in fact an ISIS specialty; no rebel groups in Syria, not even the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra/HTS, practice this method of killing. The only people who believe that ISIS is in Ghouta are those lacking the most elementary knowledge of the Syrian situation. When ISIS has come anywhere near Damascus, it has been decisively chased away by the Damascus rebels. This video, showing the way the Ghouta-based militia Jaysh al-Islam (JaI) deals with ISIS captives reveals a very brutal streak in JaI practice; even though the captives are ISIS, this action should be condemned. But it leaves no illusions that they have anything to do with ISIS.

The only other major force in Syria that practices beheading at times is the Assad regime, or otherwise similar acts such as cutting bodies into several pieces, but this is just run-of-the-mill activity for a regime which excels in horrific tortures and mutilations in its gulag.

If admitted that there is no ISIS, the accusation is that the Ghouta rebels are “al-Qaida”. By this they mean HTS, whose main component group, JFS, used to be Jabhat al-Nusra, then the Syrian branch of al-Qaida. JFS severed links with al-Qaida a year and a half ago, but remains a deeply reactionary, Sunni-sectarian organisation, which the rebels will need to deal with in their own time, such as when they do not need to fight for survival against an infinitely more murderous regime and invading imperialist powers.

In any case, no serious analyst believes there are more than a few hundred HTS fighters out of the twenty thousand or so fighters in Ghouta.

But even many of those who concede that the HTS presence is tiny note that one of the main rebel militia in Ghouta, Jaysh al-Islam (JaI), is just as bad. JaI certainly has a reactionary leadership, though it is a homegrown Islamist group with no links to global terrorism. But just who the other rebels are in East Ghouta, what the role of JaI is, how much power these rebel military formations have over the populations, who the civil resistance is, and what the term ‘revolution’ means in this context, are important questions if we want to go beyond a superficial analysis that says that “bad guys” run both sides of Damascus – as if the aim of the uprising were to place the JaI leader on the throne in Damascus.

Who are the rebels?

So, who are the rebel groups holding out in East Ghouta? There are two major rebel brigades, and a scattering of smaller groups. The two major forces are:

Jaysh al-Islam (‘Army of Islam’), a Salafist-led brigade formed in 2011 by Zahran Alloush, the son of a Saudi-based preacher, dominates the eastern-most region of East Ghouta, particularly the suburb of Douma. It is thought to have around 10,000 fighters or slightly higher. For a time Alloush specialised in very sectarian and anti-democratic language, but in the period before he was assassinated by a Russian airstrike, he had moderated much of this. JaI also engages in repressive practices against opposition. The famous Douma Four revolutionary activists – Razan Zeitouneh, Samira Al-Khalil, Wael Hammadeh and Nazem Hammadi – were kidnapped in late 2013 and have not been heard from since. Family and friends believe JaI was responsible; it denies the charge, but evidence strongly points towards its responsibility.

JaI’s unsavoury character is often cited not only by those justifying Assadist genocide against the Ghouta population, but also by many who condemn the regime’s slaughter of civilians. They say the presence of this militia indicates that we are not dealing with any revolutionary process in Ghouta; it is just a sectarian war where one side happens to be in a far more powerful position to carry out its murderous designs than the other. This omits the broader question of the relationship between these militias and the civil opposition and the people in a revolutionary situation, which will be examined below; but even on the level of armed militias, it leaves out the other most powerful brigade in Ghouta:

Faylaq al-Rahman (‘Rahman Brigade’), a large FSA military coalition, dominates the western side of Ghouta, closer to regime-held Syria, with some 8-9000 troops. FaR has clashed with JaI numerous times in the last few years, usually due to the latter’s attempts to dominate the region. Most of the big battles against the regime over the last year and a half have been led by FaR, including the big battles linking Jobar and Qaboun early last year, and in Harasta late last year. FaR is led by SAA defector Captain Abd al-Nasr Shmeir, who claims to be fighting for a non-sectarian future for Syria, stating he defected from the SAA in order to protect the people and “because he seeks a Syria that does not serve one sect.” FaR advocates a civil, democratic state.

It was formed in November 2013, as a fusion of several FSA brigades, including Shmeir’s original Liwa al-Bara, consisting of defecting SAA troops in Douma; then the FSA 1st Brigade based in Qaboun and Tishren districts, and the soft-Islamist Ajnad al-Sham Islamic Union, both fused into FaR in 2016. The latter was itself formed in November 2013, from five Islamist brigades, on the basis of a more moderate interpretation of Islam in line with traditional Damascene Islam, as an explicit rejection of JaI’s increasingly hard-line stance; Ajnad al-Sham makes explicit its goal of protecting minorities.

While JaI’s sectarian stance is often highlighted, neither the mainstream nor the woke “alternative” media note the opposite stances of the other major armed brigade in Ghouta. During last year’s offensive in Jobar and Qaboun, the FSA, and Faylaq al-Rahman itself, released statements declaring their commitment to “all laws of war”, specifically, avoiding civilians “of all religions and sects”, avoiding touching any places of worship or their “symbols” with “direct or indirect fire”, fair treatment of prisoners and the bodies of the dead “without insulting or abusing them” and working to secure and protect “medical personnel, civil defense crews and all humanitarian aid and media groups.”

Two minor brigades are the local branches of Ahrar al-Sham, which controls the suburb of Harasta and has about 1000 fighters, and of HTS, which has several hundred fighters. Ahrar al-Sham fought alongside FaR in the big battles against the regime last year, when JaI was little involved. HTS has been in conflict with both JaI and FaR.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army site lists about half a dozen smaller FSA brigades as having a presence in the Damascus region; and the site ‘Understanding War’ names several dozen FSA brigades in Damascus province, but many are based outside of the city.

In response to the spurious attempt to justify this latest massacre on an “al-Qaida” presence, Jaish al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham offered to expel HTS’s small presence there, evacuating them within 15 days, in exchange for full implementation of the UNSC’s ceasefire resolution, a full end to bombing and full access to humanitarian aid. FaR spokesperson, Wael Olwan, last year offered to expel HTS to Idlib, but claims “the Russians did not let the evacuation happen.”

The question of arms and alleged foreign support

In the Assadist disinformation war, a common piece of discourse states that in Ghouta Assad is fighting a “US- and Saudi-armed terrorist insurgency at the gates of the capital,” often padded out with ironic statements calling JaI “moderate rebels.” Since those defending this genocide have no argument, they rely on such complete red-herrings.

The US has never provided arms to the Damascus brigades, and especially not to Jaysh al-Islam. The assertion of any US arming is just a bald-faced lie. Nor has the US, or any western government or media ever referred to JaI as “moderate” rebels, a label only ever used to refer to non-Islamist groups dedicated to a civil state (JaI’s main rival, the FSA Faylaq al-Rahman, could very deservedly be awarded this title). indeed US Defence Secretary John Kerry even referred to JaI (and Ahrar al-Sham) as “terrorist” groups. These Assadist attempts at irony are therefore simply stupid.

According to the pro-opposition news site Qasioun, the US recently warned the FSA Southern Front against attempting to end its ceasefire with the regime to help Ghouta. For anyone who understands why the once mighty Southern Front, with its 35,000 fighters, has effectively been at peace with the regime for two years, this should come as no surprise. It is well-known that the US imposed a number of “red-lines” on the Southern Front back in 2015, one of which was not to advance towards Damascus (one source even claimed the US threatened them with airstrikes if they did); soon after, all supplies to the Southern Front from regional states through the Jordan-based Military Operations Centre (MOC) dried up. The SF was informed that the US would only allow these (mainly the Saudis) to continue sending arms via the MOC if they fought ISIS only, and specifically not the regime (full details here).

Given the geographic isolation of the Damascus suburbs, the prevention of the SF – whose Daraa-based territories border on Jordan – from linking up with them could hardly be more counterrevolutionary; in late 2016, this led to the fall of the iconic revolutionary centres in south-west Damascus, Darayya and Moadamiya.

Trump could hardly make things clearer in any case, announcing in March, in the middle of one of the worst Assadist sieges in the war, that the only US interest in Syria is “to get rid of ISIS, and to go home.”

The question of Saudi support is more complex. Media reports often refer to JaI as “Saudi-backed” (and of FaR as “Qatari-backed) as a matter of course; a discerning reader would notice the complete absence of any attempt to back up these assertions with a shred of evidence. A google search on Saudi support to JaI will turn up a number of articles, all of which were from around October 2013. Even these articles provide precious little evidence of Saudi arms; rather, they claim that the conversion of Alloush’s former Liwa al-Islam (Islam Brigade) into Jaysh al-Islam (Islam Army) was a Saudi-backed manoeuvre attempting to curb the growing influence of the extremely anti-Saudi Jabhat al-Nusra.

JaI denies ever receiving Saudi weapons. In 2016, JaI spokesman Captain Islam Alloush, stated that “we in Jaish al-Islam have not received any Saudi military or logistic support. As far as we know, Saudi Arabia is involved in military support only through the international cooperation rooms, which in turn do not support Jaysh al-Islam.” “International cooperation rooms” means the MOC; it is true that Saudi support has gone through the MOC, and that the MOC has only ever armed the Southern Front (and even this has often been blocked by the US), and never sent anything to JaI. If there has been any Saudi support beyond the MOC, it has left no trails. In any case, JaI, despite its change to a more grandiose name, remains almost entirely based in Ghouta, which is encircled; the Saudis would need to fly in weapons to arm JaI.

It is also worth noting that, despite the common association with Saudi Arabia, largely due to the fact that Zahran Alloush’s father is a Saudi-based preacher, JaI and the Saudis have often been sharply at odds politically.[1]

Where then does JaI get its arms? In fact, apart from arms seizures from battle, both JaI and FaR have the advantage of operating in heavily industrial Ghouta, full of little workshops, where they have become very proficient at making the largely primitive arms they overwhelmingly possess, giving them a degree of independence of foreign backers. On the other hand, JaI’s power has almost certainly been boosted by finance from the Gulf, from mostly private Islamist sources in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, rather than any regime.

Class and the uprising in the Damascus ‘suburbs’

If the above sketch of the armed formations shows that that they are not all Jaysh al-Islam, or not even all Islamist, nevertheless a major Islamist component of the uprising exists in Ghouta, as elsewhere in Syria. For many western observers, it seems that Islamists come from Mars, or from anywhere but Syria; or at least it indicates the influence of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Gulf-based Islamist networks. While some of these factors have had influence, these explanations avoid the most important place to look for a powerful, if relatively moderate, Islamist component to the uprising, armed and unarmed: Syria.

The “Damascus suburbs” which ring the east and south of the city – East Ghouta, including Douma, Harasta, Hamouriya, Saqba, Zamalka, Jobar, and further south towns such as Moadamiya and Darayya – have been major sites of the Syrian revolution from the beginning, under full control of opposition councils since 2012.

While the revolution always had a strong component of students, teachers, intellectuals, artists and other urban-based middle-class activists, alongside a heavily rural- and poor provincial-based uprising, the real motor was where the urban and rural worlds of Syria intersect: in the newer working class and poor suburbs and shanty-towns surrounding Damascus (and in east Aleppo city, crushed by Assad a year ago after five years under opposition control), composed of hundreds of thousands of relatively recent rural immigrants from the countryside.

Bashar Assad’s neo-liberalisation of the economy in the last decade before 2011 brought the political demand for democracy and the economic issues of the poor together to form a highly combustible revolutionary mix. As these policies facilitated the growth of an “obscenely wealthy and atrociously brutal neo-bourgeoisie,” according to Syrian intellectual and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh, especially around the Assad family and its cronies, like Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf who controls some 60% of the economy through his holding companies, at the other end they impoverished the already poor. From the countryside – where peasants had benefited from the Baathist land reforms of the early 1960s – a vast human wave of poor peasants uprooted by these policies fled to the outskirts of the big cities and formed these vast semi-urban, semi-rural slums and shantytowns.

The class divide between regime and revolution was striking in both Damascus and Aleppo. Qadri Jamil, a former minister in Assad’s government who was one of his left window-dressers until sacked in 2013, claims to have long believed that Assad’s economic liberalisation would “lead to a social explosion,” noting it had left “44 percent of Syrians in poverty, and raised unemployment levels to 20 percent.” These policies, he claims, “destroyed local producers in places like the Damascus suburbs of Zamalka, Harasta and Douma — now centers of opposition” — while enriching the new elite. “All those towns whose names we are hearing now are similar to Detroit in America, so how one cannot expect to have resentments in their circles?”

By contrast, the central Damascus bourgeoisie and upper middle classes are of course the base of the Assadist regime – though countless others in central Damascus who don’t entirely belong to either “world” chafe under the totalitarian rule of the regime, including many with secret sympathies for the people of Ghouta, because that is the only place to be safe from Assad’s bombs, missiles, napalm, poison gas and starvation siege.

The division in Aleppo between regime and former opposition-controlled regions was a similar study in sociology. As a Syrian exile wrote who returned to her city:

“Aleppo today is cut in two distinct halves, as was Beirut. Whereas Beirut was divided along confessional lines, social classes separate the two Aleppos. In the East the Free Syrian Army rules over the poor, working-class neighbourhoods; in the West the regime controls the middle class and bourgeois parts of town.”

Islam, Class and Revolution

How does this relate to the question of Islam? Basically, at least some degree of ‘Islamism’ simply represents the traditional conservatism of the countryside and its reflection among the rural immigrants living in the regions ringing the cities. They were never “secular” in the sense of the Assadist elite; official state “secularism”, and the relatively middle-class lifestyle that went with it, was limited by the savage class structure of Assadist Syria. So while Qatar and Turkey tended to support many soft-Islamist brigades (though also FSA brigades) via their Muslim Brotherhood networks, it is important to understand that a certain level of mild political Islam was always going to be part of the mix, just as it is in Palestine with Hamas, in Iraq during the resistance to US occupation, and throughout the Middle East.

To help us understand this, this video shows us a protest by 500 women in Douma, all in veils, protesting when Assad’s security forces detained and tortured children and teenagers early in 2011. Many of these women had never before left their houses alone, but came out into the streets to demand their release. One of them explained (see video at 19.04 – 20.20):

“Sometimes I feel like a man working among men. There’s no more differentiation between men and women in Douma. On the contrary. Men now let women take care of the injured because they know better how to deal with them.”

While this may seem little from the perspective of western feminism, for the traditional Muslim women involved this was an important step; unless we understand the movement of real people where they are at, western observers are merely playing with concepts of “revolution,” or for that matter, women’s liberation.

These are the ordinary people who made the revolution. As Sam Hamad puts it: “Syrians are bearded Muslims. They are hijab-wearing women. They are in general quite poor and haven’t had access to western-style education. They aren’t all liberals and photogenic Good Arabs. Sorry. This belief obscures everything and reflects an internalised racism and Islamophobia. For the majority of the population, like Egyptians or Jordanians or Tunisians etc., their default point of orientation in life, coexisting with other points of belief, is their faith.”

Now, all that said, this does not entirely explain the presence of a particularly odious character in the form of Zahran Alloush, the late leader of Jaysh al-Islam. Some of these Islamist formations are strikingly moderate and committed to a civil state, while others are more hard-line, and JaI, though furiously anti-ISIS, is generally seen as on the hard-line end. But here’s where conjunctural factors come in. JaI was not set up as a cadre-based ‘jihadist’ group like Nusra (or even Ahrar al-Sham in its early years), with chapters all over the country dedicated to a particular system of thought; rather, it arose as a genuine anti-dictatorship movement based in the traditionalist working class region of Douma. One reason it ended up with someone like Alloush at its head was that Assad released Alloush, along with 1000 other jihadists, from his dungeons in mid-2011, at the very time he was arresting and jailing thousands of democratic activists, including from Douma. The vacuum of leadership created by Assad’s mass arrests and tortures was taken up by people like Alloush, who also had connections among Gulf Islamist circles.

Moreover, just as the most traditionalist areas tended be more ‘Islamist’, after the war began the most devastated areas were going to tend towards radicalisation. As a Palestinian friend in Sydney put it, this is the same reason Hamas is in Gaza, whereas Fatah is in relatively more comfortable (by occupation standards) in Ramallah; in similar vein, JaI arose in Douma, a kind of Syrian Gaza, except where Assad’s version of Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ goes on for years instead of weeks, an obvious breeding ground for more radical politics. While the current siege reaches cataclysmic proportions, mass killing and starvation has been the staple all along; for example, regime shelling killed 250 people in Douma in February 2015 alone, then on just one day, March 15, 83 were killed; in virtually any period over these years similar figures could be pulled out. As Gaza shows, reducing a slum to smashed up ruins tends to strengthen “Islamist” forces or anyone who can offer either “radical” action, or God, as some kind of alternative when the entire world has abandoned you.

The question of Jaysh al-Islam’s sectarianism

More significant than the extent of JaI’s ‘radical’ evolution was the vocal sectarianism of its leadership. Alloush made his most famous sectarian rant, promising to “cleanse” Damascus of Shiites and Alawites, in September 2013. More than any other speech or action in Syria outside the realms of Jabhat al-Nusra, this particular speech, coming from an Islamist with generally friendly relations to the mainstream opposition, was of almost decisive importance in helping cement the sectarian divide that Assad had deliberately and cunningly created; most Alawites who may have been hedging their bets, especially in the Damascus region, would likely have resigned themselves to putting up with Assad.

Alloush made this speech soon after the most devastating event Ghouta has suffered: Assad’s sarin massacre in August that year, just weeks earlier, which killed 1400 people, above all children, in various suburbs throughout Ghouta. While this hardly justifies a speech that virtually re-labels the democratic struggle as a sectarian war, context is hardly irrelevant: where a people are being literally smashed to pieces and starved to death by an Alawite-dominated military, which then uses chemical weapons and is granted licence by the world, the emergence of anti-Alawi sectarianism is surely no mystery. This was made worse a few months earlier, with the mass entry of Hezbollah into the war on Assad’s side, when this Lebanese Shiite-communalist militia played the decisive role in besieging, conquering, destroying and “cleansing” the strategic rebel-held Sunni town of Qaysar, in June 2013. Alloush’s appalling statements reflected a rise in Sunni sectarianism in the context of this onset of the invasion by the Shiite-sectarian international, of Nasrallah’s sectarian war.

A year and a half later, however, Alloush publicly retracted these views. Regarding co-existence with minorities, he said this has always been the situation in Syria, and “we are not seeking to impose our power on minorities, or to practice oppression against them”, including the Alawites who are “part of the Syrian people.” Alloush claimed his earlier statements were due to the pressure he lived under in Ghouta: “We are under siege. We all suffer psychological stress. When I was in prison and the jailer would come and torture prisoners, after he would leave prisoners would quarrel and beat each other.” Regarding democracy, which he had previously denounced, he claimed that if they succeed in toppling the regime, “we will leave it to the people to choose what form of state it wants.” In another interview later in 2015, he again said that Alawites “are not our enemy, they are victims of the regime.”

Of course, the damage had already been done, given that the damage was political, not that Alloush’s loud noises from the ghetto ever had any reality. We also have no way of knowing if this reincarnation was genuine. But the issue is not the personal honesty or otherwise of one individual, now dead; even when he was alive, the issue posed was never of Alloush taking Assad’s place on the throne. Nor was it ever an issue of JaI having the military capability to overrun central Damascus, still less the distant Alawite coast, to be able to carry out Alloush’s threats; to harbour such fantasies would be equivalent to imagining that Hamas may one day win a military struggle with Israel and rule over Jews in Tel Aviv.

Rather, the issue is that, regardless of the reason for this change, JaI was never Nusra, ie, was never a militia whose existence was defined by an ultra-sectarian ideology. As a vehicle for the local people to resist Assad’s attacks with arms, carrying out a sectarian war on Alawites had nothing to do with the reasons thousands joined the group. As one civil activist in Douma, hostile to JaI, explained: “All the young people join Jaysh el-Islam. This is not out of ideological belief or because they like Alloush, but because they need to fight and not wait around. Two years ago, we went from a partial siege to a total siege. The bombardments come from the heights of Ghouta Valley, and these missiles condition our daily life. The fighters are not all Salafists, or, rather, they are Salafists by circumstance.” As such, an idiosyncratic leader could flip this way or that without it changing much on the ground.

Jaysh al-Islam, repression and civil resistance

Actually, JaI is more a danger to the local Sunni population and the democratic revolutionaries of Ghouta than to out-of-touch Alawites; the disappearance of the Douma Four revolutionaries is a good example. Yet it should not be forgotten that before disappearing, these four were leaders of the fight against the Assad regime; whatever they may have thought of JaI, it already held the same powerful position in parts of Ghouta that it does today (indeed, the Violations Documentation Centre, which they had set up, was not shy about also reporting rebel violations). Moreover, since their disappearance, thousands of other democratic revolutionaries still continue to operate in various ways (as we will show below), including those who consider themselves the continuers of their work, often called the “Razan Zeitouneh network,” around the Local Coordinating Committee they had built, including the Violations Documentation Centre, the Douma Women’s Protection Centre and various health and educational activities. One such activist, named Hani, notes that the armed brigades cannot override Ghouta’s social dynamics: “… the women in the Razan network don’t give up. These types [eg, Alloush] are the new local despots. But they are not Bashar’s murderous forces.”

JaI, in other words, may often try to use repressive means, but it is limited by the very revolution all around it of which it is part, however deformed. Even JaI’s denial that it was involved in the disappearance of the four activists, and the secretive nature of the entire episode, reflects the fact that association with crimes against such outstanding revolutionaries would be met with rejection among the revolutionary masses. A comparison with the Assad regime’s practice of returning tortured and mutilated corpses of relatives, even children, to families following time in its dungeons is indicative of the contrast; the regime’s aim is precisely to terrorise, seeing, quite rightly, the mass of people as its enemies.

As a result, we have continually seen large demonstrations in Ghouta against JaI, and in the majority of cases, JaI forces do not attempt to repress them, though there certainly have been exceptions; and people also protest these attempts at repression. At times, JaI has also faced demonstrations against high prices caused by its alleged corruption and profiteering, such as the “hunger demonstrations” of late 2014. At this time, Douma residents also attacked the storage units of merchants who dominate the local food distribution business, and they identified Jaysh Islam with these merchants, in a particularly notable example of both the class nature of such “Islamist” leaderships and of the kind of “uninterrupted” revolutionary struggle that could result if the regime is ejected and the people are not dependent on the armed groups for elementary protection against the greater enemy. At the time, JaI guards did fire live ammunition at the rioters, but they fired back, and Ghouta’s Unified Judicial Council issued a statement warning against these JaI-backed “monopolists,” calling them “blood dealers” and partners of the regime in the siege on Ghouta. The council gave them a week to put the goods on the market at their previous prices. When someone then attempted to poison council members, the council made no bones about pointing the finger at JaI.

This back and forth between the dominant armed group, the people in the streets, and the Ghouta local council reveals a dynamic different to that pictured not only by enemies of the revolution, but also by some of its well-intentioned supporters, who condemn Assad’s slaughter of civilians but tend to see the Islamist hijacking of the revolution as a completed dead end. The reality of Ghouta is far greater than that of the armed groups that arose to defend it.

Ironically, this complexity has even been shown at times of some of JaI’s worst actions. On November 1, 2015, following a period of some of the most horrific bombing of the entire war, JaI attempted to force a pause in the bombing by publicly parading SAA prisoners of war, and their civilian wives and adult family members, in cages atop the backs of trucks, which were placed in public streets and squares in the city.

This followed an October 30 regime bombing of Douma, which killed at least 70 people and wounded 550, a mere spike within the daily slaughter. Earlier, on August 16, 112 were killed in the one day, again with some 550 wounded civilians, 40 percent of them children. The desire to do anything to protect local civilians form this daily devastation is more than understandable; the hypocrisy of those who condemn JaI’s action but not the regime’s mass killing, is beyond words available in the English language. That said, the use of prisoners in such a demeaning way – especially the civilians – was condemned by almost all pro-revolution activists, and organisations, and by most of the very people of Douma being battered by regime airstrikes.

According to the news site Syria Deeply, while opinions in Ghouta “varied drastically,” everyone they spoke to “agreed that the women and children should be immediately released ‘because Jaish al-Islam shouldn’t act like the regime’.” Moreover, “all of the sources” they spoke with “confirmed that cages were paraded around the city for two hours, before residents of the city convinced Jaish al-Islam militants to return the captives to their standard holdings.”

Needless to say, the damage had been done, with global focus on “caging people” rather than slaughtering them, and the revolution seen to demean itself as it demeaned civilians, but the point here is not to defend JaI; rather, to note again that its susceptibility to popular pressure.

This dynamic was revealed in an even more significant way in March 2017, when Jaysh al-Islam closed the ‘Rising for Freedom‘ Magazine, after some protestors stormed its office when it published an article which they deemed “blasphemous.” Taking advantage of this situation, JaI also banned five other local NGOs, none of which were connected to the magazine, including the Violations Documentation Center, The Day After: Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria, Local Development and Small-Projects Support, and the Hurras Network for Child Protection, while even the LCC was allegedly ordered to cease operations. Eleven other local organisations joined the five in condemning the crackdown.

While this may have looked like the end of local democracy, several days later the judicial committee of Douma ordered the re-opening of all five organisations. Unfortunately, it maintained the closure of the magazine pending the court hearing, but protestors prevented the arrest of magazine staff. To compare JaI’s rule to Assad’s on the basis of this unsuccessful attempt to ban these organisations would be inherently self-defeating, since no such organisations would be allowed to exist in the first place under the Assad regime; their leaders would be in Assad’s torture archipelago.

The episode once again indicated the very complex nature of the relationship between armed militias formed out of crisis response to regime terror, the ongoing civil side of the uprising and its elected bodies, and the local population itself. At this point, it would be worth reviewing the main aspects of this civil resistance.

Elected Local Councils and Civil Opposition in Ghouta

Douma’s revolutionary democratic council was one of the earliest to rise to the task of running the region free of the Assadist regime, when the latter withdrew in October 2012. The Douma council has 19 offices, dealing with “water and electricity, health and education, agriculture, legal affairs, civil records, sanitation, subsidies, women’s affairs, employment, media and the cemetery.” After JaI took control of religious affairs in November 2014, it tried to also take control of the council, but soon gave up. “They knew they would fail if they put their sheikhs in charge,” says Taha, a then council member, who says most of the council’s members “are technocrats: engineers, lawyers, members of civil society.”

The council also became the location for the headquarters of the National Assembly of the Forces of the Revolution in East Ghouta, “a broad movement of political activists, civilians and rebels from 58 urban centres in the area with the purpose of creating a unified council for the entire East Ghouta region.”

While the council was originally formed by local consensus, given the difficulties of holding elections in a war-zone and the necessity of immediate administration, this gave way to elections which have become more democratic over time. A Supervisory Electoral Commission created by the National Assembly organised council elections in January 2014, electing 25 council members. These first elections were from general assemblies of the local communities, with some 26 local councils across Ghouta operating. The next step was to move on to full popular elections by secret ballot. The first such election took place in Arbin district in January 2016, followed by similar elections in Douma, al-Malihah, al-Abbadeh and Saqba during 2017.

According to the elected president of the local Saqba council, Mr. Yasser Obeed, election officials “were keen to ensure the necessary environment for voters, such as secret rooms and the prevention of outside influences that might change voters’ opinions. In addition, the stages of the elections were subject to oversight from the ballot, to the counting of votes, and to the final statistical process.” According to Robin Yassin-Kassab, in the Ghouta elections, militia leaders were not allowed to stand, though fighters were, but none were elected.

The 2017 elections were also notable for the participation of women. “For the first time since the start of the revolution, female candidates formed coalitions, fund-raised and campaigned among the people,” resulting in the nomination of 14 women for the educational, medical, economic and engineering sectors.

This participation of women, despite the presence of Salafist militias like JaI, was helped along by the widespread activities of civil society. “During 2016 and 2017, a number of activities were carried out in the city of Douma to empower women in the fields of education and work. This included activities by The Day After organization, which held forums and lectures on political diversity for women,” despite the site of the activities sometimes being subject to attack and the organisers being beaten. Another organisation, Women Now for Development, which provides opportunities for women to work on their own projects,” also conducted workshops on women’s rights which they believe contributed to increased women’s participation in the elections.  Indeed, given the anti-woman politics of most Islamist groups, the large-scale participation of women in organsing the anti-Assad resistance in East Ghouta is outstanding.

Some 70 civil society organizations operate in East Ghouta, in sectors “including women empowerment, child care and protection, relief, skills training, advocacy, associative action, etc,” a part of the revolution related to, but separate from, the councils. These organisations are related to the entire network of civil society built up by people like Razan Zeitouneh around the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), which also organise anti-regime demonstrations and disseminate information about the revolution. At the Douma Women’s Protection Center, which she founded, over 300 women regularly distribute survival baskets; a member of the network named Madj recounts being involved in the creation of seven educational centers, which serve 200 to 250 children. These are just a few of the great range of activities taking place in Free Ghouta, despite the almost impossible situation of endless mass killing by the regime.

In the midst of this furious slaughter today, civil society organizations, activists, and leaders released a statement on March 18 demanding the UN and international community take action to save lives in Ghouta, to protect civil and humanitarian agencies and for the civil bloc to be included as a negotiating party. These people have stayed to the end. They are not staying to protect JaI, or because JaI is “using them as human shields”, the accusation used by every imperialist and oppressor regime as it rains death on civilians. On the contrary, the only reason the civilian population has put up with the likes of JaI is due to the desperate needs of defence against the tyrannical regime, but the civil society bloc speaks with its own voice.

A momentary aside in Idlib …

Before concluding, it is important to note that all the same caveats about the relationship between armed militias (whether HTS, Islamist or FSA), civil uprising and councils, and the revolutionary people applies to the other large region still under the control of the revolution, Idlib province and neighbouring parts of south and west Aleppo and northern Hama – also under devastating attack earlier this year. And that is despite the larger role played there by HTS, and its anti-democratic practices, including kidnappings, killings and torture of other oppositionists.

In fact, revolution-held towns such as Maraat al-Nuuman, Saraqeb, Karanbel, Atareb and others have continually resisted encroachment by HTS (and precisely such towns have been continually bombed by Assad and Russia). Meanwhile, local council elections were held in Idlib in early 2017 despite the HTS presence; and by this time, HTS rule itself had softened notably, including in terms of social restrictions, under the impact of popular pressure. In mid-2017, however, HTS was able to defeat its main rival, Ahrar al-Sham, but this had more to do with many town councils and FSA brigades not seeing Ahrar as their representative, and making separate deals for HTS to keep away; and some of this may have been due to lost credibility when Ahrar did not take part in the spring offensive against the regime in Hama (which both HTS and FSA brigades led), in turn related to Ahrar’s dependence on Turkey and the new geopolitical game Erdogan was playing with Putin. However, as this very victory then encouraged HTS’s tendency to act oppressively, the people continued to resist it in a great variety of ways; and their demonstrations are generally tolerated by HTS. Moreover, with a new offensive led by Ahrar al-Sham against HTS in early 2018, local people, regardless of their views on Ahrar, have seized the opportunity to throw off HTS rule; it has been driven out of some 30 towns across the province.

Once again, therefore, the defence of Greater Idlib against Assad must not be seen as a defence of HTS, or of the armed brigades in general, but of the people’s revolution.

The loss of Ghouta: A huge loss to democratic prospects

Therefore, Assad’s likely military crushing of Ghouta will represent a massive blow against the democratic aspirations of Syrians trying to resist the full re-imposition of tyranny; the stakes are far bigger than the defeat of some Islamist militia.

But the stakes are bigger also than the survival of Ghouta itself. One propaganda device of the pro-Assad camp is to depict this struggle as a defence of the people of central Damascus, and the Alawites of the even more distant Mediterranean coast, from being overrun by armed Ghouta-based brigades like JaI. Apart from the reality of defence being the other way around, the problem with this is that it depicts all-or-nothing military victory by one side or another to be the issue, a flagrantly dishonest portrayal of the struggle.

At least since 2012-13, no serious observer has considered a sweeping military victory of the armed opposition even remotely likely; as stated above, the likelihood of JaI “coming to power” in Damascus, given military realities, is equivalent to that of Hamas “coming to power” in Tel Aviv. What then is the military struggle about, apart from the obvious desire of people in rebel-held pockets to not be ruled by Assad?

For Assad to be overthrown by a full-scale revolutionary uprising, armed or unarmed, would have required the armed and unarmed opposition to have had the political capacity to win a decisive part of the Alawite minority away from the regime, to the perspective of a democratic, non-sectarian revolutionary solution. Despite the democratic and anti-sectarian slogans of the early uprising, Assad’s militarisation of the revolution inevitably led to deepening sectarian fissures among the people; bloodshed has that effect, even aside from the fact that Assad’s massacres also had a deliberate sectarian nature. The rise of organisations such as Nusra, and vile statements such as those of Alloush in 2013, closed the immediate possibility of such a united, nation-wide insurrection against Assad. While civil oppositionists, FSA brigades and the exile-based opposition leadership continued to issue democratic and anti-sectarian statements, this would have needed to be daily shouted from the rooftops to counter the actual trends that had taken hold due to Assad’s war.

This left two possible ways of ending the conflict: military or political. But Assad plunged the country into military conflict not only to poison the political atmosphere, but also because as long as the struggle was purely military, his regime could not lose: the regime’s overwhelming military superiority could never be broken. Even if the West and regional states had properly armed the FSA – for example with the needed anti-aircraft weapons that in fact the US went out of its way to block – that would not have resulted in military parity; it would simply have allowed the rebels to hold onto their own territory without all this civilian slaughter, and to advance into areas where they had a natural support base (eg more of Daraa, Hama and Homs provinces); anti-air weapons would not have helped the rebels conquer regions where the regime had its support base, such as central Damascus, western Aleppo, Tartous or Latakia.

In fact, all major actors, both regime (officially if not in practice) and opposition (except Nusra) and all regional and global actors have been committed to some form of “political solution” since the Geneva process began in 2012. This has always been understood to involve a ‘transitional’ administration replacing the Assad regime, including mutually agreed upon members of the opposition and of the regime, tasked with organising free elections. From the opposition’s standpoint, this would exclude Assad and his immediate circle of mass murderers; from that of regime supporters and religious minorities, it would exclude jihadists and sectarians.

In all joint declarations of the Syrian opposition – political, military and civil – including the ‘Islamist’ brigades (including JaI), the form of state envisaged following the transition is “a democratic pluralistic regime that represents all sectors of the Syrian society, with women playing an important role and with no discrimination against people regardless of their religious, denominational or ethnic backgrounds.” In 2016, he opposition Higher Negotiations Committee added that women must be represented “in all entities and institutions to be formed at a rate of 30 percent” while stressing that “the Kurdish cause shall be considered a national Syrian cause and action shall be taken to ensure their ethnic, linguistic, and cultural rights in the constitution.”

However, ceasefires, political arrangements and elections do not necessarily guarantee great steps forward for the people’s revolutionary dreams; this depends on the content of such stages. For the best outcome, the military balance on the ground is a decisive factor: it is the difference between a transitional political arrangement in which the opposition can demand the release of political prisoners, the end of sieges, be able to keep their weapons, to provide security and democratic governance to the areas they continue to control during the transition, and be able to hold meetings and demonstrations without being shot at, compared to one in which the regime is able to deny these basics: in other words, the difference between a ceasefire that leaves the door open to non-military revolutionary possibilities, and one that slams it fully shut, an Assadist regime without Assad – the preferred model of the imperialist powers and regional dictators (and they no longer insist even on the “without Assad” part).

Therefore, the crushing of Ghouta is not only a setback for democratic governance in Ghouta itself, but for the optimum balance of forces required for the future revival and success of the civil democratic revolutionary movement throughout Syria.

What can we do?

Many supporters of the Syrian people have advocated action such as dropping food and supplies to the besieged people, boycotting Russian airlines, or the coming World Cup in Russia, trying to get anti-aircraft weaponry to the rebels, a No Fly Zone, or other ideas. The complete disinterest of the “international community” in adopting even the least militaristic approaches – especially that of dropping food as they did in Deir Ezzor – should make clear enough what has been blatantly obvious for seven years: the western imperialist agenda has been for the crushing of the Syrian revolution, just via a different tactical approach to that of the Russian imperialist mass murder machine. While people should continue to take solidarity actions as long as the unbelievably steadfast people continue to resist, the military crushing of most of Ghouta is probably a matter of time.

Given the irrelevance, when not outright malevolence, of a large part of the western political left on the question of Syria (despite many honourable exceptions) – many having formed an alliance with the fascistic, neo-Nazi and white-supremacist far-right on this question – it is probably most helpful at this stage to support organisations more relevant to the cause of human emancipation today who are aiding the battered people in various exemplary ways:

Karam Foundation: https://www.karamfoundation.org/eastern-ghouta/

Syria Civil Defence (‘White Helmets’): https://www.whitehelmets.org/en

Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org.au/ghouta-massacre/?a1=0&a2=0&a3=0&cn=trd&mc=click&pli=23501514&PluID=0&ord={timestamp}&gclid=CjwKCAjwnLjVBRAdEiwAKSGPIyxZL7kefZMWQVpIDu2YpVNEv_84MCLO6j5oc9fHA6xUklvkYqxxjBoCNksQAvD_BwE

Syria Relief: https://www.syriarelief.org.uk/news/starved-once-again-ghoutta/

Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders): http://www.msf.org.au/syria

UNHCR: https://donate.unhcr.org/gb-en/syria

Endnotes

[1] For example, Saudi Arabia was angry with the US for not attacking Syria in August 2013 following Assad’s chemical massacre; JaI, like all Islamist groups, vigorously opposed the US plans. Saudi Arabia had been part of training some pliant opposition cadre in Jordan alongside the US around that time; JaI condemned them as puppets. In response to the (bogus) US threat to attack Syria, Liwa al-Islam (JaI’s former name) declared:

“What matters to us is the question of: Who will America target its strike against? And why choose this particular time? The Assad regime has used chemical weapons dozens of times and the U.S. did not move a finger. Have they experienced a sudden awakening of conscience or do they feel that the jihadists are on the cusp of achieving a final victory, which will allow them to seize control over the country? This has driven the U.S. to act in the last 15 minutes to deliver the final blow to this tottering regime so it can present itself as a key player and impose its crew which it has been preparing for months to govern Syria.” “It’s crew, which it has been preparing for months” can only mean the Saudi-supported “crew” being prepared in Jordan.

Several months later Saudi Arabia came out strongly encouraging opposition political and military forces (who were deeply divided on the issue) to attend the US-Russia organized Geneva II negotiations with Assad in January 2014. JaI, by contrast, demanded that the Islamic Front coalition (of which JaI was a founding member) “put the participants of both parties in Geneva II [ie, both regime and opposition] on a Wanted list” (the Islamic Front itself declared participation at Geneva “treason”).

_{Bashar Assad, “nationalist” leader, held afloat by the intervention of both imperial superpowers and the rest of the world, hereditary ruler of a country now occupied by 36 foreign military bases, image from Radio Free Syria https://www.facebook.com/RadioFreeSyria/photos/a.382885705129976.91927.363889943696219/1477942602290942/?type=3&theater}

By Michael Karadjis

The deepening American intervention in Syria under the administration of president Donald Trump has been both far bloodier than that under Barack Obama, and also more openly on the side of the regime of Bashar Assad, as has been clarified by a number of recent official statements and changes.

Emphatic pro-Assad orientation of Trump regime

First was the recent declaration by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the only fight in Syria is with ISIS, that the US and Russia must work together on Syria, that Assad’s future is Russia’s issue and that the US is largely agnostic about “whether Assad goes or stays.” Tillerson also made one of the clearest statements to date that the US sees all forces fighting the Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh) as essentially allies and that it has no fight with Assad:

“Actors in Syria must remember that our fight is with ISIS. We call upon all parties, including the Syrian government and its allies, Syrian opposition forces, and Coalition forces carrying out the battle to defeat ISIS, to avoid conflict with one another and adhere to agreed geographical boundaries for military de-confliction and protocols for de-escalation.”

This was followed by Trump’s official ending of the long-dormant CIA program to arm and train some “vetted” anti-Assad rebels. In reality, this effort was only ever aimed at co-opting and taming the rebels anyway. The aims of the concurrent Pentagon program were more explicit: it would only arm and train rebels who agreed to drop the fight against Assad and only fight ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra, and therefore it failed, since few rebels would agree to such conditions; as was quipped, it aimed to support only those rebels who do not rebel. While the CIA program, in contrast, is normally seen as more supportive of actual anti-Assad efforts, in reality it mainly differed in style; by initially supporting viable Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades, once such groups were entrapped by an arms pipeline, the CIA was in a position to then pressure them to stop fighting Assad, thereby enlisting real forces for the US “war on terror” against ISIS and Nusra. Yet even the anti-Assad façade was too much for Trump: he considered it “dangerous and wasteful.”

Even worse, Trump also ended US “stabilisation” funding for civil society in regions outside Assad regime control. Trump declared “the United States has ended the ridiculous 230 Million Dollar yearly development payment to Syria,” referring to the Obama-era funding, which went to a vast array of local governance and civil society organisations which kept society running in the absence of the regime. To be clear: the Trump regime put an end to all US funding, no matter how minimal, to both the civil and military sides of the revolution.

Further, the nature of any US aid to Syrian rebels has now been clarified: to be successfully “vetted” as a condition to receive aid is now officially synonymous with not fighting Assad. US Central Command spokesman Major Josh Jacques explained: “vetted Syrian opposition groups all swear an oath to fight only ISIS.” This command was recently reinforced in the southeast desert, where the US has been arming and training two “vetted” brigades for the war against ISIS. This led to one of the brigades, Shohada al-Qaryatayn, cutting off its relationship with the US-led Coalition due to “pressure from the US-led coalition to stop the fighting against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA)” in rural Suweida, Damascus and Homs. Another Coalition spokesman, US Army Col. Ryan Dillon, noted that Shohada Al Quartyan wanted “to pursue other objectives,” and that not only would the Coalition cease support, but would also retrieve “the equipment we provided them to fight ISIS.” Indeed, if they did not return the weaponry the US has warned that it will bomb them

It is notable that this US trajectory has continued and deepened even as conflict between the US and Russia in the global arena has sharpened elsewhere. As the US Congress and Senate voted in late July, against Trump’s wishes, for new sanctions on Russia (for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election), and Russia retaliated with the expulsion of 755 of the 1,210 US diplomatic staff in the country, both sides made clear this would not affect cooperation in Syria. Putin stressed that the US-Russian brokered southern “de-escalation zone” had seen “concrete results” and that such coordination would continue. Meanwhile, a “new” US strategy was in the same week presented to the House and the Senate by Defence Secretary James Mattis, State Secretary Tillerson and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph F. Dunford Jr., conceding Assad’s control of Syria west of the Euphrates River and most of centre and south. Discussing “a proposal that we’re working on with the Russians right now,” Dunford (who has sometimes been referred to as a traditional military “hawk”), noted “my sense is that the Russians are as enthusiastic as we are to ensure that we can continue to take the campaign to ISIS.”This has now reached the point where US personnel are “bragging” about their cooperation with Moscow. “The Russians have been nothing but professional, cordial and disciplined,” according to Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, Iraq-based commander of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition.

This trajectory is consistent with Trump’s stated policy in the lead-up to his 2016 election as US president. Trump promised to work with Putin’s Russia in Syria, to an even greater degree than Obama and Kerry had, asserting the US should be on the same side as Russia and Assad in “fighting ISIS”, and said the US would cut off any meagre “support” still going to the anti-Assad opposition. These policies in fact represented more continuity than change, but did point to the more emphatic counterrevolutionary policy that has come to fruition.

Bombs on Assad – a change in direction?

However, within a number of months of Trump’s election, some events began to cast doubt on this trajectory. Above all, in contrast to the complete absence of any military clash between the US and Assad in the Obama years, the first half-year of Trump saw one regime airbase bombed, one regime warplane downed, and three minor hits on pro-Assad Iranian-led Iraqi militia in the southeast desert.

Various reasons were put forward for these clashes, and the apparent contradiction between this military activity and Trump’s stated goals, which some believed were heralds of an almost inevitable US drift into conflict with either Assad, Russia or Iran, if not all three, despite Trump’s predilections. Of these reasons, three stand out.

First, from the outset, many observers said that while Trump and some of his leading officials may be pro-Putin for various reasons, others were traditional Republican “hawks”, who were either very anti-Russia or anti-Iran and aimed to “re-assert” US strength against these traditional rivals. Either they would undermine Trump’s policy, or Trump himself would be won over to their views, given his own American nationalism and militarism.

Second, many point to the glaring contradiction between Trump’s pro-Putin, and essentially pro-Assad, position on the one hand, and his rabid anti-Iranian rhetoric on the other. Since Iran is just as crucial a backer of Assad as is Russia, unless he could get quick results trying to divide Russia and Iran on Syria, Trump would stumble into conflict with Assad via conflict with Iran.

Finally, from a different angle, many assert that the common desire of both global and regional powers to avoid the collapse of the Assad regime via an outright revolutionary victory was the main obstacle all along to these rivalries coming out into the open. Now that Assad has largely turned the tables on the armed opposition, with the revolutionary uprising as a whole subsiding, the only thing holding the various global and regional powers back from openly fighting each other has now been removed. Therefore, traditional rivalry between the various imperialist and regional powers will re-assert itself.

As an extension of this, we also see all of these rival powers, in continually changing “blocs,” involved as “allied rivals” in the mopping up operation against the Islamic State in eastern Syria, so when that is over, there will be even more of the corpse of Syria to fight over.

While all three explanations have merit, this piece will show that the reality of the deepening US intervention in Syria is much more in tune with Trump’s original pre-election views than the handful of clashes may superficially suggest, and that, therefore, these factors cannot adequately explain the evolving policy of the Trump administration.

Divisions within the Trump administration?

While the divisions over a great many issues in the Trump regime are hardly a secret, virtually none of this has ever been related to Syria policy.

What we can schematically call the ‘Trump side’ on the question of Putin and Assad has, in any case, always had a substantial presence, despite constant changes, from former chief advisor from the “alt-right”, Steve Bannon, with his ideological affinity for Putinism shared by Trump’s first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, an open Putinist stooge, and his deputy NSA KT McFarlane, who advocated Putin be given the Nobel peace prize; to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with huge economic connections to Russian business, and others like Trump’s son Donald Jnr and son-in-law Jared Kushner with own Russian connections; and Trump’s Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, who probably combines far right ideological leanings with his own Russian connections.

On the other side, it is often claimed that Defence Secretary James Mattis, Flynn’s replacement as National Security Advisor, HR McMaster, and others in the Defence/Security establishment are traditional Russia and/or Iran hawks; UN ambassador Nikki Haley is generally slotted in here. Trump also has strong support among a number of former leaders, like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, who in their time were considered to be traditional Republican “Russia hawks.” Somewhat less convincingly, it is sometimes claimed that vice-president Mike Pence is more hawkish than Trump on Syria.

A left-wing version of this is has it that those leaders who represent the broader interests of US capital in its rivalry with Russian imperialism are in conflict with the narrow Russian-connected business interests of Trump’s circle.

Of course, many in the Defence/Security establishment and other traditional Republican circles may well be embarrassed by the somewhat shameless way in which the Trump coterie has indulged Putin. In reality, however, when we look at the stronger positions many of these leaders have expressed about Russia, it has been overwhelmingly about the East Europe-Ukraine-NATO theatre, not about Syria. For example, after Trump refused to clearly state his commitment to NATO’s Article 5, on mutual self-defence of members, during his Europe trip in May, Mattis stepped in to strongly endorse the article. In other words, there is no dispute that US-Russian rivalry exists and that many US leaders express more anti-Russian views than Trump, but it is virtually impossible to demonstrate that this has any bearing on Syria.

Mattis is a clear case: he has always opposed “no fly zone” plans over Syria, and he opposed Obama’s threat to strike Syria in 2013 over Assad’s chemical attack on East Ghouta, claiming it did not involve US interests, and more recently declared the time to support Syrian rebels fighting both Assad and ISIS “had passed.” In McMaster’s past statements there is little of note about Syria, but he came out with the most conciliatory statements after Trump’s strike on Assad’s airbase (see below). While Haley, conversely, came out with very anti-Assad statements at that point, just days earlier she had issued perhaps the most conciliatory statement towards Assad to date, just before his chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun.

Coming from the Christian right camp, vice president Pence does not belong in this camp at all; the only reason some consider him ‘tougher’ on Assad was due to some remarks he made during last year’s vice-presidential debate, when put on the spot about the horror then taking place in Aleppo; even then went out of his way to stress he was only talking about civilian protection, not about confronting Assad. The Christian right on the whole is ideologically inclined to be as ‘Trumpist’ as Trump on Syria (former presidential candidate Ted Cruz being a good example).

As for past leaders now in the Trump camp, Gingrich strongly opposed Obama’s threat to strike Syria in 2013, declaring “both sides in Syria are bad. One side is a brutal dictator, and the other includes Islamists and terrorists who are dangerous already and who would be brutal in power if given the chance.” Giuliani reacted to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea by stating that unlike Obama, Putin is “what you call a leader,” and compared Trump-Putin to Reagan-Gorbachev. Even the idiosyncratically hawkish John Bolton, at one point being considered for a post in the Trump administration, opposes overthrowing Assad (which he says will bring “al-Qaida” to power), even while advocating “regime change” in Iran; and to block Iran, he advocates creating a “Sunnistan” in eastern Syria where ISIS is defeated, to be led by Kurdish forces, leaving western Syria (where the anti-Assad uprising was mostly taking place) to Assad; interestingly, very much the current de-facto US-Russian agreement (as will be explained below).

The various tendencies and increasingly new versions of the Trump regime can be described as a mix of right-wing ideologues with a fascination for Putin, leaders with Russian business connections, anti-Islam warriors and a group of ‘muscular realists’ in the defence and security establishment. While there are no liberal interventionists, nor are there any “neo-conservatives”, essentially a dead species; to the extent that they make background noise, they are divided on Syria in any case, with some such as Leslie Gelb and Daniel Pipes advocating alliance with Assad.

Therefore, there is no dissension within the Trump regime on Syria, and, aside from the odd permanent internal oppositionist such as John McCain, essentially none within the Republican Party as a whole.

Drifting into confrontation with Iran … in a very strange way?

The second issue, Trump’s fierce anti-Iranian rhetoric, is a clear example of the need to distinguish between “wars of rhetoric”, which have their own uses, and what is actually happening in the region. To date, little of the rhetoric appears to have any practical application whatsoever. Yes, Trump when visited Saudi Arabia he repeated the stock phrase that Iran was the number one supporter of “terrorism” in the region. This pleased his Saudi hosts and Trump scored a fabulous US arms deal.

Yet in terms of practical impact in the region, Trump’s visit was closely followed by Saudi Arabia and a group of allies (United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain and others) using Trump’s “anti-terrorist” endorsement to slap a siege on Qatar, a key supporter of the Syrian rebels who fight against Assad and Iranian interests in Syria.

For months and months, the US and Iran, and the Iraqi regime – an asset which these two supposedly hostile powers regard as an ally – laid siege to the ISIS stronghold of Mosul. The city has been completely destroyed, “bombed back to the Stone Age,” up to 40,000 people killed, and finally this US-Iranian “regime change” operation was successful. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed and armed Shiite sectarian militia known as Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), have poured in and are carrying out a horrific vengeance against the Sunni population, murdering, torturing, throwing them off cliffs, drowning them in rivers, in an ISIS-like orgy of sectarian terror.

This most major of all US military operations at present does not look a lot like a US-Iranian confrontation. These very same Iranian and Iran-backed Iraqi militias have been operating in Syria for years as death squads for the Assad regime, and given that the PMU is actually recognized as part of the Iraqi regime army, this effectively constitutes a pro-Assad invasion of Syria by some 20,000 troops of the US-backed Iraqi regime. While the US has been bombing Sunni jihadist forces in Syria for several years, again with a massive intensification the last few months under Trump (see below), these Shiite jihadist forces have never been hit. We will get to the significance or otherwise of the three small recent hits on them (out of 9000 US airstrikes) in the southwest desert below.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s close ally, the Christian rightist Michael Aoun, has recently taken over the presidency, backed by other traditional rightist forces. In recent weeks, the allied forces of the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah have launched a brutal military operation against Syrian refugees in Arsal, mostly Sunni refugees from Hezbollah’s sectarian cleansing of western Syria, where Hezbollah has created a “pure” region linking Damascus to Lebanon. Up to 18 refugees were shot, including an amputee shot in front of his family, in a Lebanese Army attack just before the onset of the larger operation; the army then arrested dozens, of whom between five and ten were tortured to death. Hezbollah has demanded the refugees be deported back to Syria, obviously not to the part it expelled them from, but probably to the new dumping ground/kill zone of Idlib. Now US Special Forces in Lebanon are operating on thê ground providing training and support to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) working “in close proximity to Hezbollah” in the war against ISIS in the Syria-Lebanon border region. The LÀF is the 5^th largest recipient of US arms in the world, and given the fact that Hezbollah has openly paraded American-made M113 armored personnel carriers on the Syrian battlefield, the possibility that the LAF is partially a conduit to the arming of Hezbollah seems highly plausible.

It is true that Trump is aiding the Saudi air war in Yemen, where the enemy is mostly the pro-Iranian Houthis allied to the forces of former dictator Saleh. But the US was already doing this under Obama. However, Trump has intensified the parallel US air war against villages controlled by Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), not against Saleh-Houthis; there have been more than 80 strikes against AQAP since February, double the number of the whole of 2016. And like in Iraq and Syria, this has gone hand in hand with a significant rise in civilian killings. And now US special forces are on the ground supporting UAE troops in a major offensive against AQAP.

Thus the expected radical shift against Iranian interests simply has not materialized, and is unlikely to unless Trump decides to break with fourteen years of US policy in Iraq, the largest and most strategic of the countries discussed above.

Mattis was commonly referred to as an “Iran hawk” before the elections and he is also fond of the “world’s biggest supporter of terrorism” stock phrase. But when Trump was making noises about ripping up the Iran nuclear agreement, it was Mattis above all who insisted that this would not be done. He also stresses that change in Iran can only come about “internally,” differentiating himself from any “neoconservative” illusions that may still be around in some odd dejected pockets of the US foreign policy elite.

Given the grotesque crisis the Trump regime is in, it is not out of the question that Trump may at some stage decide to create some “war distraction” for the masses, by striking Iranian missile sites for example, “putting some meat into the rhetoric” when needed. The discussion above however suggests that if any such attack did take place, it would have little relation to current US policy in the region; the more detailed discussion below will show that it would have no relation to US Syria policy.

The fact that such a hypothetical strike would likely be driven by domestic “bread and circuses” concerns rather than any drift in US policy or “rivalry” with Iran is further suggested by the fact that it is precisely those imagined to be “hawks” in the security establishment who appear to be holding back a personally volatile Trump. In July, for the second time, Trump recertified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, but this followed an hour-long meeting where “all of Trump’s major security advisers” – Tillerson, Mattis, McMaster, and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Joseph Dunford – recommended recertification despite Trump spending “55 minutes of the meeting telling them he did not want to.” McMaster’s dismissal of leading Iran-hawk, Derek Harvey, from the NSC may also better underline the direction of the US government than a bunch of Trumpist rhetoric.

Inter-Imperialist Rivalry?

The third argument – that the creeping victory of Assad over the revolution removes an obstacle to all these global and regional rivals from clashing with one another – is more persuasive, and based on sound premises. Despite tactical differences on how to do it, destroying the revolution one way or another was one thing that united these various powers. Now, any clashes that may erupt would have even less connection with the question of revolution and counterrevolution than at any time before.

However, there are two points here. The first is that, yes, Assad has the upper hand in the military struggle against the revolutionary forces at present, but whether or not it is all over remains to be seen. The fact that the present reality does not yet indicate any approaching clash between rival global and regional powers may well indicate that the death forecasts are premature.

But even if for argument’s sake we say it is all over, this present reality indicates that while the end of the revolution would remove an obstacle to such clashes, it does not follow that such clashes are inevitable. There is, of course, always rivalry at some level between various imperialist and capitalist powers. But capitalist rivalry does not always lead to conflict; in reality this is only sometimes the case.

Of course, I have no crystal ball and events may prove this wrong. Mistakes, accidents, minor clashes over tiny bits of ground, conflicts over “credibility”, or the actions of wild cards, all have the potential to blow a situation out of control despite anyone’s intentions. And if my predictions are wrong, and the end of the Syrian revolution did lead to the Trump regime feeling free to launch an attack on Iran, for example, such a war should indeed be recognized as naked imperialist aggression with no connection to Iran’s bloody role in the crushing of the Syrian people, which the US has facilitated. At present, however, the current US role, as discussed in the section above, would appear to make this an unlikely eventuality.

The argument here is that there is no appetite for any serious conflict over Syria; there is little fundamental the powers would want to fight over anyway (conspiracist nonsense about “gas pipelines” notwithstanding); and that the main desire of imperialist and regional powers is to restore some kind of capitalist stability to the region, necessitating compromises. A Dayton-style regional deal is more on the cards than a new war.

Strikes on Assad: Entirely circumstantial

Furthermore, regarding the idea that the five or so clashes between the US and Assadist or pro-Assad forces indicate a new trend, a drift in the direction of some future war, I suggest that on the contrary they have all been entirely circumstantial. The only “trend” one might discern is a greater concern to enforce “red lines” than Obama showed, but even that is debatable. If anything, these minor clashes and clearer red lines are making the main game – all that is allowable within these “lines” – also much clearer: a US-Russia alliance, a victory for Assad, an enormous joint massacre within ISIS-held territory, a division of the spoils, and an abandonment of all pretenses of supporting any democratic transition in Syria.

It is also useful to place these five US-Assadist pinprick clashes in context; these first few months of the Trump regime have seen a far more massive intensification of the US war on ISIS, including a very dramatic rise in civilian casualties: the number of civilians killed by US bombing in Iraq and Syria in Trump’s first six months is now higher than the number of civilians killed in Obama’s eight years, including 472 killed by US airstrikes in Syria between May 23 and June 23 alone, the third month in a row that civilian casualties from US strikes topped even Assad’s toll. The figures for Iraq in particular are likely to be massive underestimates, with evidence of a death toll as high as 40,000 from the battle of Mosul; meanwhile, the real civilian toll from the decimation of Raqqa is likely to be much higher than current figures suggest, and by the time of writing in late August, enormous massacres are occurring daily, for example, 158 civilians killed between August 18 and 22.

From any human point of view, a comparison between the US bombing of a mosque in Idlib in March (allegedly targeting Nusra), where 57 worshippers were killed, and the US strike on the Assadist air base a few weeks later, highlights what a mundane event the second was, even ì only the second drew the ire of the alleged “anti-war” movement in the West.

So, while the five clashes with Assadist forces in six months might seem like a lot compared to none in six years, we are talking about microscopic numbers compared to the gigantic US assault on ISIS, on Nusra, on Idlib, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Mosul, and above all the civilian populations of these places. When these five strikes are placed alongside the actual war trend under Trump, it demonstrates that they are not indicative of any trend at all.

The Shariyat strike and its aftermath

Did the US bombing of Assad’s Shariyat airbase in April – the first US hit on Assad after nearly 8000 US strikes in Syria at that point – signify a new US policy?

Not even remotely. In the very weeks before Assad’s chemical massacre in Khan Sheikhoun, three prominent US leaders made Trump’s pro-Assad position even clearer. US UN representative Nikki Haley announced that the US was “no longer” (sic) focused on removing Assad “the way the previous administration was”; Tillerson used Assad’s very words, declaring that the “longer term status of president Assad will be decided by the Syrian people”; and White House spokesman Sean Spicer declared that “with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept.”

When Assad took all this encouragement to mean that even sarin could be legitimised, the US had little choice but to strike Assad for the sake of its own “credibility.” The whole point of the US back-down on its “red line” in 2013, after Assad had slaughtered 1400 with sarin in East Ghouta, was that it was exchanged with the “victory” of getting Assad to remove all his sarin, an arrangement facilitated by Putin and Netanyahu. In demonstrating not only that he was still keeping some sarin despite the agreement, but also that he was willing to use it, Assad forced Trump to make a credibility strike, going against the very clear stated intentions of the entire Trump regime just days earlier.

One might say this shows that Trump at least enforces “red lines” more than Obama. But in reality, it was Obama’s deal with Assad and Putin that created the necessity of a strike this time: Assad had simply not used sarin again (at least in any large enough display to get media attention) during Obama’s reign, so we cannot make any assumptions about what may have happened (though of course Assad has used chlorine dozens of times under both Obama and Trump).

To soften the blow, Trump gave ample warning to Russia, who warned Assad, that the base would be hit. As a result, according to the Russians, some half a dozen clapped out warplanes were hit. By the following day, the base was again in use bombing Syrians around the country, and Khan Sheikhoun was again being bombed – just not with sarin.

The follow-up, again by all wings of the regime, clarified further that for Trump, this really was a one-off. Tillerson stressed the strike was entirely about sarin and warned “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status.” Trump stressed that “we’re not going into Syria,” but the strike only occurred because of the use of chemical weapons “which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it.” In other words, the US had no interest in Assad’s continued use of his other weapons of mass destruction.  Mattis stressed that tensions with Russia would “not spiral out of control,” and that “our military policy in Syria has not changed. Our priority remains the defeat of ISIS,” but Assad “should think long and hard” before using sarin again. McMaster, allegedly the most “hawkish” towards Russia, clarified that if there were to be any “regime change” in Syria, it would be carried out by Russia, not the US; that the US had no concern that the base was being used again the next day, as harming Assad’s military capacities was not the aim of the strike; and that the US goal remained defeating ISIS while it also desired “a significant change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular.”

So, for all the thousands of pages that have been written about the US aiming for “regime change” in Syria, it turns out that the ‘hardest’ policy within the Trump regime, at the tensest moment, was for “regime character change” under Assad, facilitated by Russia.

The downing of an Assadist warplane

What then of the fact that the US shot down an Assadist warplane near Tabqa, in Raqqa province, on June 18, for the first time in the 6-year Syrian war – does this represent a new policy direction?

In fact, once again there was little change. For six years, the Assad regime has bombed cities and towns held by the rebels all over Syria, reduced everything to rubble, killed hundreds of thousands, and there has never been a US move to down a single Assadist warplane even to defend civilians, or schools, or hospitals, let alone rebel fighters. In fact there has been a US-enforced embargo on the supply of anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels, preventing them from doing it themselves as well. Both policies continue.

Yet as soon as Assad made the highly unusual move of attacking the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed military and political front dominated by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG), the US shot down the Assadist plane.

The main reason the YPG/SDF has become the most strategic US ally in the conflict (the US providing wall-to-wall air cover for its operations, large numbers of US special forces, and several military bases) is that both the US and the SDF are focused entirely on defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) in eastern Syria, and neither have any interest whatsoever in fighting the Assad regime or supporting the anti-Assad rebellion. As the anti-Assad struggle is mostly centred in the more populated west of the country, the US and SDF/YPG just carry out their parallel war on ISIS in the east.

This means there is normally no reason for Assad to bomb the SDF/YPG. The attack this time came as the US/SDF were besieging the ISIS capital Raqqa, when Assad’s forces broke out of southeastern Aleppo to advance on Raqqa themselves. A conflict over the mopping up operation against ISIS. The US defence of its allies thus had no connection one way or another to the question of the anti-Assad revolution.

But even from the point of view of “red lines,” once again the action was set by the Obama administration, which announced its first and only No Fly Zone in Syria in the Kurdish-dominated parts of northern Syria known as ‘Rojava’, controlled by the YPG/SDF, in August last year. At that time, Assadist jets suddenly decided to do a little unprovoked bombing of the YPG in Hassakah, apparently just to remind the YPG who was boss.

The US warned the Assadist warplanes to keep away or they would get bombed. They ran away fast. They did not try again under Obama. Now they tried again under Trump, to see if Obama’s NFZ still applied. They learnt that it did. But bombing everywhere and everyone else in Syria continues, and Assad knows not to expect any problem from Trump with that.

The US Centcom statement on the downing of the warplane emphasised that its mission is only to defeat ISIS and that it has no interest whatsoever in fighting Assadist, Russian or pro-regime forces, but that it will defend itself or its “partner forces.”

Still, was this at least a sign of the growing conflict between the rival camps? Of course, the fact of a hit demonstrates that clashes can occur. That it has not re-occurred in that theatre is just as important; according to embedded journalist Robert Fisk, a “coordination centre” has been set up in the east to prevent “mistakes” between “Russian-backed and American-supported forces,” as  “all sides are determined to avoid any military confrontation between Moscow and Washington.” As we will see below, this may also involve a US-Russia agreement on how to divide the spoils in the ISIS-held east.

The conflict in the southeast desert

The other three US hits between mid-May and early June, on Iranian-backed, pro-Assad Iraqi militia, all took place within a 55 square kilometer patch of desert around a US base in al-Tanf, a town wedged into the corner where the Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian borders meet.

Do these three micro-hits in this tiny region signify that Trump is “taking up the Iranian threat to the region” and proving to the Saudis and others that he is on their side? What a laugh.

The US presence at al-Tanf began when the Pentagon set up the New Syrian Army (NSA) in 2015, as a brigade that would specifically fight ISIS only and not the regime. However, as such a fight does not attract many rebels, the NSA seemed to disappear. But in the meantime, the US and Jordan were putting enormous pressure on a real mass FSA formation – the powerful Southern Front – to stop fighting Assad and to only fight ISIS and Nusra. So while the southern front against Assad went quiet, the US quietly assembled two new brigades in al-Tanf, Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT), or the Commandos of the Revolution, and Shohada al-Quartayn. It is unclear whether they were previously part of the NSA, or former cadres of the Southern Front, but neither are currently members of the SF. They appear to have crossed into southeast Syria from Jordan, following CIA training and vetting to ensure they do not fight Assad (though as discussed above, Shohada al-Quartayn has now quit for precisely this reason).

Looking at a map, it is striking how distant al-Tanf is from the centres of revolutionary conflict in western Syria. And notably, while the headlines featured these microscopic clashes in the distant desert, the Assad regime was conducting a major murderous offensive against the revolutionary stronghold of Daraa in the southwest. There were of course no US hits over there to defend the FSA or the Daraa citizenry.

The US base at al-Tanf is where the Pentagon works with these brigades in its war on ISIS. To facilitate this work, it declared a 55 square kilometre zone around it as a “de-confliction zone” (in line with the de-confliction zone policy being pushed by Russia, Turkey and Iran). This meant there were to be no clashes between the US-backed forces and nearby pro-Assad forces, so that they could all focus on fighting ISIS.

All three strikes on the Iranian-backed forces have been inside this very small pocket of desert. In each case, the strikes only took place because the Iranian-backed forces were advancing against the US-backed forces rather than against ISIS.

In every case, the US-led Coalition’s ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’ released an almost identical statement, which stressed that although it had acted against these forces advancing towards the US base inside the zone, with seemingly hostile intent,

“The Coalition does not seek to fight the Syrian regime, Russian or pro-regime forces partnered with them. … The Coalition presence in Syria addresses the imminent threat ISIS poses globally, which is beyond the capability of the Syrian regime to address. … The garrison is a temporary Coalition location to train vetted forces to defeat ISIS and will not be vacated until ISIS is defeated. … Coalition forces are oriented on ISIS in the Euphrates Valley. The Coalition calls on all parties to focus their efforts in the same direction to defeat ISIS, our common enemy and the greatest threat to worldwide peace and security.”

This seems pretty clear. One might argue that this is just window-dressing, that really the US presence in al-Tanf is aimed precisely at fighting Iran. But in that case, would we not have seen more than three pin-prick strikes, and not only restricted to this tiny patch of desert in the furthest corner of Syria?

In any case, other events here revealed the limitations of US aims in that region.

First, when these US-backed brigades, or other FSA forces, have been operating outside the zone and are confronted by Assadist forces, the US has not helped them. In fact, Assad’s forces took advantage of the US and MaT focus on fighting ISIS only, and the continued US-Jordanian freeze on the Southern Front, to seize significant parts of the eastern Qalamoun and eastern Suweida regions from the rebels, but these brigades was not allowed to link with the FSA in east Qalamoun, with some reports claiming the US promised to cut their pay and arms if they did so:

“As opposition forces battled IS fighters farther east over the weekend, pro-regime soldiers attacked the overstretched desert rebels roughly 60km southwest of the ancient city of Palmyra, … The regime’s assault led to a swift victory. … On Monday, rebel sources told Syria Direct that the US-led coalition provides financial and logistical support for opposition forces to combat IS but stops short of funding the rebels to directly attack the regime. “The coalition is a partner of ours in the war against Daesh [the Islamic State], but when it comes to fighting the regime and its foreign militias, [the coalition] is not our partner,” Al-Baraa Fares, a MaT spokesman, explained.

Perhaps even more stunningly, the US has even given permission to the Assad regime to bomb inside its exclusion zone. On June 6, the Assad regime relayed a request to the US military via Russia to bomb the US-proxy forces inside the US-declared zone, because they were attacking Iranian-backed forces operating just inside the zone. So, even though the US itself demands these pro-Assad forces not enter the zone, it does not give permission for its own proxies to attack them, because it only supports them fighting ISIS. So the US gave permission to Assad to bomb its (the US’s) own proxies inside its own exclusion zone! Yet later that same day, when the Iranian-backed forces refused to leave and allegedly brought reinforcements in, the US made its third (and last) trike against them.

One reason commonly cited for the US stand in al-Tanf is that the Baghdad-Damascus Highway passes through the town, and the US is thereby blocking a direct Iranian connection, a “land bridge”, to Syria, which would effectively link Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon by land. So, even if the strikes have been few, small and circumstantial, the very US presence here fulfils an important anti-Iranian outcome.

Another factor is that Jordan aims to have a ‘safe zone’ inside Syria along its borders once ISIS is driven away. Such a zone would enable refuges to stay rather than enter Jordan, and perhaps even allow Jordan to push refugees back into Syria. Therefore, it needs a strip of border free of regime or Iranian control.

While the real reason may be a mixture – or it may even be simply a convenient place for the US to train these forces in its fight against ISIS – the anti-Iranian reason is undermined by the fact that there remains a great expanse of Syria-Iraq borderland that Iranian, pro-Iranian Iraqi and Assadist forces can seize in order to form the land bridge. If we take out the small area around al-Tanf in the southeast corner, and the northern part of the Iraq-Syria border around Hassakah, controlled by the US-backed SDF, then we are left with the entire ISIS-controlled Deir-Ezzor province.

Now, just after the third strike, around June 10, it appears that Russia mediated, and persuaded the Iranian-backed forces to leave the Americans alone in al-Tanf. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis claimed that Russia had been “very helpful” in calming down the situation near al-Tanf, by “communicat[ing] U.S. concerns to pro-Syrian government forces in the area.”

A defeat for Iran? Unclear, because Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leaders simply re-routed their land-bridge concept: as this map shows, its proposed route passes through Deir Ezzor province, via the border town of Abu Kamal and the heavily bombed – by the US and Assad in tandem – town of Mayadin.

But wait – this “re-routing” had already been declared in early May. Further, it was not being re-routed north from al-Tanf, but rather south from SDF-controlled Rojava. Perhaps Iranian-backed forces entering from Iraq had assumed they would be allowed through, due to the SDF’s sometimes dealing with Assad; but the SDF made clear that it would fight the PMU if it crossed the border into Rojava. But this suggests that al-Tanf was not the original land-bridge plan anyway, not the big deal it was made out: the micro-clashes appear to have been a mere test of waters, if not a distraction.

But then we read in countless articles that the US was aiming to seize Deir-Ezzor from ISIS and so this would likely be the scene of the great US-Assad or US-Iran show-down.

But then something else also happened on June 10: ISIS suddenly withdrew from “thousands of square meters of land” in a strip that connected Assad-controlled Palmyra with the Iraqi border, just north of al-Tanf; Assadist and Iranian-backed forces immediately filled the strip without a fight, reaching the Iraqi border, thereby cutting off the only possible land-route for US-backed forces to advance north between al-Tanf and and Abu Kamal in Deir-Ezzor province. We can see the problem on this map:

Surely now the US had to react, to prevent this new major step in the Iranian land-route project, to ensure “US-backed” forces can get Deir Ezzor? Well, not according to the Pentagon, which reacted: “We give them [FSA] training and equipment, and they fight against Daesh. That is all. We don’t help them to control an area or fight against the regime … our only focus is Daesh. We are not a part of their struggle against the regime.”

Meanwhile, Iranian-backed forces in Iraq (the PMU) had also reached the Syrian border near the southern end of Rojava, already on May 29. Having thus reached both sides of the border, the pro-Iranian forces are now poised to meet up. Not immediately – the Iraq-based forces are far north of the Syria-based forces, and what stands in between is ISIS-controlled Deir-Ezzor province.

So, as the “nightmare scenario” has almost arrived, will the US now fight tooth and nail to prevent the world’s “number one backer of terrorism” from forming its land bridge all the way from Tehran to Beirut? Meaning, specifically, the US must prevent the regime and Iran from seizing Deir-Ezzor from ISIS; even if now blocked by land, should the US be expected to use the SDF to advance south to prevent this from happening?

Leaving aside the fact that the Iranian-backed forces in Iraq are part of the US-backed Iraqi regime, a US-Iran joint venture, and that the US, Iran and these Iraqi forces have just been on the same side in a gigantic and extremely bloody war in Mosul; leaving aside the fact that the US and Assad have been bombing ISIS in Deir-Ezzor province in alliance, or at least in tandem, since November 2014, with many bloody mass casualty events, indeed that the US has protected the regime airport from ISIS siege; leaving aside the fact that US bombing directly helped Assad reconquer Palmyra earlier this year, and Palmyra is the regime’s gateway into Deir-Ezzor; surely, so the ideology goes, the US must now do everything to prevent the Iranian land-bridge.

Well, not quite.

On June 23, US-led Coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon explained that if the Assad regime or its allies “are making a concerted effort to move into ISIS-held areas” then “we absolutely have no problem with that.” Dillon said that “if they [ie, Assad regime] want to fight ISIS in Abu Kamal and they have the capacity to do so, then that would be welcomed. We as a coalition are not in the land-grab business. We are in the killing-ISIS business. That is what we want to do, and if the Syrian regime wants to do that and they’re going to put forth a concerted effort and show that they are doing just that in Abu Kamal or Deir el-Zour or elsewhere, that means that we don’t have to do that in those places.”

This could hardly be clearer; far from the US engaging in “rivalry” in resource-rich east Syria with the Assad regime, Russia or Iran, far from a great new alliance with “conservative Sunni states against Iran” and so on, especially in the most strategic province of Deir-Ezzor, rather, for the Pentagon, if Assad and allies take this region from ISIS, the US “doesn’t have to” go there. Why go there, when your allies are headed there anyway?

Indeed, despite the harsh anti-Iran rhetoric of the Trump administration, it is notable that while US bombing mainly supports the SDF, or the Tanf proxies, against ISIS in Deir Ezzor, US bombing also directed aided not only Assad’s forces but even Iran-led forces over many months in 2017.

Still, it may be surmised that the Assad regime taking Deir Ezzor does not necessarily mean this Iranian presence remains long-term, with which to build their land-bridge (since the question here is not morality – the Assad regime is far more genocidal than Iran’s theocratic despots – but the geopolitical issue of Trump’s alleged desire to “stop Iran”). It may be that a deal is done, that the US does not oppose Assad reconquering the province, as long as Iran later leaves. And to ensure this, the key would be a greater involvement of Russia.

And exactly this has supposedly been discussed: a deal by which Assad allows the US and SDF to take Raqqa, while the US allows Assad and Russia to take Deir-Ezzor, with no mention of Iran. In light of indications of Russian-Iranian rivalry – even claims that Assad is under pressure from “pro-Russian factions in his ruling circle” to dump Hezbollah, as a means of weakening Iranian influence – such a deal is quite plausible.

Yet it is doubtful that even that would change very much. Assad’s armed forces are simply so weak that they are dependent on the tens of thousands of foreign Shiite jihadists coordinated by Iran, above all the 20,000 or so Iraqi PMU fighters. Further, even if all these pro-Iranian forces were excluded, as long as Assad remains allied to Iran and Iraq, then Assadist control of Deir Ezzor ensures a geographical link between Tehran and Beirut – unless Russian troops were to actively block the border.

In other words, all indications are that the land-bridge that was supposed to be a red line is essentially US policy.

There are even indications that the Pentagon may be planning to give up even al-Tanf to Assad and Iran, just keeping some desert near Jordan’s border and the northern SDF-controlled region, thus allowing the land-bridge to proceed along the Baghdad-Damascus highway. According to some sources, the US-backed units “could be airlifted over the regime forces and ISIS to a front line near al-Shaddadi, which is held by the Syrian Democratic Forces.” As CentCom spokesman Dillon explained, al-Tanf is a mere “temporary garrison” which will not see growth, “if anything, it will be in the opposite direction.” Given that one of the US-backed brigades has quit al-Tanf and the US alliance in order to fight Assad in south Syria, and two groups of fighters from MaT have gone the other way and joined Assad’s army, it may also be that the whole US operation from al-Tanf collapses due to its own contradictions. However, this may not go down well with Saudi Arabia, as we will discuss below.

‘De-escalation’ and counterrevolution

The American acquiescence with Assad’s control of Deir-Ezzor, while trying to hang onto al-Tanf, is connected to the “de-escalation zones” process initiated by Russia, Turkey and Iran, with the US, Jordan and Israel playing back-seat roles. The Assad regime has said little about them, despite both Russia and Iran being involved; it retains its “right” to violate them even when they are in its favour, continually bombing these zones. The opposition, by contrast, has from the start slammed the process as a form of partition of Syria, yet has been forced to take part in practice.

 This process sets aside a number of opposition-controlled zones where the regime and rebels are to “de-escalate”, ie, freeze the battle lines. These various foreign powers would be guarantors of these local ceasefires; as Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin explained, the three countries are working on a plan to station their forces in these zones, suggesting that Russian and Turkish forces could be stationed in Idlib, Iranian and Russian troops around the Damascus region, and Jordanian and US forces in Daraa. Without going into detail, anyone who follows events in Syria closely will see from these ideas what a counterrevolutionary conception this is.

Initially, four zones were laid out: the rebel-held province of Idlib and adjoining parts of Aleppo and Hama provinces; a stretch of rebel-held territory in northern Homs; the remaining rebel-held Damascus suburbs; and rebel-held parts of the south, particularly Daraa. At this stage, however, all these fronts remain active and have only barely de-escalated; and even where the zones have officially been declared, the regime continues to bomb.

Meanwhile, the US added the southeast desert region around al-Tanf as another zone, because the rebels there are only to fight ISIS and not the regime. And to much fanfare, the US and Russia declared they had successfully negotiated a de-escalation zone in the southwest, the region adjoining the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, involving Jordan and Israel. Russia has begun occupying this zone, as a guarantee to Israel that the regime’s return to the Golan “border”, which Israel is in principle in favour of, is not coupled with Iranian or Hezbollah presence; under the agreement, Iranian-backed forces have to keep out of this zone. Russia has also occupied rebel-held southern Daraa, and deployed its forces in the new de-escalation zone, negotiated via Assad’s Egyptian ally, in rebel-held East Ghouta, likewise signaling the regime’s return by stealth; and Egypt was again brought in to help broker the Homs de-escalation zone; this Egyptian involvement is a powerful link between the interests of Assad, Israel, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

In addition, the rebel-held region of northern and eastern Aleppo province where Turkish troops are present as part of the Euphrates Shield operation is effectively a de-escalation zone, as the rebels there only fight ISIS and are not permitted to confront the regime (and, at least in this case, it also means they are free from regime bombing); and the ‘Rojava’ region under SDF control and US protection, stretching from Manbij to Hassake (as well as the Russian-occupied Afrin pocket in the northwest corner) can also be considered such a zone, because it is likewise only at war with ISIS, and neither confronts, nor is bombed by, the regime.

At present there is much talk of a counterrevolutionary agreement between Russia, Turkey and the regime, directed at both the SDF in Afrin and HTS in Idlib. According to one scenario, Russia, which has troops protecting the SDF-held region of greater Afrin, would withdraw from some areas to allow Turkey to help its FSA allies to re-take the Arab-majority Menaq-Tal Rifaat region, which was conquered from the rebels by the YPG, with Russian airforce support, in early 2016. In exchange, Turkey would use this as passage into Idlib to attack HTS, and facilitate the entry of Russian troops into Idlib to occupy the “de-escalation zone” alongside Turkey. While the FSA would probably go along with recovering their occupied territories, it would be quite another thing if they were to go along with more ambitious Turkish plans to seize Kurdish-majority Afrin itself. It is also unclear whether the rebel groups working with Turkey in Idlib would go along with a frontal attack on HTS, if on behalf of an impending Russian occupation, regardless of their own ongoing conflict with HTS in Idlib. For its part, Russia has put it to the SDF that if it does not want to be conquered by Turkey, they need to allow a return of the regime to Afrin.

Meanwhile, while the US has not been bombing Idlib the last few months, as it focuses on the east, it is now using the HTS presence to justify any impending Russian attack on the province, despite Russia’s well-documented use of the “attacking al-Qaida” trope to bomb all Syrian rebels. “In the event of the hegemony of Nusra Front on Idlib, it would be difficult for the United States to convince the international parties not to take the necessary military measures,” State Department Syria official Michael Ratney stressed, warning rebel groups to move away from HTS before it was “too late”.

Much more could be said of what these zones and these various conflicts around their implementation mean for revolution and counterrevolution, but that would be beyond the scope of this piece. However, this ‘pacification’ program, in the context of the regime having the upper hand, is the prime means by which the global imperialist and local reactionary intervention aims both to extinguish the revolution and also “equitably” partition the spoils, partially in order to avoid the much warned about imminent conflict.

US policy in the east fits firmly into this context. Regarding the global imperialist powers, the US-Russian partition of Syria is reasonably clear: Russia, via its tool in Damascus, is in control of most of western Syria (“useful Syria”), and the US, with its allies (SDF) and proxies (MaT or others) controlling much of the east. Russia’s new 50-year agreement for its air base in Latakia, simply highlights the fact that the US has never appeared to have any objective of trying to eject Russia from its bases on the Mediterranean; other than in the most conspiracist literature, there has simply never been any suggestion that this had any relation to US Syria policy.

At the same time, it is quite true that this process is unlikely to be smooth, and that real regional rivalries and obstacles will hamper its easy execution.

While the thesis here downplays the idea of global imperialist conflict in Syria, and also the vague idea of “rivalry” between global and regional powers, a more solid case can be made regarding rivalry between these regional sub-imperialist powers of similar size themselves, especially Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey (with its Qatari ally).

Defeating ISIS in the Sunni east and replacing it with some kind of local Sunni-based authorities, without Iran, appears to be a fundamental Saudi interest, giving them some influence in post-revolution Syria. This coincides with its ally Jordan’s desire to have a “safe zone” on its border to keep out refugees. Thus the strip of desert along Jordan’s border currently controlled by US-backed militia, ending in al-Tanf, would appear to be a step along this path. But with apparent US acquiescence to regime control of strategic Deir-Ezzor, meaning the fulfilment of the Iranian land-bridge, a rather large gap is thus driven through the concept of a US-controlled east Syria where Saudi interests could balance Iran. Whether the proposed Russian occupation of a regime-controlled Deir-Ezzor would satisfy Saudi Arabia that Iran could be kept out seems uncertain, despite excellent Saudi-Russian relations. Interestingly though, this Saudi interest in the east, while the Saudi-led bloc feuds with Turkey’s ally Qatar, has created potential for an ideologically odd rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and the US’s SDF allies controlling the northern part of east Syria.

The issue of the Iranian land-bridge could also be undermined by other factors, above all the fact that both Deir Ezzor province, and the Iraqi side of the border opposite Deir-Ezzor, namely Anbar province, are overwhelmingly Sunni. The Iraqi regime and PMU will need to control Anbar to effectively link with an Assad-controlled Deir Ezzor, but Anbar was the heartland of the Sunni-led insurgency against the US occupation from 2003 onwards. How the locals will take to being ruled by sectarian Shiite forces remains to be seen, but that is connected to the entire question of what a post-ISIS Iraq will look like now that ISIS has been defeated. Moreover, the US ceding of Deir-Ezzor to Assad may be no guarantee of smooth sailing there either; Deir-Ezzor was an early centre of the anti-Assad uprising. The FSA’s Unified Military Council of Deir-Ezzor was founded on March 19 with the aim of unifying efforts to liberate Deir-Ezzor from both ISIS and the regime; important brigades formed by Deir Ezzor locals, such as Jaysh Assud Al-Sharqiyah, are operating in the southeast to block Assad’s advance into Deir Ezzor, which they claim will be liberated “by its sons.”  Moreover, as the opposition site Enab Baladi Online explains, “the tribal population [of Deir-Ezor] have strong ties with Saudi Arabia, which sees control of the area as strategic to counterbalancing the Iranian Shiite influence.”

Other issues involving Israel, Hezbollah, Turkey and the Kurds have already been noted above. Yet whichever way we look at it, the overall US-Russia agreement appears to guarantee a chunk of Syria for everyone. Aside from the guaranteed US and Russian zones, Israel gets to keep its Golan theft, if not effectively extend it somewhat; Turkey gets to keep the Azaz to Jarablus strip, regardless of the fall-out of the current dealing in Afrin and Idlib; even if Iran does not get its land-bridge fully intact, it still gets to keep the “cleansed” Qalamoun region linking Damascus to Lebanon and to the Alawite coast and Homs, as long as its Hezbollah allies don’t venture too far south; and Jordan gets to effectively control a strip of pacified southeast Syrian desert as a buffer.

It goes without saying that such an arrangement may well break down, and that such unjust “peace” agreements are often creators of future wars. But we can also confidently say that the revolutionary wave that began in the Arab Spring is not over, despite its setbacks in Syria and elsewhere – see the current uprising in Morocco’s Rif for example – and will continue to threaten the “stability” enforced by the regional soft-partition being enacted. The various imperialist and local reactionary powers, however much some may hate each other, will continue to be confronted by situations which force them into unwritten alliance against the masses of the region.

Originally published in Marxist Left Review, No. 14, Winter 2017, https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/us-vs-free-syrian-army-vs-jabhat-al-nusra-and-isis-history-of-a-hidden-three-way-conflict/

By Michael Karadjis

The US administration has annexed the Syrian conflict to its own war on terror. It has tried to impose its battle on Syrians so that they will abandon their own battle against the tyrannical discriminatory Assadist junta. … [but] the war on terror is centred around the state; it is a statist conception of the world order which strengthens states and weakens communities, political organizations, social movements, and individuals… In the record of this endless fight against terrorism there has not been a single success, and thus far three countries have been devastated over its course (Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria).”1

– Yassin al-Haj Saleh, former Syrian Communist dissident who spent 16 years in Assad’s dungeons

Introduction

This article deals with a specific aspect of the US role in the Syrian conflict: its drive to co-opt the Free Syrian Army (FSA) into a proxy force to fight only the jihadist forces of Jabhat al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, or JFS) and the Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh), while giving up their fight against the Assad regime.

This reality sharply contrasts with the comic-book view widely expressed in tabloid journals of the mainstream, left and right, that alleges the Syrian rebellion against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad is a conspiracy involving both the US and al-Qaida, along with the Gulf states, Turkey, Israel, George Soros and many others.

In reality, the US and the al-Qaida spin-offs have been involved in Syria on opposite sides from the outset. It is a particularly bad case of “alternative news” when the US is depicted as “supporting” the forces it bombs in Syria – the Islamic State and Nusra/JFS (and often mainstream rebel groups2) – while supposedly “trying to overthrow” the Assad regime which is untouched by US bombing.

Both the US and Nusra/JFS are enemies of the Syrian revolution and the FSA; yet both act to undermine it through maintaining some kind of relationship with it. In this they play a different tactical role to the direct counterrevolutionary role of Russian imperialism and Iran, and also of the Islamic State.

But in this process of “soft” undermining of the revolution from within, the US and Nusra/JFS have been in radical conflict with each other, forcing the FSA and other rebels to walk a fine line, given the overwhelming military superiority of their enemy.

Overview: US policy on Syria

This story of deceit, conflict and betrayal involving the triangle US-FSA-Nusra is only one aspect of the US role in the Syrian conflict, so an overview of general US policy on Syria will be presented first.

Fundamentally, the US has always been hostile to the revolution, for the same reason imperialist powers generally oppose people’s uprisings against “stable” capitalist regimes that serve their interests. The starting point needs to be an understanding that the long-term, multi-faceted, all-encompassing Syrian uprising is a revolution, regardless of the limitations of political leadership; and even more so, when looking at where the revolution has been at its strongest, that class has been the more decisive factor than sect and other issues that often appear to superficially dominate.

Yassin al-Haj Saleh sums up the regime as “an obscenely wealthy and atrociously brutal neo-bourgeoisie, which has proved itself ready to destroy the country in order to remain in power forever”. Moreover, “in its relationship with its subjects, this regime reproduces the structure of imperial domination” which “is a thousand times more telling than any anti-imperialist rhetoric”.3

This is central to understanding the American view, which was highlighted when US State Secretary Hilary Clinton’s asserted that Bashar Assad was a “reformer”4 as Assad was gunning down peaceful protest in early 2011.

At the same time, the US has no special love for particular representatives of such a “brutal neo-bourgeoisie”, if in destroying its country it cannot crush the masses and instead only intensifies the revolutionary instability – the US assassination of its client, South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Diem in 1963 being a case in point. So eight months and thousands of deaths later, President Obama finally called on Assad to “step aside”.

This “Yemeni solution” – named after the arrangement in Yemen whereby former dictator Saleh ceded power to his deputy to preserve a cosmetically ‘reformed’ regime – was spelled out when US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, in July 2012, stressed that when Assad leaves, “the best way to preserve stability is to maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government”.5 This has been US policy from Geneva I and II through recent rounds in close cooperation with Russia, in which even Assad himself could remain in a “transitional” government.6

US leaders understood that Assad cannot completely crush the uprising, and if the FSA were crushed it could only lead to further growth of Islamist and jihadist formations to absorb the dispossessed Sunni majority, given the real divisions among the population and the exploitation of them by the regime.

For a reformed capitalist regime to stabilise the country for capitalist rule would therefore, in this context, require it to incorporate some conservative sections of opposition leadership. Therefore, the more ideologically heterogeneous sections of the opposition, such as the FSA, should not be crushed, but weakened enough to be susceptible to co-optation; the search was on for a Syrian Abbas.

Thus bare survival for the FSA was the purpose of US aid: and the minimal level of this aid demonstrated this: it was never even remotely of the quantity or quality necessary for the FSA to win even tactical victories on the ground (let alone win outright), or to allow a permanent “balance” with the regime.

Till late 2013, the US only provided non-lethal aid (which was regularly cut off),7 such as binoculars, radios, “ready-meals” and tents.8 When the CIA arrived on the Turkish and Jordanian borders in mid-2012, its role was blocking others from supplying the advanced weapons that the FSA needed,9 especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons;10 often the US blocked any weapons getting to the FSA.11

The US embargo on anti-aircraft weapons remains today; given that Assad has been waging an air war since 2012, this is a fundamental aspect of US intervention; even when FSA groups tried to buy portable anti-aircraft missiles (manpads) on the black market, “somehow, the Americans found out and our purchase was blocked”.12

When the US finally began providing some “vetted” rebels with light arms in late 2013 – i.e. the kind of weaponry which they already manufactured or captured13 – reports of rebels being supplied 16 bullets a month exemplified the limited objectives of this “support”.14 As for the concurrent CIA training program, many rebels who already knew how to fight felt the main American interest was surveillance.15

The rest of the essay will look at the main purpose of this “aid” to some Syrian rebels: the main US aim has been to try to re-direct them away from fighting Assad into its own “war on terror” as a deliberate counter-revolutionary strategy.

Some background: the US-FSA-Nusra triangle of conflict

Two lines on the question of dealing with jihadism have been in conflict throughout the war.

The first is the Syrian revolutionary line. The rebels see the Assad regime as their main enemy, and believe attempting to defeat the jihadists without defeating Assad would be unsuccessful, because the regime is responsible for conditions leading to jihadism. However, they have clashed with Nusra/JFS throughout the conflict on their own terms, defending themselves or their communities against Nusra/JFS attacks. At the same time, they often cooperate militarily against the massively more powerful regime; and have refused US prodding to launch a frontal attack on Nusra/JFS, which they see as suicidal for the anti-Assad forces. However, the dramatically more violent terror against the Syrian people launched by ISIS led the rebels to make their own decision in late 2013 to launch an all-out frontal attack on it; but did not view this war as taking precedence over their war against the regime: they fight the dual counterrevolution.

The opposing US-backed line was the imperialist-Sawhat line, named after the Sunni militias recruited by the US in 2006-07 to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq. Mobilising Sunni fighters to fight Sunni jihadists was a positive step for the US compared to its previous reliance on Iranian-backed Shiites, which encouraged sectarian slaughter. However, the US-Iranian backed Shia-led regime dropped its promises to incorporate Sunni into the regime once al-Qaida was defeated, hence its negative connotations. In Syria, the Sawhat’s key differences with the revolutionary position are that, firstly, the US has pushed the FSA to launch a full frontal attack on Nusra as well as ISIS, and secondly, to gain US support even for their own war against ISIS, the US demands the rebels fight ISIS only and end their fight against the regime.

For most part the FSA has walked this fine line successfully – defensively fighting Nusra attacks, while rejecting US demands to launch a frontal offensive on Nusra, launching its own war against ISIS while rejecting US demands to stop fighting the regime – highlighting the absurdity of claims that the FSA is either a CIA or an al-Qaida front.

The FSA is the armed expression of the 2011 uprising, composed of troops who decided to protect fellow Syrians rather than killing them, and popular forces who armed themselves for protection against Assad’s violence. Its main goal is the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship. But the Islamic State set up its own murderous dictatorship which also must be overthrown. The problem with the US line – of fighting ISIS only – is that the very conditions that led to the rise of ISIS in eastern Syria and western Iraq – the large-scale political and social dispossession of Sunni Arabs by the Assad regime and its allied, US-backed Iraqi sectarian regime – are thereby entrenched. Syrian revolutionaries therefore see the overthrow of Assad as a prerequisite for the destruction of ISIS – the very reverse of the US strategy.

Sporadic early FSA clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra

To demonstrate this, we will first review the early clashes between the FSA and Nusra. The first main cause was when Nusra tried to capture FSA-controlled regions. In March 2013, for example, fighting broke out between the FSA-aligned Farouk Brigades and Nusra in Tal Abyad, as the latter attempted to seize the Turkish border post from the FSA.16

The other reason for clashes was to defend communities from Nusra, accompanied by popular demonstrations against theocratic repression. In Idlib, protests and clashes began in late 2012.17 In Raqqa, liberated in March 2013, demonstrations broke out against Nusra, including women’s demonstrations;18 heated discussions between FSA and Nusra cadres highlighted the tensions, but also the fact that Nusra was unable to forcibly impose its rule.19 When Nusra executed three captured military officers, local coordination committees organised demonstrations, chanting “Not Sunni and not Alawite, our revolution is for civil freedom”. In Kafranbel in Idlib, demonstrators raised a banner reading “Executions in Raqqa, and lashing in Saraqib. Who’s given you legitimacy to rule the people?” In Aleppo they chanted “The Sharia Committee has become the Air Force Intelligence”, or “What a shame, what a shame, shabbiha have become revolutionaries”.20

FSA units often went to the aid of protestors. In June 2013, in the Jabal al-Wastani region of Idlib, Nusra assassinated two civilians, accusing them of owning a bar, and tried to arrest someone they accused of working for the regime. Fighters from the National Unity Brigade of the FSA prevented them, and seven FSA battalions forced Nusra out. When Nusra tried to force a checkpoint in another village, they were arrested and barred them from the region.21

During a battle in the Damascus region, an FSA soldier got angry and cursed God. When a Nusra chief demanded he be charged with blasphemy, the local FSA battalion kicked Nusra out of the area. An FSA activist stated “If Nusra are going to be extremist, their services are not wanted”. In the village of Museifra in Daraa, Nusra executed a local man they accused of working for the regime. Civilians “surrounded the al-Nusra court with heavy weapons and forced the jihadists out of the village”. In in the village of Medineh, when a local was ordered to appear before a Nusra “sharia council”, he “drove his car by the relevant building and threw a bomb inside, killing five Nusra militants”.22

In September 2013, FSA units defeated Nusra in the eastern city of Abu Kamal. The ceasefire forced Nusra to expel foreign fighters, established that security would be handled by FSA-affiliated groups, prohibited Nusra checkpoints, and stipulated that a court order was required for house-raids, which could only be performed by FSA brigades. These clashes make nonsense of assertions that the FSA is part of a “jihadi” conspiracy. But they also revealed that Nusra was unable to impose its full control, and that it could be defeated. Following the Abu Kamal events, Nusra issued a two-page apology to the people of Abu Kamal!23

This was the start of a softening of Nusra views and actions. Nusra leader al-Jouliani “denounced transgressions by al-Nusra fighters and called for redressing how the civilians in Nusra-controlled areas are dealt with”.24 The context was the split between Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) around mid-2013. Nusra’s most reactionary elements, and most foreign fighters, went with ISIS. Nusra’s relative moderation reflected the pressure of its mostly Syrian base, many of whom only joined Nusra due to its superior funds, arms and organisation compared to the FSA, rather than due to ideological commitment;25 many quit FSA units to join Nusra for these reasons. “If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can’t even provide bullets for their fighters”, according to a fighter in Idlib.26

In September 2013, the entire 11th Division of the FSA, based in Raqqa, joined the smaller, but better-armed Nusra branch, to better resist ISIS.27 When a rebel coalition led by this “Nusra”, stuffed with FSA ranks, briefly liberated Raqqa from ISIS in January 2014, they removed the black flags which ISIS had placed on the spires of Christian churches.28 In April 2014, this Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade re-emerged from “Nusra”, and became the main FSA ally of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) defending Kobani against ISIS.

This highlights the contradiction between the sectarian Nusra leadership and many of its ranks.

From mid-2013 until late 2014, FSA-Nusra clashes virtually ceased; both focused on fighting the regime, alongside various mainstream Islamist brigades.

US drive to turn FSA into the ‘Sawhat’ against Jabhat al-Nusra

These sporadic clashes with Nusra demonstrate that the FSA is not some “jihadi” organisation. But the other side of this equation was the policy being pushed by the US.

As shown above, the limited US “support” to the FSA demonstrated its hostility to the latter’s revolutionary objectives, but the US is also hostile to the jihadist forces. However, this hostility to the latter is used as cover for its hostility to the whole revolution. “We can’t send arms to the FSA because they might end up with the jihadists.” Yet when this becomes “we need to send some arms to FSA moderates to boost them against the jihadists”, such arms are severely inadequate.

What better way to deal with both than to prematurely set the “moderate” FSA against the jihadists, and let them kill each other, in the face of the regime’s overwhelming power, sapping the FSA’s revolutionary potential by turning it into a Syrian “Sawhat”?

When rebel commanders met US intelligence officers in late 2012 to discuss getting US arms, the US officers were only interested in discussing drone strikes on Nusra, and enlisting the rebels to join the attack. When the FSA members said that unity against Assad’s more powerful forces was paramount at present, the US officers replied: “We’d prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad’s army” [later].29 This has been the main condition on which the US has offered to send a few guns to select FSA units ever since.

The G8 communique in June 2013 made no mention of the regime but called for the expulsion from Syria of “al Qaida and any other non-state actors linked to terrorism”, while French president Francois Hollande demanded rebels expel “extremist” groups as a condition for getting any French arms.30

So, if the FSA’s clashes with Nusra showed it was not a “jihadist” organ, was it a “CIA” organ willing to carry out these US orders? Not at all: FSA clashes with Nusra had been on their own terms, and defensive in nature. According to FSA Colonel Akaidi, from the Aleppo military council, if the US wants to turn the FSA “into the Sahwat” and thus “help us so that we kill each other, then we don’t want their help”.31

The FSA wanted to avoid full-scale war with Nusra to prevent anti-Assad fighters killing each other in the context of Assad’s massive military superiority; the contradictory nature of many of Nusra’s anti-Assad ranks was another reason. It was Nusra that was provoking conflict with its reactionary consequences, while the US, from the opposite side, was also pushing for a full-scale confrontation.

Even when the US first listed Nusra as a “terrorist organisation” in December 2012, many Syrians took to the streets claiming “There is no terrorism in Syria except that of Assad”,32 though other revolution activists disapproved of slogans which could imply sympathy for Nusra. But their message was that, given Assad’s greater terror, the US could not tell them who their enemy was: hardly the message of CIA proxies.

Thus the imaginary US-FSA-al-Qaida conspiracy against Assad collapses on both sides.

The FSA and rebel war on ISIS

But the period of relative peace with Nusra was not the end of the FSA’s war on jihadism. While Nusra’s Syrian base acted to partially moderate its behaviour, the split had the opposite effect on ISIS, whose base among foreign jihadi fighters, whose very presence in Syria was dependent on their sponsor, facilitated its imposition of open terror.

While Nusra focused on fighting the regime, ISIS and the regime largely ignored each other to concentrate their fire on the rebels.33 The second half of 2013 saw a growing war as the FSA acted to defend the masses in liberated zones from ISIS attempts to impose theocratic tyranny.

From the outset, ISIS was far more brutal than Nusra, firing into demonstrations with live ammunition and brutally killing rebels.34 When ISIS assassinated senior FSA leader Kamal al-Hamami in Latakia on July 11 2013, the FSA declared “war” on ISIS.35 When it seized control of Raqqa, ISIS acted with wanton violence, leading the FSA Raqqa Revolutionaries Front to launch resistance.36 In August, ISIS drove the Ahfad al-Rasoul brigades out of Raqqa by destroying their headquarters with car bombs, and in September launched a campaign of “Purification of Filth“ aimed at destroying the FSA. Clashes erupted in Deir Ezzor; in Aleppo, where 44 fighters were killed in October; in Azaz, where the FSA Northern Storm resisted an ISIS drive to seize the border; and throughout the country. ³⁷

The survival of the revolution required decisive action. On January 2014, the major FSA and Islamist brigades launched a full-frontal war on ISIS throughout Syria,38 Significantly, this was triggered by nation-wide demonstrations against ISIS on January 3,39 calling ISIS “alien invaders” and demanding their expulsion.40 This was evidence of a continued link between the civil uprising and its military reflection.

Within weeks, the rebels had driven ISIS entirely from Idlib, Hama, Latakia and most of Aleppo, then in the east from Deir Ezzor and briefly even Raqqa, the biggest and most rapid defeat suffered by ISIS any time in the war. Western Syria has remained free of ISIS ever since.

Not only did the rebels achieve this without US air support, the Assad regime bombed them in support of ISIS, even helping ISIS reconquer towns it had been driven from.41 Areas that were untouched by regime bombs while under ISIS control were immediately subjected to regime bombing once under rebel control.42

After refusing to arm the FSA because jihadists who fight alongside the FSA might get their hands on the arms, now the US refused to arm the FSA because these jihadists might get their hands on the arms while fighting against the FSA! Although the FSA attacked ISIS with its own agenda, one might assume US leaders would be pleased it was doing what they had been demanding, yet the US was reluctant “to boost assistance to moderate groups battling ISIS until the fighting in northern Syria ends”.43

The New York Times explained that “neither of the two sides in the rebel fighting presents a particularly attractive face to Western policy makers”,44 while James Clapper, US director of national intelligence, asserted that Nusra, then aiding the rebels against ISIS, had aspirations to attack the US – an absurd proposition.45

An explanation more in keeping with US policy was that the US refused to aid the rebels even against ISIS unless the rebels dropped the fight against the regime.

This same pattern – Assad bombing to help ISIS against the rebels and the US refusing to aid the rebels against ISIS – continued when ISIS made a comeback in eastern Syria following its windfall of advanced US weaponry seized in Mosul in June. In June-July, rebels held out in the city of Deir Ezzor for weeks against an ISIS siege, during which the Assad regime bombed the rebels in tandem with ISIS, helping it seize the city.46

The US, already bombing ISIS in Iraq, refused to aid the Deir Ezzor rebels against ISIS. Yet, from the time conflict between the regime and ISIS over Deir Ezzor began in November 2014, the US has been bombing on the side of the regime.47

The myth that the CIA and Pentagon programs were in conflict

The secret CIA program of supplying light arms and “training” to “vetted” FSA groups from late 2013 is often contrasted to the $500 million Pentagon program, launched later in 2014, to equip an armed force to fight ISIS only and not the regime.

As we will see, the Pentagon’s “full Sawhat” collapsed: attracting anti-Assad fighters to a force banned from fighting Assad was a logical disaster.

The CIA program, by contrast, is usually presented as anti-Assad, aimed at helping the rebels exert military pressure on the regime. We even read that the CIA and Pentagon were working at cross purposes.

However, a closer look shows that this was façade: not only because the weapons were grossly inadequate for the purpose of pressuring a regime with such massively superior killing equipment, or for defending already held positions; but also because the purpose of the CIA’s co-optation was for a more round-about, yet more effective, route to the same destination as the absurd Pentagon program. The CIA understood the need to “sweeten up” viable rebel groups first before bending them into a viable Sawhat.

CIA’s TOW program: Helping fight Assad or same old Sawhat?

Once the rebel war on ISIS had reached its limits, the US did begin a program of tightly controlled delivery of “TOW” anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) to several of the “vetted” FSA groups who had defeated ISIS.

The delivery of TOWs does not prove the US is supplying them; most are supplied by Saudi Arabia from its own stocks.48 However, it is understood that the Saudis must have US permission to deliver US-made weapons, though the reality may be more tug-o-war at times.

This followed a two-year CIA-enforced embargo on US allies supplying anti-tank weapons to the rebels49 (meanwhile, the US has continued to vigorously maintain its embargo on anti-aircraft weapons).50 But the rebels’ increasing ability to capture anti-tank weapons from the regime anyway, 51 and use them effectively, pushed the US to change direction and instead try to take some control of this supply as a co-option tool (and the TOWs were less efficient than Russian-made Konkurs and Kornets which the rebels have captured).52

The first TOWs were delivered in April 2014, and the number of groups receiving TOWs soon spread to nine,53 though they only received “a few dozen TOW antitank missiles” between them, “resulting in a minimal effect on the battlefield”.54 By the end of the year it was down to only four groups,55 with few weapons actually being delivered to anyone.56 What occurred in between?

The large Idlib-based FSA coalition, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF), is often referred to as one of the “US-backed” TOW recipients. However, it was not on the initial list of groups receiving TOWs, and its leader, Jamal Maarouf, claimed “We have received lots of promises from the US, but so far nothing more”.57 The SRF, which had successfully driven ISIS from Idlib, was also dedicated to overthrowing Assad.

But while Maarouf’s “immediate group of fighters” did not receive TOWs, “some of the other factions who pledged allegiance to his front did”. An April video depicting cadre from an SRF component, the Ghab Wolves Brigade, training in the use of TOWs, helps explain why, when a fighter reveals: “The weapons are sent by the Americans…and they only give weapons to those who specifically fight ISIS. They are not giving us weapons to fight Assad, they give us weapons to fight ISIS”.58

In June 2014 Nusra suddenly ended the year-long truce and launched a murderous attack on the SRF in Idlib. In response, the SRF, Harakat Hazm and other local FSA groups (Division 13, Division 101, Fursan al-Haq, etc.) decided to “suspend any and all forms of cooperation and coordination with the Jabhat al Nusra”.59

However, there was a difference between not cooperating with Nusra and the US demand to wage war against it. The SRF stressed that “despite al-Nusra’s atrocities, the SRF has no intention to carry weapons against al-Nusra, as it is busy fighting the Syrian regime”,60 thus refusing to become a Sawhat brigade.

The US initially had more faith in another northern FSA coalition, Harakat Hazm (some of whose member groups had quit the SRF), to which the first TOWs were delivered in April 2014. But the TOWs were few and far between, with shipments containing “only three or four missiles”, which were “no better than the Russian weapons” they captured from the SAA. Hazm leaders admitted to still fighting alongside Nusra, despite the declaration ending cooperation, since “the failure of the U.S. to deliver adequate weapons leaves them unable to refuse whatever allies come their way, including those with opposing politics”.61

Hazm was caught in a vice: the paucity of US support forced them to maintain some cooperation with Nusra; yet this cooperation was used by the US to wind down support.

The real goal of this US “support” was explained by a former Hazm member: “by September 2014 the United States started to pressure us to leave the battle field against Assad and to send all our forces to fight ISIS. We had no problem to go fight ISIS, but wouldn’t agree to stop fighting Assad. From then on, our relations with the Americans went from bad to worse and eventually they stopped backing us. When Jabhat al-Nusra attacked us, we had already lost all foreign support…because we dared to disobey the Americans”.62

US launches war on ISIS and Nusra and dumps FSA

The test came when the US-led Coalition started bombing ISIS in September; the US also bombed Nusra from the first day, even though Nusra, with all its faults and crimes, was not engaged in the kinds of near-genocidal activities that ISIS and the regime were. Since Nusra was based in many of the same regions as the rebels, US bombs hit other rebels, especially Ahrar al-Sham,63 and killed numerous civilians. The regime was untouched by US bombs, and welcomed the US intervention,64 collaborating with it via intelligence sharing65 and coordinated bombing.66

Now was the time for “US-backed” groups who had received handfuls of TOWs to aid the US in destroying the jihadists. Yet despite their own war against ISIS, and conflict with Nusra, they refused to endorse a campaign that targeted only these groups but not the regime.

Harakat Hazm issued a powerful statement condemning the US bombing as “a violation of national sovereignty and an attack on the revolution”.67 The SRF joined a dozen large FSA-linked and Islamist brigades and denounced the US air strikes as aiding Assad.68 Most FSA and rebel brigades denounced the US intervention.69

Failing this US proxy test, the FSA was excluded from the start from any voice in the US-led coalition to fight ISIS;70 John Allen, the general in charge of the coalition, confirmed that “there is no formal coordination with the FSA”,71 while Pentagon spokesman John Kirby declared the US does not “have a willing, capable, effective partner” in Syria.72 This lack of coordination led to near-strikes against the FSA.73

This was the background to the reports by late 2014 showing the US had virtually halted all support to the FSA.74

Nusra launches war on the FSA, US throws them under a bus

The US attack on Nusra also provides background to Nusra’s destruction of the SRF in Idlib in November and Harakat Hazm in in Aleppo in January 2015. Most Nusra cadres in Deir Ezzor had fled to Idlib following their defeat by ISIS in July; battle-hardened fighters, weapons and experience flooded in, suddenly making Idlib a new Nusra stronghold. But the SRF was a competitor in Idlib, and Nusra does not like competition.

The bombing led to a surge in support for Nusra, seen as the martyr of an unjust US attack that benefited Assad. In mass demonstrations throughout Aleppo, Idlib, and Homs, demonstrators chanted “We are all Nusra” or “Nusra came to support us when the world abandoned us”.75

Nusra used this surge in moral authority to turn on the SRF and Hazm. Its propaganda claimed that any groups that had accepted US weapons were US proxies. Despite their refusal to be the Sawhat, Nusra’s case was helped by the very vocal way in which the US advocated the FSA use its weapons against Nusra.

Demonstrations in support of the SRF broke out in the SRF heartland, with a strong role played by women,76 but Nusra’s martyr status neutralised opposition to Nusra’s attack elsewhere in Idlib. It also militated against the SRF putting up stiff resistance; it maintained its established policy to avoid soaking the province in fratricidal bloodshed.

Meanwhile, the winding down of US support meant that the SRF, Hazm and the FSA were in a weaker military position had they wanted to confront Nusra, while in a weaker position politically due to Nusra being bombed by what was seen as their US backer. As one FSA official put it, “We have a huge American flag our back but not a gun in our hand”.77

Faysal Itani sums up this US policy:

US airstrikes on JAN immediately produced a new and powerful rival to already vulnerable moderate forces. By striking JAN without sufficiently strengthening its moderate counterparts first, and promising (publicly, no less) to use them to fight JAN and not the regime, the United States made the opposition appear just threatening enough to provoke JAN, but not so threatening as to deter the jihadist group.78

State of the Free Syrian Army at the outset of 2015

Nusra’s crushing of the SRF and Harakat Hazm did not end the FSA in the north. There were other large FSA units in the Idlib and Aleppo regions (e.g. Division 13, Fursan al-Haq and others who formed the 5th Brigade coalition) and countless smaller units. In addition, there were various rebel groups with some kind of “Islamist” reference but were not “Salafist”, such as Jaysh al-Mujahideen, Jabhat al-Shamiya and the MB-linked Faylaq al-Sham.

The 10-20,000 SRF and Hazm troops did not just disappear. Many went to these other FSA groups; many Hazm cadre in Aleppo joined Jabhat al-Shamiya; some SRF cadre in Idlib joined an expanded Ahrar al-Sham (Nusra’s aggression against the SRF was condemned by Ahrar al-Sham leaders).79 Some SRF cadre deserted to Nusra at the outset, but even some cadre who had opposed Nusra’s takeover subsequently fought under Nusra purely as a powerful vehicle to keep fighting the regime, another indication of the fluidity of group membership.80

Relative strengths led to markedly different military coalitions. In Aleppo, the Fatah Halab (Aleppo Conquest) coalition of over 30 major brigades – FSA, soft-Islamist, and Ahrar al-Sham – excluded Nusra from membership. Nusra’s disagreements with other rebels led it to largely withdraw from northern Aleppo province and Aleppo city.81 Nusra remained in a strong position in south-west Aleppo bordering Idlib, but even there was continually challenged by popular protest, especially in towns such as al-Atarib.82

In contrast, Idlib now became Nusra’s main base. While it did not “rule” Idlib, the exclusion it faced in Aleppo was impossible. The new military coalition, Jaysh al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), comprised eight groups, of which Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were the two largest. Others (Faylaq al-Sham, Ajnad al-Sham) were part of the ‘soft-Islamist’ middle; while Jaysh al-Sunna was a “non-ideological” brigade of Homsi exiles.83 In the string of major victories in early 2015 (Idlib city, Jush al-Shugr, etc.), the major FSA Idlib brigades (Division 13, Fursan al-Haq) fought alongside Jaysh al-Fatah, but were not members.

South of Idlib, FSA brigades were more prominent: in northern Latakia province, the FSA First Coastal brigade; in northern Hama, the FSA Nasr Brigades; in Homs, the new Homs Liberation Front.

US allies and proxies against ISIS: whoever does not fight Assad

When the US ground down its support to northern FSA groups in late 2014, it shifted its support in several directions. What these different forces had in common was that they did not fight Assad.

In the north, the Pentagon announced its $500 million plan to train and equip “vetted” individual rebels (rather than FSA units) to form a new force from scratch to fight ISIS.84 It collapsed in a heap. The vetting process reduced the initial 1200 fighters interested to 125, the rest either rejected by the US or quit. While more than willing to fight ISIS, they rejected the US demand that they sign a declaration pledging that their weapons would only be used against ISIS and not against the regime.85

Even worse, the Pentagon first engaged in a week of bombing Nusra in northern Syria before dispatching the first 54 fighters of “Division 30” into that very region.86 Not surprisingly, they were captured by Nusra. In a statement concerning the attack on Division 30, Nusra claimed the captured fighters admitted that their job was to fight Nusra “and other terrorist groups”, and accused them of spotting for the US air strikes.87

Of course, “confessing” while Nusra captives is hardly reliable, but the context makes these assertions plausible. They also blend with suspicions among Syrian rebels; several weeks earlier, the MB-connected Liwa al Haqq warned that “all the checkpoints need to inspect those coming from Turkey. There are stray dogs the Americans have finished training that will enter Syria soon. Their mission is spying and assassinations”.88

Whether this disaster was US incompetence or malice was the only question. One local activist noted that “sending in the 54 and then bombing JAN a few miles away from their positions – implying the 54 acted as spotters for the US Air Force – looks like constructing a case that “See, all our well-meant support is hopeless”, justifying the US abandonment of the FSA even for Sawhat purposes.89

Meanwhile, in the south, the US cobbled together the New Syrian Army. In November 2015, the NSA, backed by US air strikes, expelled ISIS from the al-Tanf border crossing with Iraq, releasing a video showing copious US weaponry. Later it launched a failed raid on Abu Kamal, where the going was tough, because many Deir Ezzor rebels “distrust its American backers”, especially because the NSA’s introductory video made no mention of fighting the regime.90

Meanwhile, while backing these toothless ventures, the Pentagon refused to provide air cover the FSA and allied rebel forces in their ongoing conflict with ISIS east of the strategic frontline rebel-held towns Mare and Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province. In June 2015, the Syrian air force bombed the rebels “assisting an Islamic State offensive on rebel-held areas”.91

Explaining why the US did not aid the rebels against ISIS, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said the rebels are not a “willing partner on the ground”.92 But according to the Syrian American Council, US officials gave “the astounding reason that aiding the rebels in Aleppo would hurt Assad, which would anger the Iranians, who might then turn up the heat on U.S. troops in Iraq”.93

However, a year later, the US did launch several air strikes in support of a new north Aleppo rebel brigade attacking ISIS. The Mu’tasim Brigade also became the first ever rebel brigade in Syria to receive airdropped weapons from the US, insignificant quantities. This US support is explained by the views of the brigade’s leader, Mu’tasim Abbas: “When extremist groups started festering in our society… We redirected our battles just to fighting ISIS and other extremists … Once we get rid of ISIS, then the regime will crumble”.94

However, by late 2014 the main US ally on the ground had shifted to the Kurdish-based Peoples Protection Units (YPG), led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), already involved in its own war against ISIS in northeast Syria. In 2015, the US helped hammer together the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), consisting overwhelmingly of the YPG alongside small numbers of Arab fighters from rebel or non-rebel groups in northeast Syria.

Since late 2014, every YPG (and SDF) offensive against ISIS has been heavily backed by fully coordinated US air strikes; the YPG/SDF is the only group in Syria with the right to call in US air strikes; US arms have been dropped directly to them in the field; hundreds of US special forces have been sent in to work with them;95 and several US air bases have been built in their territory.96

The YPG/SDF are not US proxies. They have their own goals, centred around a Kurdish autonomy expanded into what they call a ‘democratic confederalist’ entity that incorporates non-Kurds and promises a revolutionary model for post-Assad Syria. It is not the aim of this essay to assess the realities of this project. The point is merely that the US and the YPG/SDF are currently allied as their interests have converged.

Spokespeople for both sides claim that the US provides air cover for the YPG/SDF because they are the “most effective” fighters against ISIS. They were indeed effective, especially when fighting to liberate Kurdish-populated territory from ISIS tyranny. However, as we saw above, the FSA/rebels drove ISIS out of the whole of western Syria without any US air strikes to aid them.

Thus both the FSA/rebels and the YPG/SDF have been effective fighters against ISIS, due to their real roots among the populations they represent. Both have done a much better job than the Assad regime, whose only victory against ISIS was the reconquest of Palmyra (after spectacularly losing it), with the aid of Russian air strikes; Assad then lost it again, and the second reconquest was carried out with the aid of both Russian and US air strikes.97

Rather, the issue is what the YPG/SDF has in common with the US proxy forces: it fights only ISIS, and not the Assad regime. In its case, this is their own decision; the Assad regime made a pragmatic deal with the PYD in 2012 to withdraw its forces from the three main concentrations of Kurdish-majority territory, leaving them to the PYD. This was not due to Assad’s love for Kurdish autonomy; it merely enabled Assad to concentrate his fire on revolutionary forces elsewhere; nor to any PYD love for Assad –not getting barrel-bombed like everyone else has its advantages.

Nevertheless, this policy of not fighting the Assad regime meant that the US condition imposed on ex-rebel proxies was already met by this far more significant fighting force of its own accord. Thus the US-PYD alliance makes war on ISIS in eastern Syria, while both can ignore Assad and Russia bombing the revolutionary populations in western Syria.

US subversion of the Southern Front

Though the main US shift, when it dumped the FSA in the north, went towards proxies or the YPG, another subtle shift was towards the real FSA in the south, the Southern Front, based in Daraa province. With 35,000 troops in over 50 brigades, the SF carried out a string of victories in in late 2014 and early 2015.

The SF’s democratic, secularist anti-sectarian politics,98 alongside its dominance over jihadist groups in the south, is often cited as the reason for this new US support, as the numbers of TOWs increased among SF groups, as they were drying up in the north.

However, like the abandoned SRF and Hazm, and unlike the YPG and the Pentagon proxies, the SF’s main enemy was the regime. Did this indicate actual US support for anti-Assad resistance in the south?

In mid-2015, the SF released a declaration rejecting “any military or [ideological] cooperation or rapprochement with the Al-Nusra Front or any takfiri [ideology] adopted by any group among the ranks of the Syrian rebels”,99 provoked by Nusra claiming “victories” that had been made by the SF. Like all Syrian rebels, the SF vigorously condemned the massacre of some 20 Druze in Idlib by a Nusra unit and announced “its readiness to protect Druze villages”.

However, this was well within FSA-revolution, rather than ‘Sawhat’, parameters. The SF made clear that ceasing cooperation with Nusra “is not a declaration of war” and would not “face off” with Nusra.100 So, like the SRF-Hazm-FSA non-cooperation statement in Idlib, and the exclusion of Nusra from Fatah Halab in Aleppo, this highlights the fine line the FSA tries to walk between the demands of the jihad and the demands of the Sawhat.

US support to the southern FSA, coordinated via the Military Operations Centre (MOC) in Amman, consisting mostly of US, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence officers, had not always been forthcoming. In May 2013, for example, MOC deliberately held back arms to rebels facing a strategic battle in the southern town Khirbet Ghazaleh, leading to its capture by Assad.101 Throughout summer 2013, the US failed to supply “a single rifle or bullet to the FSA in Daraa”, and “actively prevented deliveries” of Saudi arms and ammunition.102 It also involved training a group of people to maintain order in the event of a catastrophic collapse of the Assad regime, rather than to fight Assad.103

The new US interest in arming the SF was connected to the war on ISIS. Unlike the Pentagon shambles, the CIA wanted to work through viable military organisations, all of which were fighting the regime. The US strategy appears to have been to allow the SF to feel some victories, then once a level of dependence was created, turn on the screws.

After the SF’s string of victories in early 2015 (taking the Jordanian border crossing at Nasib, Sheik Miskeen, Nawa, the historic town of Bushra al-Sham, and regime base 52), the US and MOC imposed a series of “red lines”, where the SF was not to go.104 These included the central area of Daraa city, the neighbouring province Suweida, north towards the city of Sasa, and any attempt to link up with the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus.

SF offensives to take Daraa city, and the Thala airbase, were unsupported,105 or blocked.106 According to some reports, if the SF violated the “red line” against advancing towards Damascus, it would come under US attack.107

By mid-2015 the MOC had scaled back support for the SF,108 and use of TOWs trickled off in late 2015 “and totally vanished in the first two weeks of 2016”, though SF spokesman Isam El Rayyes denied this was new; rather “MOC-licensed resupplies have remained as low as they ever were”.109 Reports in early 2016 indicated that Jordan had “forced the Southern Front to halt all military actions”. The context included Jordan’s acquiescence with the Russian invasion, and indications that Jordan would be happy with the Assad regime re-taking the entire region from the SF. ¹¹⁰

When the US and Russia jointly tasked Jordan with listing “terrorist” organisations to be excluded from talks, Jordan’s list included some 160 rebel groups.111

However, a full regime reconquest of Daraa would be a major undertaking; as long as the SF is held back by red lines and arms freezes, it posed no problem to the regime’s aim of destroying the main revolutionary centres there (East Ghouta, Moadamiya, Darayya, etc.).

The US-Jordan strategy involved the familiar Sawhat: in January 2016, MOC officials told the SF to stop attacking regime forces and instead focus their efforts on the jihadists, and fighting Nusra was even more important than fighting ISIS. If they did as demanded, they were promised new weaponry.112

In May, the MOC tasked some 4500 SF troops with driving ISIS-connected militia out of some pockets around Daraa, telling the SF it was “tired of your excuses” for “delaying” these operations, and warning it would cut cash flows until they scored victories over ISIS.113

In March 2016, the SF took part in the US-Russia facilitated nation-wide ceasefire. In reality, however, it was only a lull in bombing: so while the regime continued bombing at lower intensity – particularly in Aleppo and Darayya in the Damascus suburbs – “maintaining the ceasefire” became the new rationale for holding back the SF.

In May 2016, new US/MOC “red-lines” were set in a meeting with rebel groups from around the country, deeming the “destruction of military and security structures” in Syria a “red line”, and called on rebels, as part of a peace process, to “join the ranks of the Syrian Army in its fight against Jabhat al-Nusra and all armed groups that refuse to join the Army”.114

The betrayal of Darayya

In mid-2016 Assad’s troops marched into the iconic revolutionary town of Darayya, one of the key centres remaining wedded to the ideals of the 2011 uprising. Thousands of residents still remaining after years of bombing, starvation and dispossession, but also heroic resistance, were deported to other parts of Syria.

While 748 barrel bombs were dropped on Darayya in June 2016 alone,115 and the other Damascus suburbs were also being furiously bombed, besieged and starved, just a little to the south the once mighty Southern Front was forced to abide by the “ceasefire”.

Many popular forces demanded the SF reactivate the fronts against Assad. According to one pro-Islamist rebel declaration, “conspiracies against the Revolution can’t be foiled except by opening up the Damascus front. … And Deraa [i.e. the SF] won’t act except with a “white/soft coup” against the MOC”.116

How this US/MOC intervention against the SF betrayed Darayya is explained by this piece that appeared just a few weeks before the surrender:

[T]he MOC summoned leaders in the Southern Front for an emergency meeting in which they were warned against launching an offensive to seize Sheikh Maskin, a town lies along a motorway that run northward from Daraa’s provincial capital toward Damascus… The same month that the town fell into government hands, the MOC ordered the Southern Front to halt its operations against the Syrian regime in the Daraa province in order to focus its fight on ISIS-affiliated groups in the region.

[A]n official in Ahrar al-Sham issued a fiery warning to Free Syrian Army-affiliated rebels in southern Syria, saying they were culpable for the regime’s recent advances into the besieged western Damascus suburb of Darayya.117

Conclusion: CIA and Pentagon programs had same goal

To sum up, therefore, as with the CIA-program and the delivery of TOWs in the north, the much heralded CIA “support” to the once magnificent Southern Front turned out to be a long way round to the same goal as the Pentagon program: to end the rebel war against Assad and turn them into US proxies against the jihadists only. With results such as the crushing of two large FSA coalitions in the north, the demobilisation of the Southern Front, and the crushing of Darayya, the CIA program was more effectively counterrevolutionary than the Pentagon program, precisely because the latter could mobilise no significant forces (except the YPG) from the start.

So let’s lay to rest the myth of the “anti-Assad” CIA program being at odds with the anti-ISIS Pentagon program.

Return to the north: How does Euphrates Shield fit this picture?

Between the crushing of Darayya and the crushing of eastern Aleppo later that year, attention must swing back to the north. Does Turkey’s Euphrates Shield operation fall within the “Sawhat” strategy?

Turkey’s Erdogan regime had been one of the strongest supporters of the anti-Assad rebellion. While Turkey’s anti-Kurdish policy is usually given as a main objective of its intervention in Syria, this explains little. Erdogan had a very strong relationship with Assad until 2011, and Assad could be relied upon to crush Kurdish Rojava once he crushed the rest of the rebellion; and until mid-2015, Erdogan had been involved in a half-hearted “peace process” with the PKK anyway.

But Turkey could not sit by as millions of refugees from Assad’s slaughter poured across the border. Overwhelmed, Turkey’s government eventually decided that the cause of this massive instability needed to be removed. And a regime pushing a soft-Islamist discourse at home and regionally allied to the Muslim Brotherhood would lose credibility if it ignored Assad’s wholesale slaughter of mostly Syrian Sunnis.

Turkey initially put forward its plan to evict ISIS from Azaz to Jarablus in the northern Aleppo border region and set up a “safe zone” in mid-2015. Erdogan’s plan was partly to relieve the refugee burden by allowing refugees to settle, safe from air strikes, in northern Syria. However, his alliance with the rebels, who were to patrol the zone, meant that Turkey’s intervention threatened to go beyond its border issues, and provide back-up for the rebels war against the regime. Therefore this was rejected by the US, which insisted “there are no U.S. plans for a safe zone, a no-fly zone, an air-exclusionary zone, a humanitarian buffer zone or any other protected zone of any kind”.118

Yet in mid-2016, when Turkey launched the Euphrates Shield operation in alliance with FSA and Islamist militia to evict ISIS from the Azaz to Jarablus strip, it was supported by both US and even Russian airstrikes, even though its theoretically resolute anti-Assad policy clashed with both US and Russian objectives.119

Ironically, it was YPG actions that laid the basis of this US/Russian. In February 2016, the YPG seized a chunk of Arab-majority northern rural Aleppo from the FSA and rebel groups with the direct aid of Russian air cover, including the iconic revolutionary town of Tal Rifaat. This cut rebel-held eastern Aleppo city off from rebel-held northern Aleppo regions around Mare and Azaz and from the Turkish border.

So the Azaz-Mare rebels, squeezed between the Turkish border, the YPG to the west and south and ISIS-held northeast rural Aleppo, attacked east and seized the border town of al-Rai from ISIS.120 Turkey meanwhile had been gathering rebels across the border to drive ISIS from Jarablus.121 Turkey’s decision to evict ISIS from this zone thus coincided with the need of the Azaz-Mare rebels to break their isolation.

However, because the YPG was occupying Tal Rifaat, and ISIS held al-Bab, there was no route for the Turkey-FSA offensive to link up with and help defend fellow rebels in Aleppo city from Assad.

Therefore, as it had no way of fighting Assad, this FSA operation against ISIS could gain both US and Russian support, regardless of the rebels’ desires; they could support an “unintentional Sawhat”.

However, for Erdogan it may have been less unintentional. Following the botched coup attempt in mid-2016, the AKP began moving in a more conventional Turkish nationalist direction, symbolised by its new alliance with the far-right Turkish-chauvinist MHP. This push into northern Syria offered this nationalist consensus an influence in this heavily Turkmen-populated region, an opportunity to block the YPG’s threat to “link” its Kurdish cantons of Kobane and Afrin by seizing this non-Kurdish zone in between, and a potential zone to push Syrian refugees into122– while offering no danger of a clash with Assad.

This new Turkish policy made it easier for Erdogan to reconcile with Putin, and Turkey became a key partner, with Russia and Iran, in a new “peace process” launched in the Kazak capital Astana. For Russia, ensuring the process worked in the regime’s favour involved facilitating Assad’s victory in Aleppo, meaning the rebels entered the process drastically weakened.

The question then was whether Euphrates Shield weakened the rebels in the face of the decisive Aleppo showdown. One might argue that, given the Azaz-Mare rebels were already cut off from Aleppo, driving back ISIS was the best they could do, and did no harm to the Aleppo front.

However, Euphrates Shield not only involved the Azaz-Mare rebels, but also several thousand rebels Turkey had recruited from across its northwest border, from rebel-held Idlib and southwest rural Aleppo, while “60 percent of Turkmen fighters pulled out of Aleppo [city] in August to take part in Euphrates Shield”.123 This left east Aleppo drastically weakened when Assad reimposed total siege.

Accusations of Turkish betrayal came from various quarters. Abu Abd, the final leader of rebel forces in Aleppo city claimed that due to “the orders of the sponsor a lot of fighters from Aleppo left it to fight in the northern countryside;”124 Ahmed Hussein, from Ahrar al-Sham, noted that despite the regime’s “worst attack so far … we have not received any significant support to counter them;”125 while Abdul Ilah al-Fahed, the opposition National Coalition, claimed that “Aleppo’s fall was facilitated in an international agreement”.126

Possibly some of the rebels who moved north imagined that expelling ISIS from northeast Aleppo could open the front against Assad from the north. This would have required Euphrates Shield seizing al-Bab from ISIS, yet that operation only began once Aleppo was crushed. Whatever the subjective intentions of the rebels or Turkey, the effect was the same: Aleppo was abandoned.

Turkey was also abandoning traditional positions. Turkish leaders now stated their agreement with the US position that Assad could play a role in the “transitional government”,127 a point on which they had previously differed. During the siege, Turkish leaders repeated the demand made by the US 128 and Russia that the rebels “separate themselves” from JFS and expel it from Aleppo.129 Yet there were only 8-900 JFS fighters of the rebel force ten times that number in Aleppo, and were only inside the city at all due to their role in breaking Assad’s first siege of Aleppo from the outside. In the context of apocalyptic regime and Russia bombing, the demand to expel JFS was a demand on the rebels to weaken their own defences.

Clashes between Syrian rebels and HTS jihadists early 2017

In this context of Euphrates Shield, the crushing of Aleppo, Astana, the intensified US war on Nusra, and Donald Trump’s new pro-Putin US administration, new clashes erupted between different groups of rebels in Idlib and western Aleppo in early 2017.130 On one side was the new Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance, formed by JFS (which split from al-Qaida in mid-2016) and four small rebel groups. On the other were the majority of rebel groups, including Ahrar al-Sham, which expanded as six moderate Islamist brigades joined it,131 and the FSA.

These clashes did not last long; the need to avoid all-out conflict, in order to focus on Assad, the Russian and Iranian invaders and ISIS, reasserted itself. At the time, however, analyses of this conflict ranged from the idea that it represented a “new revolution against al-Qaida”,132 to the claim that HTS was leading a struggle against rebel leaderships trying to end the revolution in the service of Turkey, Russia and the US.133

As we have seen, the struggle against Nusra/JFS in Idlib both by the FSA/rebels and popular struggle has been ongoing, sharpening with Nusra attacks on demonstrations bearing the flag of the revolution and on FSA Division 13 early in 2016.134 This legacy lends legitimacy to the “new revolution” discourse.

Complicating this picture, however, was that Turkey’s Euphrates Shield operation was allied to a range of rebel groups most of whose Idlib chapters were in conflict with JFS, while Turkey was involved with the Astana process with Russia and Iran. Astana aimed to trap the opposition into accepting a “transitional” role for the Assad regime, while pushing them to turn all their guns against both ISIS and JFS: classic Sawhat.

After the Astana meeting of January 23-24, Russia, Turkey and Iran released a statement that “reiterate[d] their determination to fight jointly against ISIL/DAESH and Al-Nusra [i.e. JFS] and to separate from them armed opposition groups”.135 According to one source, this clause “transformed the positions held by al-Nusra into a cake that the regime forces and opposition factions are trying to annex”.136

However, while taking part in the discussions, the rebel leadership resisted capitulation at Astana. Stressing they “were not party to this agreement”, the FSA’s Osama Abu Zaid noted that the “three countries can sign any agreements they want to”.137

The opposition delegation “refused to talk about confrontation with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in Syria, before removing the foreign, “Iraqi, Afghan and Iranian” militias from Syria”.138 Likewise, the Syrian Coalition stressed that only “areas controlled by the ISIS extremist group”, should be excluded from the ceasefire, i.e., not areas with JFS presence.139

The rebels also continued to reject any role for Assad in a “transitional” regime,140 and declared their aims at Astana were to achieve basic preconditions for real negotiations, including the release of captives and an end to regime sieges.141

However, caught in a bind, the rebels abided by the ceasefire for the sake of the civilian population, despite its terms legitimising regime, Russian and US attacks on JFS-controlled territory; yet the Assad regime refused to abide by any ceasefire, and continued to furiously bomb East Ghouta and Wadi Barada.142

Furthermore, some statements from the exile-based Syrian Coalition were less principled than the rebels’ positions. For example, in one statement the Coalition called for “the formation of an international coalition to oust all terrorist organizations from Syria”.143

JFS began its attacks on rebel groups that very week; either JFS believed it had to pre-emptively attack the rebels before they coveted its territory, or could use this clause as a pretext to attack its adversaries.

Astana was in full accord with the US position. Over December 2016 and January 2017 the US stepped up its war against JFS, killing hundreds their cadres,144 as well as allied fighters from the Nour ed-Din al-Zinki brigade,145 and plenty of civilians, though it also bombed Ahrar al-Sham, JFS’s main opponent.146

Along with being the main target of US bombing, JFS was also the only significant armed group that opposed the Turkish intervention and Astana process.147 Together with a small degree of moderation which has crept into its governance 148 and its discourse 149 since breaking with al-Qaida, this has allowed JFS to project itself as the only true “resistance” to Astana and capitulation.

Trump continues and intensifies the Obama-Kerry legacy

While Trump’s Syria policy shows much continuity with the Obama legacy, his open praise for Putin’s and Assad’s alleged “fight against ISIS” suggested an even greater counterrevolutionary role for the US.150

Under Trump, the bombing of JFS in Idlib and western Aleppo reached its most horrific point with the slaughter of some 57 worshippers in a mosque in western Aleppo 151– which Trump’s Russian friends defended as aimed at “terrorists”,152 while the nature of the “war on ISIS” was highlighted with massacre of dozens of displaced people in a school in Raqqa,153 and the mass killing of hundreds of civilians in Mosul.154 Meanwhile, the US role alongside Assad, Russia and Iran in the latest reconquest of Palmyra was widely reported;155 and a calculation US bombings in February from CentCom (i.e. the US-led Coalition bombing Syria) shows that while 60 percent were carried out in coordination with the SDF, most of the other 40 percent was in alliance with Assad in Deir Ezzor, Palmyra and Idlib, some 195 of the 548 strikes.156

Then in the very days before Assad’s chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, three prominent US leaders announced that the US was “no longer” (sic) focused on removing Assad, whose “longer term status will be decided by the Syrian people”, but is for now “a political reality that we have to accept”.157

Assad mistook this encouragement to mean that even the use of sarin would pass, resulting in the first ever US strike on the regime, on the airfield from where the sarin was launched. After this singular US “credibility” strike on Assad – following 7,899 strikes on anti-Assad targets – all wings of the US leadership scrambled to emphasise that it was a one-off, that “we’re not going into Syria”, that it was only in response to sarin, that the US had no interest in Assad’s continued use of his other weapons of mass destruction, that defeating ISIS remains the priority, that tensions with Russia would “not spiral out of control”,158 and that there was “no change in US policy”.159

National Security Advisor HR McMaster clarified that if there were any “regime change” it would be carried out by Russia, and that the US goal was limited to “a significant change in the nature of the Assad regime and its behavior in particular”.160

Conclusion

It is not surprising that key revolutionary centres that continually resist the jihadists – Ma’arrat al-Numan,161 Atareb,162 Kafranbel, Darayya and so on – centres where revolutionary councils have been most successful, have been continually targeted by regime airstrikes.

It is also not surprising that the US again cut off its meagre “support” to the rebels when the latest conflict erupted with JFS, allegedly “to ensure that supplies do not fall into extremist hands”.163 This may seem counterintuitive, given US pressure on the rebels to fight Nusra, but is logical when we remember that the rebels refused to drop the fight against Assad.

These facts indicate that both the US and Assad see the real revolution as the main threat, with “anti-jihadism” a useful propaganda device. But this regime, Russian and US bombing boosts the standing of JFS amid false ‘ceasefire’ processes. As Felix Legrand points out, “the very inverse dynamic” from that intended has resulted from these ceasefires, as Nusra/JFS “emerged indisputably strengthened from the failure of the agreement between the regime and the non-jihadist opposition”.164 Because Assad continues to slaughter through the ‘ceasefires’, when the rebels try, for good reason, to respect them, JFS gains points as the “true resistance”.

A genuine ceasefire, especially one based on a more positive relationship of forces than at present, would aid the democratic revolutionary forces, because the jihadists thrive on military struggle; every time there is some lull in the fighting, the masses return to the streets with the flag and slogans of the revolution. A revival of the civil movement would provide a chance to overcome the sectarian atmosphere; massive slaughter is not conducive to rebuilding harmony.

At this point, the military side of the struggle appears to be largely lost; the long-term US drive to divert the revolution to the “war on terror” and other forms of sabotage, and the undermining of the struggle by other alleged foreign “friends”, alongside the massive Russian and Iranian intervention and the rise of ISIS, have all led to this point.

Of course, there is no military “solution” (and the arguments that some Syrians fear certain rebel formations “taking power” in Damascus are as unreal as fears of Hamas emerging from Gaza to rule in Tel Aviv). However, the military balance on the ground is a decisive factor: it is the difference between a ceasefire leading to a political arrangement in which the opposition can demand the release of political prisoners, the end of sieges, keeping their weapons, providing security and democratic governance to the areas they control and so on, compared to one in which the regime is able to deny these basics: in other words, the difference between a ceasefire that leaves the door open to non-military revolutionary possibilities and one that slams it fully shut.

At the same time, the severe political limitations of the opposition leaderships are also crucial factors; the issue is not merely military. But it is beyond the scope of this article to analyse this question; the point here, however, is that the sabotage of the FSA’s military position has also had profoundly negative impacts on the relationship of political forces within the Syrian opposition. It imposes a false choice between total capitulation, dressed up as the only acceptable form of “moderate” politics (so reminiscent of Palestine), and nihilistic rejectionism and jihadism as the as the face of “continuing the struggle”.

Such an evolution of the political situation within the anti-Assad camp does not bode well for the revolutionary possibilities of a genuine ceasefire, even one based on a more favourable military balance than at present. However, from afar, we can do little but provide solidarity with both the military and political struggles that do presently continue, and not give up on the revolution while its sparks continue to rage throughout Syria, in some cases to amaze.

Notes

---

1 Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “The Syrian Cause and Anti Imperialism”, Al-Jumhuriya, 5 May 2017, http://aljumhuriya.net/en/critical-thought/the-syrian-cause-and-anti-imperialism.

2 Michael Karadjis, “Who Has the US Bombed, Bombed For and Bombed Within Syria?”, Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis, 3 September 2015, https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/who-has-the-us-bombed-for-in-syria/.

3 Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “The Syrian Cause and Anti Imperialism”, Al-Jumhuriya, 5 May 2017, http://aljumhuriya.net/en/critical-thought/the-syrian-cause-and-anti-imperialism.

4 Patrick Goodenough, “Syrian President Assad Regarded As a ‘Reformer,’ Clinton Says”, CNSNews, 28 March 2011, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/syrian-president-assad-regarded-reformer-clinton-says.

5 “U.S. defense chief: Syria military must remain intact when Assad goes”, Reuters, 30 July 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-syria-crisis-usa-idUKBRE86T1KF20120730.

6 “US sees Assad staying in Syria until March 2017”, The Daily Star, 6 January 2016, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2016/Jan-06/330448-us-sees-assad-staying-in-syria-until-march-2017.ashx.

7 Serene Assir, “Western-backed Syria rebels in disarray as aid halted”, The Daily Star, 12 December 2013, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Dec-12/240840-syrian-rebel-spokesman-decries-us-uk-aid-decision.ashx#ixzz2oVu4wg8J.

8 Lauren Williams, “U.S. to tighten mechanisms for FSA aid delivery”, The Daily Star, 25 November, 2013, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Nov-25/238779-us-to-tighten-mechanisms-for-fsa-aid-delivery.ashx#axzz2lSxxMMwy.

9 Nour Malas, “Syrian Rebels Get Missiles; Fears Rise That Portable Antiaircraft Weapons Could Wind Up With Terrorists”, The Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443684104578062842929673074.

10 John Follain and Tony Allen-Mills, “CIA polices weapons entry to Syria as spooks invade Turkey”, The Australian, 13 August 2012, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/cia-polices-weapons-entry-to-syria-as-spooks-invade-turkey/story-fnb64oi6-1226448705909.

11 Joanna Paraszczuk, “The US-Saudi Conflict over Arms to Insurgents”, EA Worldview, 23 June 2013, http://eaworldview.com/2013/06/syria-special-the-us-saudi-conflict-over-arms-to-insurgents/.

12 Charles Lister, “Russia’s Intervention in Syria: Protracting an Already Endless Conflict”, The Huffington Post 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-lister/russias-intervention-in-s_b_8350266.html.

13 Caitlin Hu, “Syrian rebels’ homemade weapons are getting bigger”, Quartz Media, 19 March 2015; Marlin Dick, “Syria’s ‘Western-Backed’ Rebels? Not in Weapons”, The Daily Star, 31 May 2014, https://qz.com/365934/syrian-rebels-homemade-weapons-are-getting-bigger/.

14 Adam Entous, “Covert CIA Mission to Arm Syrian Rebels Goes Awry”, The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/covert-cia-mission-to-arm-syrian-rebels-goes-awry-1422329582.

15 Raja Abdulrahim, “Syria rebels, once hopeful of U.S. weapons, lament lack of firepower”, Los Angeles Times, 7 September 2014, http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-harakat-hazm-20140907-story.html#page=1.

16 David Enders, “Islamists, secular rebels battle in Syria over Nusra Front’s call for Islamic state”, The Miami Herald, 26 March 2013, http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article1948577.html.

17 Hanna Mourtada and Anne Barnard, “Jihadists and Secular Activists Clash in Syria”, The New York Times, 26 January 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/world/middleeast/syria-war-developments.html.

18 “Raqqa: Women against Al-Nusra front”, Syria Untold, http://www.syriauntold.com/en/2013/07/raqqa-women-against-al-nusra-front/.

19 Rania Abouzeid, “A Black Flag in Raqqa”, The New Yorker, 2 April 2013, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-black-flag-in-raqqa.

20 Joseph Daher, “Syria or elsewhere, there are no pure revolutions, just revolutions”, Syria Freedom Forever, 7 June 2013, https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/syriaor-elsewhere-there-are-no-pure-revolutions-just-revolutions/.

21 Bassma Kodmani and Felix Legrand, Empowering the Democratic Resistance in Syria, (pdf), Arab Reform Initiative, Beirut-Paris, September 2013, pp26-27, http://www.arab-reform.net/en/node/593.

22 Michael Weiss, “The Southern Front, Part I”, Now, 15 August 2013, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/the-southern-front.

23 Hassan Hassan, “Rebel Vs. Rebel”, Foreign Policy, 18 September 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/18/rebel-vs-rebel/.

24 Tareq Al-Abed, “The Impending Battle Between FSA, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, Al-Monitor, 31 July 2013, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2013/07/syria-possible-battle-fsa-islamic-state-iraq-syria.html.

25 Vera Mironova, Loubna Mrie and Sam Whitt, “Islamists at a Glance: Why Do Syria’s Rebel Fighters Join Islamist Groups? (The Reasons May Have Less to Do With Religiosity Than You Might Think)”, Political Violence At a Glance, 13 August 2014, http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2014/08/13/islamists-at-a-glance-why-do-syrias-rebel-fighters-join-islamist-groups-the-reasons-may-have-less-to-do-with-religiosity-than-you-might-think/.

26 Mona Mahmood and Ian Black, “Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra”, The Guardian, 9 May 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/08/free-syrian-army-rebels-defect-islamist-group.

27 Alison Tahmizian Meuse, “Raqqa’s FSA Brigades Join Jabhat al-Nusra”, Syria Deeply, 20 September 2013, https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/articles/2013/09/20/raqqas-fsa-brigades-join-jabhat-al-nusra.

28 Robin Yassin-Kassab, “The rise and fall of ISIL in Syria”, Al Jazeera, 19 January 2014, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/rise-fall-isil-syria-201411572925799732.html.

29 Phil Sands, “America’s hidden agenda in Syria’s war”, The National, 9 May 2013, http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/americas-hidden-agenda-in-syrias-war.

30 “Hollande urges Syria rebels to retake extremist zones”, The Daily Star, 23 June 2013, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Jun-23/221321-hollande-urges-syria-rebels-to-retake-extremist-held-zones.ashx#axzz2X5dwF4Mo.

31 Roula Khalaf, “The west is losing friends who will matter after Assad”, Financial Times, 27 April 2013, https://www.ft.com/content/71e492d0-acdd-11e2-9454-00144feabdc0.

32 “Syrian protesters slam U.S. blacklisting of jihadist group”, The Daily Star, 14 December 2012, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Dec-14/198527-syrian-protesters-slam-us-blacklisting-of-jihadist-group.ashx#axzz2F62w5Yns.

33 Ammar Cheikh Omar, and Cassandra Vinograd, “Syria, ISIS Have Been ‘Ignoring’ Each Other on Battlefield, Data Suggests”, NBC News, 11 December 2014, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/syria-isis-have-been-ignoring-each-other-battlefield-data-suggests-n264551.

34 Bassma Kodmani and Felix Legrand, Empowering the Democratic Resistance in Syria, (pdf), Arab Reform Initiative, Beirut-Paris, September 2013, p27, http://www.arab-reform.net/en/node/593.

35 “FSA ‘at war’ with Al-Qaeda militants following assassination”, Now, 12 July 2013, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/nowsyrialatestnews/new-front-opens-in-syria-as-rebels-say-al-qaeda-attack-means-war.

36 Bassma Kodmani and Felix Legrand, Empowering the Democratic Resistance in Syria, (pdf), Arab Reform Initiative, Beirut-Paris, September 2013, p28, http://www.arab-reform.net/empowering-democratic-resistance-syria.

37 Michael Weiss, “Islamists Assemble”, Now, 25 September 2013, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/islamists-assemble.

38 Leila Al-Shami, “Syria: Revolution within the revolution: The battle against ISIS”, Tahrir-ICN, 7 January 2014, https://tahriricn.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/syria-the-battle-against-isis/.

39 Joseph Daher, “Protests against ISIS January 3 2014”, Syrian Freedom Forever, 3 January 2014, http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/protests-against-isis-january-3-2014/.

40 Joanna Paraszczuk, “ISIS Are Alien Invaders Say Kafranbel Activists”, EA WorldView, 4 January 2014, http://eaworldview.com/2014/01/syria-isis-alien-invaders-say-kafranbel-activists/.

41 Leila Al-Shami, “Syria: Revolution within the revolution: The battle against ISIS”, Tahrir-ICN, 7 January, https://tahriricn.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/syria-the-battle-against-isis/.

42 Kyle Orton, “The Assad Regime’s Collusion With ISIS and al-Qaeda: Assessing The Evidence”, 24 March 2014, https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/assessing-the-evidence-of-collusion-between-the-assad-regime-and-the-wahhabi-jihadists-part-1/.

43 Sam Dagher and Maria Abi-Habibin, “Fighting Among Rebels Boosts Syrian Regime”, The Wall Street Journal, 13 January 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fighting-among-rebels-boosts-syrian-regime-1389651944?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303819704579318732940300704.html&tesla=y.

44 Ben Hubbard, “Syrian Rebels Deal Qaeda-Linked Group a Reversal”, The New York Times, 8 January 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-said-to-oust-qaeda-linked-group-from-its-aleppo-headquarters.html?_r=0.

45 Spencer Ackerman, “Al-Qaida faction in Syria contemplating US attack, intelligence officials warn”, The Guardian, 30 January 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/29/al-qaida-syria-nusra-front-intelligence-threat.

46 “ISIS, regime close in on Deir e-Zor rebels”, Syria Direct, 18 January 2014, http://syriadirect.org/news/isis-regime-close-in-on-deir-e-zor-rebels/.

47 US Embassy of Syria, 5 December 2014, https://twitter.com/usembassysyria/status/540972704741220352; Leith Fadel, “Nowhere to Retreat for ISIS Militants in Deir Ezzor; Syrian Army Intensifies Their Attacks in the West”, Al-Masdar News, 26 September 2014, https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/nowhere-retreat-isis-militants-deir-ezzor-syrian-army-intensifies-attacks-west/.

48 Arabi Souri, “Anti tanks technology fsa hands”, Syria News, 18 April 2014, http://www.syrianews.cc/anti-tanks-technolgy-fsa-hands/.

49 John Follain and Tony Allen-Mills, “CIA polices weapons entry to Syria as spooks invade Turkey”, 13 August 2012, The Australian, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/cia-polices-weapons-entry-to-syria-as-spooks-invade-turkey/story-fnb64oi6-1226448705909

50 Charles Lister, “Russia’s Intervention in Syria: Protracting an Already Endless Conflict”, The Huffington Post, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-lister/russias-intervention-in-s_b_8350266.html?ir=Australia.

51 David Axe, “How to Take Out 1,800 Tanks in Two Years”, War is Boring, 18 November 2013, https://medium.com/war-is-boring/how-to-take-out-1-800-tanks-in-two-years-74ecd413cb93.

52 Michael Weiss and Pierre Vaux, “Are U.S. Missiles Taking Out High-Ranking Russian Military Officials?”, Daily Beast, 2 May 2016, http://www.thedailybeast.com/are-us-missiles-taking-out-high-ranking-russian-military-officials.

53 Scott Lucas, “Syria: The 9 Insurgent Groups with US-Made TOW Anti-Tank Missiles”, EA Worldview, 9 May 2014, http://eaworldview.com/2014/05/syria-9-insurgent-groups-us-made-tow-anti-tank-missiles/.

54 Raja Abdulrahim, “Syria rebels, once hopeful of U.S. weapons, lament lack of firepower”, Los Angeles Times, 7 September 2014, http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-harakat-hazm-20140907-story.html#page=1.

55 “FSA North’s New Vids Show US TOWs Still Arriving”, 17 December 2014, https://notgeorgesabra.tumblr.com/post/105371128803/fsa-norths-new-vids-show-us-tows-still-arriving.

56 Josh Rogin, “Syrian Rebels See U.S. Abandoning Them”, 13 December 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-12-12/syrian-rebels-see-us-abandoning-them.

57 Ari Soffer, “‘Moderate’ Rebel Leader Says ‘Al Qaeda is Not Our Problem’”, Arutz Sheva, 2 April 2014, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179200.

58 “Syria’s Unending Rebel Conflict: Wolves of the Valley”, Vice News, 25 April 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9Cb3OURdl3g.

59 “Hazm Movement and Syrian Revolutionary Front: Suspending All Forms of Cooperation with Nusra”, Democratic Revolution Syrian Style, 21 July 2014, https://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/hazm-movement-and-syrian-revolutionary-front-suspending-all-forms-of-cooperation-with-nusra/.

60 “After ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusra announces Islamic Emirate in Syria”, Ara News, 22 July 2014, http://aranews.net/2014/07/isil-jabhat-al-nusra-announces-second-islamic-emirate-syria/.

61 Raja Abdulrahim, “Syria rebels, once hopeful of U.S. weapons, lament lack of firepower”, Los Angeles Times, 7 September 2014, http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-harakat-hazm-20140907-story.html#page=1.

62 Felix Legrand, Foreign Backers and the Marginalization of the Free Syrian Army, Arab Reform Initiative, 13 November 2016, http://www.arab-reform.net/en/node/1007.

63 Michael Karadjis, “Who Has the US Bombed, Bombed For and Bombed Within Syria?”, Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis, 3 September 2015, https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/who-has-the-us-bombed-for-in-syria/.

64 “Syria Direct: News Update”, Syria Direct, 24 September 2014, http://syriadirect.org/news/syria-direct-news-update-9-24-14/.

65 Jack Khoury, “Report: U.S. Providing Assad Regime With anti-Islamic State Intelligence”, Haaretz, 15 September 2014, http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-1.615892.

66 Kellie Strom, “Raqqa: to appease Iran, Obama gives Assad’s air force a free pass for slaughter”, Left Foot Forward, 1 December 2014, http://leftfootforward.org/2014/12/raqqa-to-appease-iran-obama-gives-assads-air-force-a-free-pass-for-slaughter/.

67 Harakat Hazm statement: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByPSsxMIYAQy2Wt.jpg.

68 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByUiHcTIMAAmTDF.jpg.

69 Michael Karadjis, “Syrian rebels overwhelmingly condemn US bombing as an attack on revolution”, Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis, 25 September 2014, https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/syrian-rebels-overwhelmingly-condemn-us-bombing-as-an-attack-on-revolution/.

70 Josh Rogin, “No Syrian Rebels Allowed at ISIS War Conference”, Daily Beast, 14 October 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/no-syrian-rebels-allowed-at-isis-war-conference.

71 Hannah Allam, “U.S. won’t work with current Syrian rebel groups to battle Islamic State”, The News & Observer, 15 October 2014, http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/world/article10097267.html.

72 Josh Rogin, “No Syrian Rebels Allowed at ISIS War Conference”, Daily Beast, 14 October 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/no-syrian-rebels-allowed-at-isis-war-conference.

73 Josh Rogin, “Exclusive: America’s Allies Almost Bombed in Syrian Airstrikes”, Daily Beast, 30 September 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-americas-allies-almost-bombed-in-syrian-airstrikes.

74 Josh Rogin, “Syrian Rebels See U.S. Abandoning Them”, 13 December 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-12-12/syrian-rebels-see-us-abandoning-them.

75 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTcYjYCcAEeOnA.jpg:large; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww2LT-Wcpcc&feature=youtu.be; https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTtNQkIYAETWtU.jpg:large.

76 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcCu6uw4G40&feature=youtu.be; https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DBpCqoisCp0.

77 Josh Rogin, “Syrian Rebels See U.S. Abandoning Them”, 13 December 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-12-12/syrian-rebels-see-us-abandoning-them.

78 Faysal Itani, “What Went Wrong in Idlib?”, Atlantic Council, 4 November 2014, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/what-went-wrong-in-idlib?utm_content=buffer5ecba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.VFjjW_oeG2c.twitter .

79 Aron Lund, “‘Our Enemy Is Bashar al-Assad’: An Interview With Ahrar al-Sham’s Mohammed Talal Bazerbashi”, Carnegie Middle East Center, 12 November 2014, http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/57201?lang=en.

80 https://twitter.com/archicivilians/status/546782618503499776; Anne Barnard, “As Syria’s Revolution Sputters, a Chaotic Stalemate”, New York Times, 27 December 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/as-syrias-revolution-sputters-a-chaotic-stalemate.html?smid=tw-share&_r=3.

81 “Nusra withdraws from Turkey border”, Now, 10 August 2015, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565709-nusra-withdraws-from-turkey-border.

82 Joseph Daher, “Demonstrations in al-Atareb, Aleppo countryside, against attempts by jihadist group of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham to take over the oven of the town”, Syria Freedom Forever, 3 February 2017, https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/demonstrations-in-al-atareb-aleppo-countryside-against-attempts-by-jihadist-group-of-jabhat-fateh-al-sham-to-take-over-the-oven-of-the-town-مظاهرة-في/.

83 Scott Lucas, “Why Southern Rebels Distanced Themselves from Jabhat al-Nusra”, EA Worldview, 16 April 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/04/syria-interview-why-southern-rebels-distanced-themselves-from-jabhat-al-nusra/.

84 Josh Rogin, “No Syrian Rebels Allowed at ISIS War Conference”, Daily Beast, 14 October 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/no-syrian-rebels-allowed-at-isis-war-conference.

85 Scott Lucas, “Did the US Abandon Its 54 Trained Rebels?”, EA Worldview, 31 July 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/07/syria-daily-did-the-us-abandon-its-54-trained-rebels/.

86 “U.S.-led air strikes kill 8 people, including 4 Nusra Front fighters, in Idlib”, Zaman Al Wasl, 29 July 2015, https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/10948.html?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork.

87 https://justpaste.it/mpnr.

88 https://twitter.com/AbuJamajem/status/617780767540834308.

89 Scott Lucas, “Did the US Abandon Its 54 Trained Rebels?”, EA Worldview, 31 July 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/07/syria-daily-did-the-us-abandon-its-54-trained-rebels/.

90 Sam Heller, “Syria’s Newest Rebel Army Has Its Sights on the Islamic State”, Vice News, 1 December 2015, https://news.vice.com/article/syrias-newest-rebel-army-has-its-sights-on-the-islamic-state.

91 Scott Lucas, “Assad’s Bombs Aid Islamic State Offensive in Aleppo Province”, EA Worldview, 2 June 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/06/syria-daily-assads-bombs-aid-islamic-state-offensive-in-aleppo-province/.

92 Roy Gutman and Mousab Alhamadee, “Rebels call for U.S. airstrikes as Islamic State advances near Aleppo”, Miami Herald, 1 June 2015, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article22838910.html#storylink=cpy.

93 Michael Weiss, “Exclusive: Syrian Rebels Backing Out of U.S. Fight Vs. ISIS”, Daily Beast, 31 May 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-syrian-rebels-backing-out-of-us-fight-vs-isis.

94 Michael Weiss, “They’ve Got U.S. Guns. Can They Stop ISIS?” Daily Beast, 22 June 2016, http://www.thedailybeast.com/theyve-got-us-guns-can-they-stop-isis.

95 Scott Lucas, “US Puts More Troops Into North”, EA Worldview, 10 March 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/03/syria-daily-us-puts-more-troops-into-north/.

96 “US Sets up New Military Base in Syrian Kurdistan”, Basnews, 22 January 2017, http://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/news/middle-east/325757.

97 Scott Lucas, “With Russian & US Help, Regime Takes Palmyra from ISIS”, EA Worldview, 3 March 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/03/syria-daily-regime-with-russian-us-help-retakes-palmyra-from-isis/.

98 The Free Syrian Army Southern Front, “Statement No. 4: The Transition Phase”, RFS Media Office, 10 December 2014, https://rfsmediaoffice.com/en/2014/12/15/the-free-syrian-army-southern-front-transitional-phase/.

99 “FSA moves against Nusra in south Syria”, Now, 15 April 2015, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565114-fsa-moves-against-nusra-in-south-syria.

100 Scott Lucas, “Why Southern Rebels Distanced Themselves from Jabhat al-Nusra”, EA Worldview, 16 April 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/04/syria-interview-why-southern-rebels-distanced-themselves-from-jabhat-al-nusra/.

101 Suleiman Al-Khalidi, “Assad’s forces capture strategic town in southern Syria”, Reuters, 7 May 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-town-idUSBRE94703H20130508.

102 Joanna Paraszczuk, “The US-Saudi Conflict over Arms to Insurgents”, EA Worldview, 23 June 2013, http://eaworldview.com/2013/06/syria-special-the-us-saudi-conflict-over-arms-to-insurgents/.

103 Julian Borger and Nick Hopkins, “West training Syrian rebels in Jordan”, The Guardian, 9 March 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/west-training-syrian-rebels-jordan.

104 Scott Lucas, “Report: US Restricting Rebel Offensive in Daraa City”, EA Worldview, 23 August 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/08/syria-daily-regime-carries-out-another-mass-killing-in-douma/#daraa.

105 Mohanad Mezghiche, “Why is Operation Southern Storm failing?” 11 July 2015, http://syria4rev.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/why-is-operation-southern-storm-failing.html.

106 Scott Lucas, “Joint Operations Room in Jordan Halted Rebel Assault on Key Regime Airbase”, EA Worldview, 17 June 2015, http://eaworldview.com/2015/06/syria-feature-joint-operations-room-in-jordan-halted-rebel-assault-on-key-regime-airbase/.

107 @FreeDaraa11 – “Unconfirmed – We have Been Warned in the south by USA not to advance to Damascus otherwise they will attack FSA”, July 2015, http://imgur.com/a/oTwnu.

108 “Daraa rebels ordered to stop fighting Syria regime: report”, Now, 22 January 2016, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/566514-daraa-rebels-ordered-to-stop-fighting-syria-regime-report.

109 Michael Weiss and Pierre Vaux, “Are U.S. Missiles Taking Out High-Ranking Russian Military Officials?”, Daily Beast, 2 May 2016, http://www.thedailybeast.com/are-us-missiles-taking-out-high-ranking-russian-military-officials.

110 Osama Al Sharif, “Has Jordan Acquiesced to Assad Regime Offensive in Southern Syria?” Middle East Institute, 12 January 2016, http://www.mei.edu/content/article/has-jordan-acquiesced-assad-regime-offensive-southern-syria.

111 Linah Alsaafin, “Syria talks face mounting pressure as rebels refuse to negotiate with Assad”, Middle East Eye, 18 December 2015, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordan-presents-list-160-terrorist-groups-syria-international-council-2106399989.

112 “Daraa rebels ordered to stop fighting Syria regime: report”, Now, 22 January 2016, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/566514-daraa-rebels-ordered-to-stop-fighting-syria-regime-report.

113 Phil Sands and Suha Maayeh, “Far from Raqqa and Fallujah, Syria rebels open new front against ISIL in the south”, The National, 28 May 2016, http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/far-from-raqqa-and-fallujah-syria-rebels-open-new-front-against-isil-in-the-south#full.

114 Scott Lucas, “Claim – US-Led Operations Center Sets Conditions on Support for Rebels”, EA Worldview, 2 May 2016, http://eaworldview.com/2016/05/syria-feature-us-operations-center-conditions-support-rebels/.

115 “748 TNT barrels on Daraya on June 2016”, Yallasouriya, 2 July, 2016, https://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/syria-748-tnt-barrels-on-daraya-on-june-2016/.

116 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClQ0WUnWMAApGrz.jpg.

117 Albin Szakola, “South Syria rebels ordered to not attack regime-held town: report”, Now, 17 August 2016, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/567284-south-syria-rebels-ordered-to-not-attack-regime-held-town-report.

118 Josh Rogin, “U.S. Shoots Down Idea of Syria Safe Zone”, 29 ‎July 2015,‎ https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-28/u-s-shoots-down-idea-of-syria-safe-zone.

119 Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, “Airstrikes by Russia Buttress Turkey in Battle vs. ISIS”, New York Times, 8 January 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/us/politics/russia-turkey-syria-airstrikes-isis.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0.

120 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqEul-NVMAAg6E6.jpg.

121 “Syria: Rebels, Kurds ‘racing’ to retake IS-held border town”, The New Arab, 22 August 2016, https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2016/8/22/syria-rebels-kurds-racing-to-retake-is-held-border-town.

122 “Turkey to build refugee cities on security zone vacated by Daesh”, Yeni Şafak, 26 August 2016, http://www.yenisafak.com/en/news/turkey-to-build-refugee-cities-on-security-zone-vacated-by-daesh-2517694.

123 Humevra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall, “As Syrian rebels squeezed in Aleppo, Turkish backers’ eyes are elsewhere”, Reuters, 29 November 2016, http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-idUKKBN13O294.

124 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKFzwR5w1FE.

125 Haid Haid, “Did Turkey abandon Aleppo to fight Syrian Kurds?” Now, 4 October 2016, https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/567401-did-turkey-abandon-aleppo-to-fight-the-syrian-kurds.

126 “Opposition secretary says Aleppo collapse was ‘regional deal’: Interview” Zaman Al Wasl, 4 January 2017, https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/21880.html.

127 “‘No longer realistic’: Turkey admits U-turn on policy to rid Syria of Assad”, Middle East Eye, 20 January 2017, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-confirms-u-turn-policy-rid-syria-assad-165657783.

128 Patrick Wintour, “Aleppo could be ‘bombed into smithereens’, warns John Kerry”, The Guardian, 1 November 2016, , https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/31/aleppo-syria-john-kerry-russia-diplomacy.

129 “Erdoğan, Putin agree to clear Aleppo of Nusra” Hurriyet Daily News, 13 June 2017, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-putin-agree-to-clear-aleppo-of-nusra.aspx?pageID=238&nid=105125.

130 Scott Lucas, “Rebel Battle v. Jihadists of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in Northwest”, EA Worldview, 24 January 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/01/syria-developing-rebels-fighting-v-jihadists-of-jabhat-fatah-al-sham-in-northwest/.

131 Alex MacDonald, “Analysis: Why Fateh al-Sham is lashing out at Syrian rebels”, Middle East Eye, 26 January 2017, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/why-jabhat-fateh-al-sham-fighting-other-rebels-syria-1902636393.

132 Leila Alwan, “Anti-Nusra Front demo in Idlib ‘start of new revolution’”, Al Arabiya, 4 February 2017 https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2017/02/04/Activist-says-anti-Nusra-Front-demo-in-Idlib-beginning-of-new-revolution-.html.

133 https://justpaste.it/JFS_Balance.

134 Sadik Abdul-Rahman, “Rebel Idlib’s 100 Days of Protest Against Al Qaeda”, Al-Jumhuriyah, 16 August 2016, accessed at isqatannizam blog, https://isqatannizam.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/rebel-idlibs-100-days-of-protest-against-al-qaeda/.

135 “Joint Statement by Iran, Russia, Turkey on the International Meeting on Syria in Astana, January 23-24, 2017”, Al Jazeera, 25 January 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/astana-joint-statement-iran-russia-turkey-full-170124133951063.html.

136 Paula Astih and Nazeer Rida, “Nusra Confronts Syrian Factions in Response to ‘Secret’ Astana Clause”, Asharq Al Awsat, 25 January 2017, https://english.aawsat.com/paula-astih-and-nazeer-rida/news-middle-east/nusra-confronts-syrian-factions-response-secret-astana-clause.

137 Scott Lucas, “Russia-Turkey-Iran Pledge Ceasefire, But Assad Regime Says No”, EA Worldview, 25 January 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/01/syria-daily-russia-turkey-iran-pledge-ceasefire-assad-regime-no/.

138 “The Opposition Delegation in Astana refuses to talk about “JFS” till Iran-backed militias Get out of #Syria”, Eldorar Alshamia, 23 January 2017, http://en.eldorar.com/node/4536.

139 National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, “Nirabiya: We Reject Iran as Guarantor of Ceasefire Agreement”, 23 January 2017, http://en.etilaf.org/all-news/news/nirabiya-we-reject-iran-as-guarantor-of-ceasefire-agreement.html.

140 “Jaysh Al-Mujahideen: We will not accept of al-Assad in a transitional phase”, Eldorar Alshamia, 10 January, 2017, http://en.eldorar.com/node/4375.

141 Adham Kako, “Syrian opposition negotiator speaks to Anadolu Agency”, Anadolu Agency, 20 January 2017, http://aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/syrian-opposition-negotiator-speaks-to-anadolu-agency/731380.

142 Scott Lucas, “Russia-Turkey-Iran Pledge Ceasefire, But Assad Regime Says No”, EA Worldview, 25 January 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/01/syria-daily-russia-turkey-iran-pledge-ceasefire-assad-regime-no/.

143 National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, “We Call on our People to Denounce Terror and Support Establishment of One Legitimate Military Front”, 27 January 2017, http://en.etilaf.org/press/we-call-on-our-people-to-denounce-terror-and-support-establishment-of-one-legitimate-military-front.html.

144 “Pentagon: We killed 250 members of al-Qaeda in Idlib since the beginning of this year”, Eldorar Alshamia, 21 January 2017, http://en.eldorar.com/node/4506.

145 Scott Lucas, “US Claims Airstrike Killed 100+ Jihadists and Rebels”, EA Worldview, 21 January 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/01/syria-daily-us-claims-airstrike-killed-100-jihadists-and-rebels/.

146 Scott Lucas, “Report: US-Led Airstrike Kills Ahrar al-Sham Commander”, EA Worldview 5 February 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/02/syria-daily-the-race-to-capture-al-bab-from-islamic-state/#almasri.

147 Alex MacDonald, “Former al-Qaeda affiliate urges Syrian rebels to oppose Turkish invasion”, Middle East Eye, 23 September 2016, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/former-al-qaeda-affiliate-calls-opposition-oppose-turkish-invasion-324667843.

148 Ammar Shawki and Roy Gutman, “A Letter From Rebel Controlled Idlib, Syria”, The Nation, 1 December 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/letter-from-rebel-controlled-idlib-syria/.

149 Murtaza Hussain, “Militant Leader Talks About Break With Al Qaeda and Possible Syrian Rebel Merger”, The Intercept, 24 August 2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/08/23/militant-leader-talks-about-break-with-al-qaeda-and-possible-syrian-rebel-merger/.

150 Bethan McKernan, “Donald Trump signifies he will end US support for Syrian rebels despite their pleas to him for help”, The Independent, 12 November 2016, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-president-elect-donald-trump-support-assad-putin-syria-remove-rebel-backing-a7413346.html.

151 Christiaan Triebert, “Confirmed: US Responsible for Aleppo Mosque Bombing”, Bellingcat, 16 March 2017, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/03/16/us-missile-remains-reportedly-recovered-from-site-of-aleppo-mosque-bombing/.

152 “Russian Foreign Ministry No doubt US airstrikes in Syrian village targeted terrorists”, Tass, 17 March 2017, http://tass.com/politics/936193.

153 “Dozens dead in US-led north Syria airstrike as coalition meets”, Daily Star, 22 March 2017, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2017/Mar-22/398618-33-dead-in-us-led-airstrike-on-north-syria-activists.ashx.

154 Alessandro Accorsi, “US coalition ‘kills hundreds’ of Mosul civilians in one week: Report”, Middle East Eye, 8 March 2017, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-led-coalition-already-killed-hundreds-civilians-west-mosul-one-week-march-1271386570.

155 Scott Lucas, “With Russia & US Help, Regime Takes Palmyra from ISIS”, EA Worldview, 3 March 2017, http://eaworldview.com/2017/03/syria-daily-regime-with-russian-us-help-retakes-palmyra-from-isis/.

156 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5619fCXQAEPKTn.jpg.

157 Michael Gordon, “White House Accepts ‘Political Reality’ of Assad’s Grip on Power in Syria”, The New York Times, 31 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/us/politics/trump-bashar-assad-syria.html; Michelle Nichols, “U.S. priority on Syria no longer focused on ‘getting Assad out’: Haley”, 30 March 2017, http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1712QL; “Tillerson says Assad’s fate up to Syrian people”, Daily Mail, 31 March 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4364592/Tillerson-says-Assads-long-term-status-Syrian-people.html.

158 Varghese K. George, “Mattis No danger of conflict with Russia; Defeating ISIS still main priority”, The Hindu, April 12 2017, http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/no-danger-of-conflict-with-russia-mattis/article17957314.ece.

159 Brooke Seipel, “Tillerson: Strikes don’t signal change in military action policy in Syria”, The Hill blog, 6 April 2017, http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/327741-tillerson-strikes-dont-mean-weve-changed-our-policy-posture-on.

160 Colin Wilhelm, “McMaster: U.S. eager for regime change in Syria”, 9 April 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/hr-mcmaster-syria-regime-change-237038.

161 Sadik Abdul-Rahman, “Rebel Idlib’s 100 Days of Protest Against Al Qaeda”, Al-Jumhuriyah, 16 August 2016, accessed at isqatannizam blog, https://isqatannizam.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/rebel-idlibs-100-days-of-protest-against-al-qaeda/

162 Joseph Daher, “Demonstrations in al-Atareb, Aleppo countryside, against attempts by jihadist group of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham to take over the oven of the town”, Syria Freedom Forever, 3 February 2017, https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/demonstrations-in-al-atareb-aleppo-countryside-against-attempts-by-jihadist-group-of-jabhat-fateh-al-sham-to-take-over-the-oven-of-the-town-مظاهرة-في/

163 Liz Sly and Zakaria Zakaria, “‘Al-Qaeda is eating us’: Syrian rebels are losing out to extremists”, Washington Post, 23 February 2017, , https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/al-qaeda-is-eating-us-syrian-rebels-are-losing-out-to-extremists/2017/02/23/f9c6d1d4-f885-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_syria-rebels-705pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.137d0bd80880.

164 Felix Legrand, “The strategy of Jabhat Al-Nusra / Jabhat Fath Al-Sham in regarding the truces in Syria”, 2 October 2016, Noria, http://www.noria-research.com/strategy-regarding-truces-in-syria/.

By Michael Karadjis

On the evening of June 29, I went up against Dr. Tim Anderson, Australia’s most well-known and prolific propagandist for the murderous Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, at the Gaelic Club’s Politics of the Pub evening. A packed house, and, as might be expected at a drinking gathering, stormy enough, the evening highlighted the severity of the challenge of reconstructing a viable, credible, emancipatory political left able to confront today’s neo-liberal capitalist disaster.

Some may well say the issue is “only Syria” and we shouldn’t generalize about the bad politics that some people have on only one issue. That is a valid enough point. Nevertheless, confronted with close to the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our era – not just “any issue” – a dogged section of the western left has thrown overboard the politics of elementary human solidarity, without which, the bigger task I outlined above would appear to be a very long way away.

As usual, I had too much to say and didn’t get round to making a number of important points, particularly about the role of US imperialism, though I did get to it a little at the end, and in discussion. Some might say that is the most important issue, but given that the US has had very little to do with the dynamics of the Syrian revolution and counterrevolution, it quite simply is not – therefore I believe I was correct to focus more on the actual dynamics of what is going on in Syria rather than abstract geopolitical schemas and prejudices beloved by many western “analysts” who often couldn’t care less about what happens to real people.

Yassin al-Haj Saleh: Syria’s “internal First World” v the “black Syrians”

Before going on, I will first produce the lines I opened with, quoting Syrian Communist dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh (who spent 16 years in Assadist torture chambers for holding an opinion), because he so eloquently sums up the political method I support on this issue:

“That Syrians have been subject to extreme Palestinization by a brutal, internal Israel, and that they are susceptible to political and physical annihilation, just like Palestinians, in fact lies outside the clueless, tasteless geopolitical approach of those detached anti-imperialists, who ignorantly bracket off politics, economics, culture, the social reality of the masses and the actual history of Syria.”

“This way of linking our conflict to one major global struggle, which is supposedly the only real one in the world, denies the autonomy of any other social and political struggle taking place in the world.

“The anti-imperialist comrade is with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt for the same reason that led him to “resist” alongside the Syrian regime. Whether in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria, people are invisible, and their lives do not matter. We remain marginal to some other issue, the only one that matters: the struggle against imperialism (a struggle that, ironically, is also not being fought by these anti-imperialists, as I will argue below).

“The response to this discourse need not be to point out the truth, that the Assadist state is not against imperialism in any way whatsoever. First and foremost, the autonomy of our social and political struggles for democracy and social justice must be highlighted and separated out from this grand, abstract scheme.

“A better starting point would be to look at actual conflicts and actual relationships between conflicting parties. This could involve, for example, thinking about how the structure of a globally dominating Western first world has been re-enacted in our own countries, including Syria. We have an “internal first world” that is the Assadist political and economic elites, and a vulnerable internal third world, which the state is free to discipline, humiliate, and exterminate. The relationship between the first world of Assad and the third world of “black Syrians” perfectly explains Syria’s Palestinization.

“Only then would it be meaningful to state that there is nothing within the Assadist state that is truly anti-imperialist, even if we define imperialism as an essence nestled in the West. Nor is there anything popular, liberatory, nationalist, or third-worldly in the Syrian regime. There is only a fascist dynastic rule, whose history, which goes back to the 1970s, can be summed up as the formation of an obscenely wealthy and atrociously brutal neo-bourgeoisie, which has proved itself ready to destroy the country in order to remain in power forever.”

Support Assad?? Why not Pol Pot, the Taliban or ISIS?

As I then explained, this is what the Syrian revolution is about: the struggle against this “obscenely wealthy and atrociously brutal neo-bourgeoisie, which has reacted by destroying its country to remain in power forever.” By contrast, this ivory-tower anti-imperialism, which supports this monstrously repressive dictatorship as it bombs its entire to country to bits for six years, is the same kind that would support Pol Pot, or ISIS, or the Taliban, on the basis of alleged “anti-imperialism,” regardless of what they do to their own peoples.

However, I also pointed out the difference: Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did actually fight US imperialism for half a decade before coming to power (1970-75); the Taliban has actually been fighting US imperialism in Afghanistan for the last 17 years; and ISIS is also actually at war with US imperialism in Syria and Iraq. So while all this support the apologists are providing one of the most savage right-wing dictatorships on Earth is predicated upon this mythical “anti-imperialism”, as Saleh points out, not only is this method wrong, but in the specific case the rationale itself is false: the Assad regime has never resisted imperialism, and the US has never bombed Assad (until a few pinprick, militarily insignificant strikes recently, a needle in a haystack among the 9000 US strikes on non-Assadist forces in Syria).

Thus, on Assad, the ivory-tower anti-imperialists have got it wrong at both ends: to be really consistent in the mechanical, binary, amoeboid “anti-imperialism” they espouse, they should be supporting ISIS, not Assad.

Now, I said above that I focused on the actual dynamics in Syria, and didn’t get round to some of the things I wanted to say on the role of US imperialism; nevertheless, I did get to a number of aspects of the US role – the open support given to Assad by State Secretary Hillary Clinton at the onset of the Syrian uprising, when she called Assad a “reformer” and explained how this was different from the situation in Libya; the similar statements coming from the main Gulf states; the fact that Assad had never fought imperialism, and in particular in the last phase before 2011, Syria’s role as the favoured place for the US to send Islamist suspects for the best torture; the fact that the later call by Obama (after months of slaughter that was tearing the entire region apart) for Assad to “stand aside” had nothing to do with “regime change”, but rather was about regime preservation, with plenty of evidence provided; the fact that the main role of the US in relation to the Free Syrian Army and other rebels since 2012 has been to place spooks on the borders to prevent deliveries, by others, of ant-aircraft weapons to the rebels (in a war that has been overwhelmingly one of aerial slaughter since 2012); and the well-known fact for anyone who reads the news that that the US bombing war on Syria since mid-2014 has been overwhelmingly against ISIS, secondarily against Jabhat al-Nusra, and to some extent against other mainstream Islamist or even FSA rebels at times, not against Assad.

All of these points were ignored by Anderson and by all those supporting him either in question time or from the rowdy floor when I was speaking. Facts do not matter; when you have a semi-religious devotion to some bloodthirsty tyrant, facts and evidence are irrelevant.

On that note, to summarise the main thing I saw wrong with Anderson’s talk: he began by claiming I had largely ignored “the big picture”, and so he proceeded to give his version of what that was. The big picture included many points about the role of US imperialism in the world, the right of nations to run their own affairs and so on, issues that no-one in the room would necessarily disagree with in the abstract. As I pointed out privately to him later, all this “big picture” has little meaning without the “meat” of the “little picture” – in other words, if you cannot demonstrate that US imperialism has driven the entire Syrian movement against Assad from Day One, if you cannot demonstrate that there has been an active US intervention against Assad – then all the “big picture” is just a bunch of platitudes, with only the implication deliberately left hovering over the audience that the global role of US imperialism necessarily means it played a role in Syria that Anderson was not able to demonstrate it had.

As neither Anderson nor I were able to sum up due to time restraints (the chair understandably wanted to give more time to discussion from the audience), I was unable to respond to a number of issues he raised in his talk, so I will take the opportunity to do that now. Here were a number of points that stood out:

Fisk: New master of embedded journalism

Anderson brought up the issue of the gigantic Assadist massacre of hundreds of people in the FSA-controlled outer Damascus suburb of Darayya in 2012, noting that journalist Robert Fisk visited Darayya, interviewed locals, and found out that the FSA had committed this massacre of their own supporters and their own families (one wonders why then the regime had to endlessly barrel bomb Darayya for four years afterwards if the local people really saw the FSA as the enemy). Let’s get to the issue here: why did someone with an academic background cite Fisk, who rode into Darayya in a Syrian regime tank, and then went out “interviewing” the traumatized, terrorized locals in the presence of his regime handlers; yes, no doubt many of them knew what was good for their health and said the FSA did it (hell, so would you, especially if you had children). Fisk is someone who once upon a time rightly earned accolades for his progressive and often fearless journalism; that he now exemplifies “embedded journalism” to such an extraordinary degree is not something to be celebrated, still less to be used in argument by anyone who really wanted to know the facts. For the testimony of a real journalist, who managed to slip into Darayya without regime handlers, much better to read the account by Janine di Giovani.

The famous “DIA document”

Anderson also brought up the famous “US Defence Intelligence Agency document” that allegedly shows the US was openly supporting a “Salafist” rebellion against Assad in 2012 and that this paved the way for ISIS. Except that, once again, one would expect better from someone with his academic credentials. This scrappy document (http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf), brought out into the open by Trump’s first National Security Advisor, the right-wing spook Michael Flynn, tells us among other things that “THE POPULATION LIVING ON THE BORDER [ie, the Iraqi-Syrian border – MK] HAS A SOCIAL-TRIBAL STYLE, WHICH IS BOUND BY STRONG TRIBAL AND FAMILIAL MARITAL TIES.” Now, already this rather banal style, as Professor Gilbert Achcar has noted, “reads as if the report is based on loose talk by an “informant” and written by a novice.” To this we can add the other grammatical and spelling mistakes scattered throughout the document, which does not help the case that it is a DIA document. It even gets the name Jabhat al-Nusra wrong – calling it “Jaish al Nusra” – and wrongly translates it as “Victorious Army” – given the US intelligence focus on al-Qaida since 2001, these kinds of mistakes would be pretty embarrassing.

It is clear from reading the document that it is written by a source close to the Iraqi regime, which bridges being a US satellite derived from the US invasion, and being an Iranian satellite allied to the Assad regime. Therefore, it tends to talk with the same story as Assadists do, such as the vague assertions/accusations in the document about unnamed “western countries” supporting the opposition to Assad, supporting “Salafists” etc; but we can also see that this source does not think this is a good thing – the fact that the FSA had taken over parts of the Syrian-Iraqi border is presented as “a dangerous and serious threat” since the border is “not guarded by official elements” (ie, the Assad regime). And in the context of “the situation unravelling” the informant raises the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria,” clearly seen as part of this “dangerous and serious threat,” with “dire consequences” including the possibility of AQI declaring an Islamic state across Syria and Iraq which would create a “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity! As Achcar states, this “NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE” is “actually just worthless rubbish of the kind the files of the “intelligence” services are full of.”

Where does ISIS get its US arms from again?

Anderson also claims that the fact US weapons have been found with ISIS is evidence that the microscopic amount of mostly small arms the US has sent the FSA (to try to tame them) have made their way to ISIS. He even dismissed suggestions that the US arms came from Iraq. Now that is a really tall order. Most people know that by far the worst ever leakage of arms to ISIS came from the US/Iran-backed Iraqi army. When ISIS seized Mosul in mid-2014 and the Iraqi army ran away, ISIS seized “large quantities of US-supplied humvees, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, and various small arms and light weapons and ammunition – enough to supply approximately three divisions in a conventional army (10,000 to 20,000 soldiers per division),” as well as $480 million. Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi admitted to the loss of 2300 humvees! Masses of similar equipment was seized from Tikrit and a number of other Iraqi towns and military depots, and in particular in Ramadi in May 2015, when the Iraqi army abandoned “a half dozen tanks, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of armored personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees.” Actually, the Assad regime has also lost a significant amount of equipment to ISIS. When ISIS drove the regime from an airbase in al-Raqqa, Ayn Essa, along with the Tabqa air base in August 2014, ISIS captured MiG-21B fighter aircraft, helicopters, tanks, artillery (including SA-16 shoulder-fired anti- aircraft systems and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles) and ammunition. Similar losses occurred at the Tadmur base in Palmyra. Whatever odd gun ISIS may have seized form the FSA is certainly irrelevant compared to all these windfalls!

Mass exodus from Aleppo

Regarding the fall of rebel-held eastern Aleppo after months and months of the most savage bombardment in the war in late 2016, Anderson claimed there were only 100,000 people left there, while most of the population lived in Assad-controlled western Aleppo. This was true by that time, but what he didn’t say was how many people used to live in eastern Aleppo. Still, he would probably claim they ran away from the rebels (or “al-Qaida groups” as he dishonestly calls everyone opposing Assad). If so, it is strange that 500,000 people fled eastern Aleppo in just the two months to mid-February 2014, from when Assad launched his new more massive barrel-bombing campaign there. Just by coincidence, Anderson was there in Syria shaking hands with Assad in his presidential palace as this was beginning in December 2013. The new groundswell of refugees from Aleppo, “emptying whole neighborhoods and creating what aid workers say is one of the largest refugee flows of the entire civil war … flooded the countryside, swelling populations in war-battered communities that are already short on space and food and pushing a new wave of refugees into Turkey,” many arriving in Kilkis, “this once-quiet border town, where Syrians now nearly outnumber the original 90,000 Turkish inhabitants.” Even more dramatically, some 200,000 people fled Aleppo in just one 48-hour period in mid-2012 as the regime escalated its bombing of the city.

Schoolgirls in Niqab: How still-life photography aids still-life analysis

Anderson is also very good with photographic “evidence”. For example, he showed a photo of schoolgirls in Idlib with their faces fully covered, showing what control of the city by Nusra meant for local women. Without being able to check the photo, I am unable to determine when and where it is, but I am prepared to take his word for it. Even then, I do not know if it is from Idlib city, where Nusra plays a prominent role but shares control with others, or from some town in a part of the province under full Nusra control (it obviously is not from the parts of Idlib where FSA and other anti-Nusra forces hold full control). But again, let’s say it is Idlib city.

Despite Anderson’s slanders against all Syrian rebels as “al-Qaida”, in fact while it plays a prominent role in Idlib, Nusra/JFS has hardly gone unchallenged: a number of brilliant articles recently have explored the resistance to Nusra/JFS in parts of Idlib province by civil, pro-revolution resistance and by the FSA and other rebels (see for example here, here and here). But perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the underlying emancipatory dynamic of the revolution – which may temporarily accept Nusra rules as the lesser evil to the regime due to the crisis military situation, but is in sharp conflict with Nusra’s repressive goals – has come out and undermined Nusra/JFS even where it previously held major sway, including in Idlib city and in the area of women’s clothing:

“When Nusra took control here in March 2015, Idlib entered a dark tunnel of deprivation. Public education deteriorated, the university was closed, and public debate was stifled. But since Nusra broke with Qaeda and changed its name, the city has become a lot more liveable.

“When Nusra first came to power, it had the upper hand, because it was the biggest group in the Fatah Army. People saw no choice but to accept its rules. They saw it as less dangerous than the regime and the lesser evil.

“But the rulers have adapted. They thought they could rule with the “iron and fire” of the age of the Prophet Muhammad. But no one wanted Nusra’s dress code, which required women to wear ankle-length cloaks and to give up makeup. …

“Now the authorities have concluded they cannot oppress the people of the whole city. So they cut back the restrictions. The process began when Nusra disengaged from Al Qaeda, and it continues. Early in November, the Fatah Army leadership met with the city’s elders. Nusra hard-liners wanted to reinstate the tough measures, but the elders opposed it and won. However, there was no public statement.

“The liberation extends to primary schools. Last year, schoolgirls had to dress Sharia-style starting in the fifth grade, with black niqabs covering the face, a long black cloak, and a hijab or veil. Last month I visited a local school and saw girls in colorful mantos (a short jacket reaching to the knees) and hijabs colored with embroidery. Some even had makeup.

“The women’s police used to patrol the streets in black cloaks and a niqab, an identity card on their breasts, a rifle on their backs. They would take names of women wearing colored dresses or makeup and order them to the city administration building for a course in Sharia-style dress. They would go to a woman’s home and warn the man of the house to keep her in line, implicitly threatening arrest if he didn’t. Now the women’s police are off the streets. I see women driving cars, which would have been impossible early in the summer. Shopkeepers no longer have to close their shops at prayer time. They don’t have to hire a woman to sell clothes to female customers.

“The easing extends even to the security sector. There are fewer checkpoints and fewer searches. Meanwhile, respect for the authorities has sunk. The Islamic police, in their black pants and white shirt with a police badge, operate the checkpoints on the highways and inside the city, on the public squares and at security headquarters. They were once a feared security force, but now they are weak, powerless, and simple men, most of whom joined Nusra to earn a salary.”

It is also worth noting that Jaish al-Fateh, the military coalition (which includes Nusra/JFS but also seven other brigades) which had governed Idlib city since its capture in March 2015, handed over power to an elected local council in early 2017. The head of the election commission, Muhammad Salim Khoder, said this occurred “after efforts by the people of the city to persuade Jaish al-Fateh to deliver the city’s administration for the people to elect a local council manages its affairs”.

Now despite the mindless slanders that will inevitably come my way for writing the above about Idlib, neither the successful resistance to Nusra in other Idlib towns, nor the handover to the elected council in Idlib city, nor the sharp softening of JFS restrictions on personal issues, mean that JFS has become “nice” or anything similar. Rather, they show that, unlike under the savage dictatorships of Assad and ISIS, struggle goes on in the revolution-controlled areas, even those where the presence of Nusra is relatively strong as in Idlib. The situation remains in flux; the above is no guarantee it won’t swing back the other way at some time. But thousands of people did not come into the streets, brave bullets and tanks and warplanes in order to create more repression, but just the opposite; they will put up with Nusra’s reactionary rules for a little time perhaps due precisely to the war situation, but the pressure, including from many of Nusra’s own rank and file, is to throw them off as soon as they can.

That is, if we want to look at dynamic processes in all their complexity; for some, however, an orientalist photo of schoolgirls in niqab at one moment in time might suffice to justify “left” Islamophobic and “war on terror” discourses.

Further on the question of Islamophobic images, at an earlier confrontation between myself and Anderson organized by the Northside Forum on June 10, Anderson showed the audience an image of half a dozen severed heads, which he claimed were not severed by ISIS but by “moderate rebels.” He did not specify which rebel group was allegedly responsible for each head, nor what the source of such an allegation was (almost certainly it was his usual source, the Assad regime). In fact his more general accusation here is simply false – while no-one denies that crimes have been committed by all sides in such a merciless conflict, the FSA and mainstream Islamist groups have simply not engaged in decapitation; in fact not even Nusra/JFS does – it is indeed an ISIS specialty. The reason the single case of (horrific) decapitation by some rogue members of an increasingly roguish rebel group in 2016 (al-Zinki) became known to everyone in the world was precisely because it was so unique. Actually, there are plentiful examples of decapitation by regime forces – usually the propaganda pics claim the severed heads are only of “ISIS” troops – something only the most extraordinarily naiive would take at face value. I’d wager that was probably the origin of the regime propaganda pics in Anderson’s presentation.

In 2017, some believe “free elections” occur in fascist dictatorships

Anderson also claimed that Assad had been “elected” at an “election” held in 2014, and from memory one of the questioners even asked why we shouldn’t accept the results of a free election. This is indeed a unique occasion in leftist history when people who have rejected oppression and repression all their lives, and made great efforts at understanding how even our own bourgeois democracy is deeply flawed, uphold an “election” farce run by a murderous dictatorship. Aside from the fact that the only candidates allowed to stand against Assad were two nobodies, allowed precisely because they were Assad clones (to be allowed to stand, the first condition was that a candidate must have the support of at least 35 members of the existing Baathist-dominated parliament, and so 21 of 23 were rejected); aside from the fact that “voters” had to bloody their thumb to stamp the electoral roll, and thus could be spotted at workplaces the following day if the evidence was absent (a possible death or disappearance certificate); aside from large parts of the country being outside regime control; aside from 5 million Syrians being in exile; aside from all of this and more, why would anyone assume that the figures released by the State Ministry of Truth (ie, the 73.4 percent participation rate and the 88.7 percent vote for Assad) mean anything at all? Is anyone able to check?

If we assume these figures are “true” (even taking into account the manipulation and other factors), then do we also accept that in every other “election” that Assad has called since 1971, he has received 99 percent of the vote? Why would anyone with a brain accept that? And if so, do you also accept that Zairean tyrant Mobutu received 99 percent in his 1970 election? That Saddam Hussein got 99 percent and 100 percent in his last two elections? That Mubarak always got 97 percent? That Enver Hoxha usually got around 100 percent?

Anderson claimed large numbers of Syrian refugees voted in Lebanon, though outside Assad state control, thus proving that participation was genuine. However, every media report referred to “tens of thousands” rushing the embassy in Lebanon to vote. Yes, that is a great many. But there are 1.1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, so do the maths – the “tens of thousands” probably do represent the actual level of support for Assad among Syrians in Lebanon. But in any case, the great majority were barred from voting even if they had wanted to: a law was passed that refugees who had fled Syria at checkpoints not controlled by the regime were not eligible to vote. I wonder which groups of refugees fled at regime-controlled checkpoints?

What a sad day for the left that it is even necessary for me to explain this.

The discussion and the noise

I will also note some highlights of the discussion.

On the whole, while the majority of the audience listened to both speakers and avoided too much interference, a small group of noisy Assadists near the front continually interrupted my talk and my responses to questions. But it was less the fact of these interjections than the content of them that was the problem. “You support ISIS”, for example, was a fairly typical piece of “discussion” from this group. “Al-Qaida and ISIS are funded/armed by the US” was another good one. Now, aside from the logical problem of how the US is “supporting” ISIS by bombing it for years (indeed slaughtering thousands of civilians in the process, which none of the Assadists were concerned about), while not bombing Assad, indeed often collaborating with Assad in joint bombing of ISIS, the other problem with this inane rubbish is – even if it were true, what does that have to do with anything? Since neither I nor any of my supporters in the room support either the US or ISIS, the intended target of the silly slogan is obscure.

One questioner asked why I said I “supported al-Qaida.” Of course, for anyone with ears and brains, it was fairly obvious that I said nothing of the sort. It didn’t matter – he was sure I must have meant it. What a waste of space.

When I claimed well over 90 percent of killing had been committed by the Assad regime and the Assad cheer squad made exasperated noises, I asked them – while my slides showed the Guernica that every town and city in Syria had been reduced to – “who has an airforce”? Of course my question meant, which side in Syria, the regime or the rebels. Who in other words has destroyed the entire country, and with it, been able to carry out truly large-scale slaughter (even leaving aside the regime’s industrial scale torture-to-death archipelago). The response from the peanut gallery? “Israel”. “The US.” So, “are you saying it was Israel that bombed all these cities in Syria to rubble?”, I asked. “Yes”, came the answer. Clearly a mob interested in discussion.

Anderson himself used some unusual expressions during discussion. For example, apparently it is now OK for leftists to refer to civilians massacred by aerial bombing as “collateral damage,” since such bombing, as always with the US, Israel, Russia etc, is allegedly aimed at “terrorists.” In Assad’s case, a rather gigantic amount of this “collateral damage” was thereby swept under the carpet. We’ve come a long way it seems. I also learnt that evening that the Arab Spring uprisings were a “western construction.”

One of the most sensible questions came from a Syrian refugee. He pointed to the photos Anderson had shown of Syrian people demonstrating in support of their great leader, and noted that anyone who lives in Syria is well aware of these staged farces – as a schoolkid he had been forced onto buses to go to such “spontaneous demonstrations” for example. Confronted by this piece of elementary knowledge (as with “election” circuses, most knowledgeable people know that dictatorships are good at staging “demonstrations” that support them), Anderson could not reject it; instead he said that as a kid in Australia, he was put on a bus to see the Queen of England when she visited. Even if we leave aside the differences – for example, in a dictatorship it is not only schoolkids but also workers from workplaces force-marched to these farces – it would be difficult to miss the irony of this response: I do not remember leftists, progressives or even remotely critical thinkers ever claiming that these staged circuses to greet the English queen were evidence of mass support for the monarchy.

The Syrian in question comes from Darayya, one of the outer Damascus suburbs controlled by the most democratic part of the revolutionary movement, bombed, besieged and starved by Assad for years until its forced surrender and the deportation of its people in 2016. A refugee in Australia who has abundant connections to people, including relatives, slaughtered by the Assad regime, a person profoundly opposed to all anti-democratic currents in Syria, he was slandered by Anderson as a “former jihadist fighter” in a subsequent facebook discussion about the evening.

Some discussion points about the end of the politics of solidarity

The first questioner referred to the message to Assad from the US government that week that it suspected he was preparing another chemical attack, and not to do it or he would again be punished, like after Assad’s horrific sarin attack on the village of Khan Sheiktoun in early April. He asked if this was a signal from the US to “al-Qaida” to “attack Assad.” While it was legitimate to ask what one made of the obscure US government statement, the way the question was asked allowed little in the way of a response. The facts as I presented them and which were never denied by Anderson are that the US has been bombing “al-Qaida”, or rather its former components, both Nusra/JFS and ISIS, for years now, essentially in alliance with Assad. The singular US credibility strike on Assad after Khan Sheikhtoun was surrounded both before and after by far more massive US bombing (than at any time in the war) of both Nusra/JFS and ISIS, and also by endless assurances by all wings of the Trump regime that the strike was a one-off only concerned with the use of sarin and nothing else; just why the Trump regime would want to deliberately fake an Assad sarin attack in order to strike it again is anybody’s guess -and the fact that nothing remotely of the sort has occurred (indeed US/Russia/Assad collaboration has increased in the weeks since) is evidence enough to me that the US warned Assad to not make another sarin attack precisely because it did suspect one and did not want to have to bomb him again!

But of course my assumption here is only based on this little thing called the facts. For the quite religious-like devotees of Assad that evening, such facts are irrelevant because they had all been working on the assumption that “everyone knows”, like they “know”, that Assad did not massacre children with sarin at Khan Sheikhtoun in April, just as he did not massacre hundreds of children in East Ghouta in 2013; they assume everyone “knows” that these were “false flags.” This is not the place to go into any of the massive quantities of evidence that Assad did indeed use sarin on both occasions.

But the fact that the questioner did not express any sympathy for the actual victims – disproportionately children – who suffered the particularly horrific death caused by sarin at the hands of their fascistic idol, but was only concerned with his grotesque conspiracies, is a clear enough example of the complete collapse of the politics of solidarity among this section of the left.

Another Assadist, one Elizabeth Tory, wanted to know our views on the “sanctions” imposed on the Assad regime by western countries such as Australia, which she claimed were causing suffering. She certainly has form to be talking about suffering. One was immediately reminded of Yassin al-Haj Saleh’s distinction between the internal first world in Syria and the world of the “black Syrians” who “the state is free to discipline, humiliate, and exterminate.” While her favourite oligarchic tyrant has besieged hundreds of thousands of people, pouring millions of tons of TNT into small towns while blocking exits and entrances and imposing a regime of mass starvation on these “black Syrians”, the appropriately named Tory is concerned with some alleged deprivation allegedly caused by some mild sanctions.

Once again, further evidence of the basic politics of solidarity down the toilet. One may as well be complaining about the sanctions on South Africa in the 1980s causing some deprivation among the white internal first world there, while the state massacred the downtrodden, hungry and disenfranchised black majority. And indeed I support BDS against Israel precisely because I would like to see our hypocritical western governments punish Israel and its internal first world for its ongoing occupation, slaughter and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

A third similar example, with a difference, was the discussion point raised by one Ruby Hamad, of Lebanese Alawite background. Her first point was that, as an Alawite, she objected to “all opposition to Salafism being called Islamophobia.” Since no-one had said anything so absurd, I asked her who she was referring to. She answered that I had said it, when I said Anderson’s ritual terming of everyone fighting Assad as “al-Qaida groups” was Islamophobic. In other words, her point was yet another example of people deciding to not learn anything from facts presented that evening, or at least to refer to them in order to refute them with evidence. The fact that “al-Qaida groups” (ie Nusra/JFS) make up an absolute minority of the anti-Assad rebellion, and that even “Salafists” in general are only one part of it, and that even among so-called “Salafists” there is enormous variation, is all irrelevant to those who have decided it is either “Assad or al-Qaida”.

Where she had a better point was in expressing the genuine fears of the Alawite part of the Syrian population about the outcome of the war. The fears of the Alawites are an extremely valid issue, which I will discuss in my final point below. For now though, I will risk censure by stating openly that I considered her contribution the third example of the end of solidarity. After years and years of slaughter, of hundreds of thousands of people, overwhelmingly Syrian Sunni, by a regime which is stuffed from the top, especially of the military-security apparatus which carries out this slaughter, by Alawites (often relatives of Assad), one thing Hamad could have done would have been to express some elementary solidarity with those actually being slaughtered like flies today, and for so many years. Not a word of sympathy or solidarity (though she did at least say she doesn’t support Assad “or any oppressive governments”), in a contribution aimed at garnering sympathy for possible future victims if the tables were to turn.

Without wanting to put too fine a point on it, how is this different to Israeli Jews fretting about how if they stopped endlessly slaughtering the Palestinians, one day the tables might turn and the Arabs would come and drive them “into the sea”?

That said, and I make no apologies for it, it is important to return to the issue of the fears of Alawites (or other religious minorities) and to the broader question of peace.

The final question of the evening: How to achieve peace

And that was the last question from the audience – from a Syrian who said he didn’t like any of the forces fighting on any side, and he would like to hear discussion of how to bring about peace. It was unfortunate that this question was right at the end of the night and there was no time for this at all – now that Assad has indeed “burnt the country” as his supporters promised to do in 2011, how to end the war is indeed the most crucial issue.

In fact, despite my time limitations, I made a point in my talk of stressing there is “no military solution” to the Syrian conflict, by which I meant both that it is militarily impossible for one side to totally prevail over the other, and that even if possible such a “solution” would not be democratic. I will just clarify both points.

Of course, the fact that the vastly outgunned rebels can never achieve full military victory over the regime is rather obvious (and I also made the point in my talk that fears some Syrians hold about certain rebel formations “taking power” in Damascus are as unreal as fears of Hamas militarily emerging from Gaza to rule in Tel Aviv). So let’s drop the “who is going to take over if Assad falls” talk (how about Syrians decide that rather than “anti-imperialist” westerners thinking it is their decision, with no apparent irony?); let’s drop the “there is no-one to replace Assad” (because just what Syrians need is another tyrannical dictator to rule them if Assad goes). On the other hand, it may be argued that the opposite – total Assadist victory – is possible given its overwhelming military superiority, but if so, it would be a pyrrhic victory, with the most brutally dispossessed part of the Sunni population potentially turning to jihadism and/or guerrilla struggle, millions of refugees (a quarter of the population) stranded in exile, while the regime continues to lose all semblance of independence to the various powers keeping it afloat.

As for why it would not be democratic, that goes without saying for an Assadist victory. However, as a rebel supporter, I have always believed that the rebels “seizing power” in a purely military victory, if it were even remotely possible, would not bring a very democratic outcome either (though it would be vastly superior to the regime). This is due to the sharp divisions among Syrians, in particular the alienation of many people among the religious minorities, and the majority of Alawites, along with many of the middle classes in the big cities, from the plebeian-based revolution. If a military advance on regime areas provoked a popular uprising against Assad among Alawites and others, that would be a different thing, and it would cut the ground from under the sectarian currents among the opposition; but the political limitations of the rebel leaderships have always made this unlikely, even in better times. By that, I do not mean all rebel leaderships are crazed Sunni sectarians – far from it, I gave a number of examples in my talk of anti-sectarian declarations from the FSA in various parts of the country and could give many more – but simply they have not prioritised this issue enough, or have not been able to, giving the pressing military needs of bare survival.

Moreover, Assad’s endless drive for full-scale military solution benefits the “uncompromising” jihadist fringes, especially the very sectarian Nusra/JFS. But my assessment does not depend only on the strength or otherwise of those like Nusra/JFS – civil war and massive bloodshed itself intensifies sectarian dynamics, and full-scale military victory would likely encourage a degree of sectarian “revenge” on the ground even if politically non-sectarian forces vastly prevail over the likes of Nusra. Just as there is no military solution in Israel/Palestine; just as Mandela understood the need for a transitional political arrangement to calm fears among white South Africans; so likewise, every political and military opposition formation in Syria, except Nusra/JFS, has long ago signed onto the concept of a transitional political arrangement, following a genuine ceasefire, involving delegates from both the opposition and from the regime (but not Assad’s immediate circle) to pave the way for elections.

Some examples of this include the 100 oppositionist delegates from a variety of political and military opposition groups (including the Syrian National Coalition, the National Coordination Committee, various FSA and Islamist rebel groups covering pretty much everyone except Nusra/JFS, and civil opposition groups, including a number of Alawites, Druze, Christians and Kurds), who met in the Saudi capital Riyadh in December 2015, who released their negotiating platform; the opposition’s Higher Negotiations Committee (HNC) Executive Framework for a Political Solution Based on the Geneva Communiqué, released in September 2016; and the Free Syrian Army Southern Front’s Statement on ‘The Transitional Phase’, released in December 2014. All these declarations and plans call for a civil state and a democratic, pluralistic society with full and equal rights for all religious and ethnic communities.

The fact that even those Islamist groups usually considered more hard-line (eg Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam) have supported these transition plans gives a better indication of the relationship of political forces, when able to calmly discuss political outcomes, than some of their more heated rhetoric, and their relative weight as long as the military struggle remains paramount, would superficially suggest.

Such a political process could only begin following a genuine ceasefire. Over the last year and a half, the opposition has agreed, a number of times, to negotiated ceasefires; in every case, the regime actively violates them, using some excuse of having to bomb “Nusra/JFS”, while in fact bombing all rebels and usually focusing on one particular place each time to crush while the “ceasefire” holds. It does this because it can, and the fact that these US-Russia “ceasefires” have always left Nusra/JFS out of them has given the regime the pretext; the FSA/rebels have attempted to respect these ceasefires for the sake of the long-suffering civilian population.

Yet despite these “ceasefires” only producing a relative lull in the regime bombing, it has been enough for the masses return to the streets around the country with the flag and slogans of the 2011 revolution. What this indicates is that a genuine ceasefire would aid the democratic revolutionary forces; a revival of the civil movement would provide a chance to overcome the sectarian atmosphere; massive slaughter is not conducive to rebuilding harmony. In contrast, jihadists like Nusra/JFS thrive on military struggle, and because the regime never truly abides by the ceasefires, the jihadists are able to present themselves as the only true ongoing resistance, presenting a genuine dilemma for the FSA and allied rebels.

However, until a genuine ceasefire leading to a political process can be achieved, the military balance on the ground remains a decisive factor: in other words, desiring peace is not simply a matter of one side unilaterally giving up to be jailed, disappeared, tortured and slaughtered by the dictatorship. If the opposition had been able to achieve a better military balance on the ground (eg, if they had been able to receive some more useful military aid than the crumbs thrown them by their “friends”), then they would be able to push for a ceasefire and political arrangement including the release of the tens of thousands of political prisoners, the end of regime sieges, the right of the FSA to keep their weapons and to provide security and democratic governance in the areas they control, as well as actually being able to keep control of more of the areas that are their natural support base. In contrast, a ceasefire in which the military balance gives the regime the upper hand would be able to deny these basics.

Note that I have used the term “political process” rather than the more popular “political solution.” There is no more of a “political solution” with the regime than there is a military solution; the only solution is revolutionary. But revolution is not only military struggle, especially such an exhausted and catastrophic one. The opposite kinds of ceasefire and political arrangement I have just outlined, based on different military balances, represent the difference between a ceasefire that leaves the door open to a renewal of the civil mass struggle and thus to non-military revolutionary possibilities, and one that slams the door fully shut.

… well, not quite, just the continuation of six years of genocidal war as Assad, Russia and the US pulverize Syria

By Michael Karadjis

For the first time in the 6-year Syrian war, the US shot down an Assadist warplane on June 18, in defence of its allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed military and political front dominated by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG). Assadist warplanes had carried out the highly unusual act of bombing the SDF in the town of Ja’Din, near Tabqa in Raqqa Province.

For most of the war, the Assad regime and the YPG/SDF have largely avoided militarily confronting each other. While not allies, neither are they enemies, and have at times collaborated in parts of the country when it suited, including the YPG’s assistance to Assad in the recent siege of rebel Aleppo.

In contrast, the YPG/SDF has become the largest and most strategic US ally in the conflict, as both the US and the SDF are focused entirely on defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) in eastern Syria. As neither have any interest in supporting the rebellion against the Assad dictatorship, a phenomenon overwhelmingly taking place in the more populated west of the country, they can get on with what is largely a parallel war elsewhere. Thus the US has provided the SDF with wall to wall air cover for all its operations since late 2014, has sent hundreds of US special forces to aid the SDF, and has set up a number of military bases in SDF-controlled territory.

The Obama administration announced its first and only No Fly Zone in Syria in the Kurdish-dominated parts of northern Syria known as ‘Rojava’, controlled by the YPG/SDF, in August 2016, when Assadist jets suddenly decided to do a little bombing of the YPG in Hassakah. Although the YPG had not done anything to provoke this attack, at times the regime likes to remind anyone outside its control who is boss.

While the regime pragmatically allows the SDF to run Rojava so that it can use all its resources to crush the Syrian uprising, it occasionally likes to remind the SDF that it is opposed to either any Kurdish autonomy, or to any ‘democratic confederalist’ project the SDF seeks to run in Rojava, and that as soon as the rest of the rebellion is crushed, it will come for them.

That time, last August, the US warned the Assadist warplanes to keep away or they would get bombed. They ran away fast.

Now they came back to test out the NFZ, so the US knocked a warplane out of the sky.

On the question of “World War III”

Last year during the US elections, Hillary Clinton, confronted with the daily genocidal slaughter carried out by the Assad regime against defenceless civilians throughout the length and breadth of rebel-held Syria, made some comments about examining the possibility of the US military – already involved in bombing enemies of Assad for two years at that point – also helping protect Syrian civilians against Assad’s warplanes through some kind of No Fly Zone.

Donald Trump opposed this idea and instead stressed his support for existing US policy, of only fighting ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. In fact, he went further, expressing the view that the US alliance with the Assad regime and Russia against the jihadists should be even more emphatic.

Much of the pro-Assad but allegedly “anti-war” movement, and even many genuine anti-war folk opposed to Assad, claimed that a vote for Clinton would be a vote for “World War III.” Two years of actual US bombing of Syria, which had already killed hundreds of civilians, was seen as no problem, and certainly not a cause for a single demonstration (as it was not directed against Assad); in contrast, imposing a No Fly Zone to protect civilians would mean shooting down Assadist warplanes, which could cause conflict with Assad’s Russian backers, and therefore “World War III.”

Even leftists well aware of how much of a far-right neo-liberal racist Trump was, how hard-wired he was into the entire global far-right, expressed the view that on this issue, Trump was, relatively speaking, the “peace candidate.” They said this despite the fact that Trump openly warned that he intended the sharply step up the bombing of anti-Assad targets in Syria; he was the “peace candidate” in comparison to “World War III” Clinton even though he promised to not just “bomb the shit out of” those he called the “terrorists,” but also to “kill their families.” Promises he has kept.

The soft-on-Trump left had not noticed that the US had already imposed a No Fly Zone over Rojava, which had not caused World War III. US airforce protection the YPG, who identify as leftists, was not considered an issue, but if the US were to protect ordinary Syrian civilians, and their schools, hospitals, markets, refugee camps and so on, living in rebel-controlled zones, from years of relentless massacre, that would have been considered the ultimate evil.

Thus, Old Left “anti-war” views on these issues had no relation one way or another with any principled opposition to US intervention anywhere; whether or not US intervention, bombing, special forces, military bases, slaughter of civilians and so on was a problem or not depended entirely on who the targets and/or the allies of the US intervention were.

It is the same again in this case. When the Assad regime, encouraged after the entire Trump cabinet made clear that even Obama’s tepid “opposition” to Assad was no longer US policy, went a little too far and dropped sarin on the north Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in April, and so the US launched a relatively harmless “credibility strike” against Assad’s Shariyat airbase, angry mobs launched “anti-war” protests throughout American cities. The previous 8000 US airstrikes against non-Assadist targets had gone unnoticed, despite the significant civilian toll; one with a zero civilian toll, against a military airbase, from where chemical weapons had been launched, created a strange anger.

Others declared that Trump had now “changed his policy,” despite the fact that Trump, Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson and every other US leader of note went out of their way to declare that they were “not going into Syria,” that there was no change of policy, that the strike was only about sarin and not about any of Assad’s other weapons of mass destruction that he uses daily on a massive scale, that the only US interest remained the defeat of ISIS, and so on and so forth.

Yet when the US shot down its first Assadist warplane, we get a stunned, and confused, silence. Anti-imperialists are not sure whether to support the “anti-imperialist” Assad regime – which tortured Islamist suspects for the US rendition program, joined the first US Gulf war against Iraq, invaded Lebanon at the behest of the Lebanese counterrevolution and carried out an enormous massacre against the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance at Tel al-Zaatar, kept Israel’s stolen Golan “border” stone cold quiet for 40 years, and regularly massacred Palestinians and tried to extinguish their movement – or to support the “anti-imperialist” YPG/SDF, the strategic partner of the US in Syria.

If, in an alternative universe, the US were for once to knock down an Assadist warplane slaughtering civilians in a rebel-held town, then of course all hell would break loose, we would again have demonstrations, declarations, “anti-war” statements etc. #MilitaryAirfieldsLivesMatter, apparently.

The ongoing slaughter in Daraa and Raqqa

Meanwhile the Assad regime has been pummeling Daraa, the birthplace of the revolution, with literally hundreds of barrel bombs for weeks on end now. According to the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and Medicins du Monde already on June 7, “in recent days, the aerial bombardment campaign over Dara’a has intensified. According to reports from the ground, in the first five days of June, there have been approximately 330 direct fire activities, including air raids, explosive barrels, artillery, rockets, explosive cylinders, and explosive charges. These attacks have been carried out by the Syrian government and its allies, and represent a dramatic increase from the 165 aerial attacks which took place last month.”

Yet there is no US gun or bullet landing in the hands of FSA and allied rebels in Daraa defending their people against this genocide, let alone a downed warplane. Daraa, its civilians, its infrastructure, its symbolism as a centre of the most democratic part of the revolution, its unbelievable suffering, and unbelievable heroism, can all go to hell, but obviously the US considers the SDF to be a red line.

The US, in any case, is dong virtually the same thing to the ISIS “capital” Raqqa. As the SDF advances on Raqqa, US airstrikes (and SDF artillery) are creating what UN war crimes investigators described as a “staggering loss of civilian life.” The US is literally carpet bombing Raqqa, “destroying the town to save it.” The death toll from US strikes on Raqqa and neighbouring Deir Ezzor – where the US has been openly bombing in collaboration with the Assad regime since November 2014 – is so high that, for two months in a row, the civilian death toll from US strikes has been higher even than that  of the Assad regime (and even in the previous month, the US toll was already higher than either the Russian or ISIS civilian toll). The monitoring site Airwars estimates the US-led Coalition is responsible for over 3000 civilian deaths in Syria, the vast majority in the last four months under Trump. The US has even used white phosphorus in its war on ISIS in Raqqa.

The anti-ISIS, anti-Assad resistance group ‘Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently’ released a statement declaring that Syria as we once knew it is has been “forever changed by the relentless brutality taking place across the country. The horrors happening now in the cities of Raqqa and Daraa are only met with utter silence – both international and local. For months now, the city of Raqqa has been exposed to a campaign of systematic destruction perpetrated by the International coalition and its local allies who are using a scorched earth policy to take control of the city. All violations against civilians receive little to no condemnation, as they are committed under the pretext of fighting ISIS.”

Calling RBSS “ISIS agents’ simply won’t cut it. ISIS hunts down and murders RBSS members, even outside Syria.

Yet this all appears to be a non-issue for the western anti-war movement.

Assad, Russia and Iran now decide YPG/SDF are “terrorists”

The Assad regime has sent out mixed signals about the YPG/SDF recently. One leader called them a branch of the so-called “Syrian Army”, while the recent declaration in the Russian state’s propaganda organ ‘Sputnik’ that the YPG/SDF are “terrorists like ISIS” quoted “Syrian expert” (ie, regime spokesperson) Husma Shaib, who explained that “we regard these forces as unlawful military formations which operate outside of the legal environment. They are the same as terrorist units like the al-Nusra Front and Daesh. The Syrian Democratic Forces do not coordinate their activities with the Syrian Army. We regard them as terrorists.”

Iran’s ambassador to Turkey, Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian Fard, also recently clarified to his Turkish counterpart that Tehran “describes the PKK, the PYD and the YPG to be terrorist groups” that Tehran and Ankara needed to jointly work against.

This turn seems to be caused by rivalry over the mopping up operation against ISIS in the east: with the US-backed SDF advancing upon Raqqa, the Assadist army, backed by Hezbollah, recently broke out from southeast Aleppo and began advancing east as well, in a way that was, unusually, threatening towards SDF positions.

US: No quarrel with Assad as long as you’re just bombing civilians

The US Centcom statement on the downing of the warplane emphasised, as usual, that its mission is only to defeat ISIS and that it has no interest whatsoever in fighting Assadist, Russian or pro-regime forces (as is well-known), but that it will defend itself or its “partner forces.”

As the tweeter ‘Northern Stork’ introduced this Centcom statement, this means “Back off you guys, go barrel bomb some civilians elsewhere, we are not here to fight you, leave us alone.”

While the regime claimed it was bombing ISIS – in Taqba, which the SDF had liberated from ISIS months ago – this was rejected by the SDF. SDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Talal Silo accused regime forces of launching “large-scale attacks using aircraft, artillery, and tanks” on the SDF in the Tabqa area.

The SDF v ISIS and the issue of ethical dilemmas

Given the nature of the Islamic state tyranny – a pale, yet nonetheless horrific, reflection of the Damascus-based tyranny – there can be little doubt that the SDF can only be a vast improvement, regardless of one’s view of the reality of the Rojava revolution. Actually, even if one fully accepted the loftiest claims about Rojava in its heartlands, it is doubtful that such a vision can be brought about via such frightening terror launched by the US airforce; it would be a first in the history of revolutions. Yet still, whatever turns out can hardly not be a vast improvement on ISIS.

And while the hypocrisy and selective solidarity of much of the anti-war movement and sections of the western left are an obvious target here, the decisions of the SDF in a difficult environment are not. That does not mean that seriously incorrect decisions should not be criticized; but gratuitous condemnation of the SDF as “US proxies” merely for accepting any level of US support against the ISIS terror regime should be avoided (notwithstanding the fact that the PYD leaders themselves rarely give the same latitude to the forced tactical decisions of the FSA and Syrian rebels, despite the qualitatively greater pressure they have been under for six years; and their western backers, who include some with a strong streak of left-orientalism, are often considerably worse).

But at a certain point, quantity becomes quality. The massive US/SDF war to liberate Raqqa has turned into such an enormous massacre of the Raqqa citizenry that, no matter how much one hates ISIS and naturally prefers the SDF to win, the severity of the political and ethical dilemma here can no longer be avoided with dishonest platitudes about the SDF “accepting some limited US aid” against ISIS and the like. It is difficult to see that much progressive content can survive this massive “military solution” and relentless, barbaric imperialist bombing. And to the extent that it does in some form, who is there to speak for the thousands killed, and their many thousands more relatives scarred for life as a result, and thousands more maimed?

Finally, as the SDF leaders are no doubt themselves aware, neither the Assad regime, Russia nor the US are ever going to be reliable allies, and so they will need to constantly watch their backs. Yet this means the only real ally of the Syrian Kurdish people are the Syrian Arab people. “Tactical” alliances by either Kurdish or Arab rebel leaderships that lead to significant bloodshed and betrayal between the two peoples have much more than “tactical” consequences. Neither side have been innocent on that score.

by Michael Karadjis

US bombing of Syria did not begin on April 7, it began in September 2014, two and a half years ago. Nearly 8000 US air strikes have been launched, in which, according to the monitoring organisation Airwars, at least 1400 civilians have been killed. This includes killed hundreds just in recent weeks in some horrific strikes, like the slaughter of some 57 worshippers in a mosque in western Aleppo – which Trump’s Russian friends defended as aimed at “terrorists” – and the massacre soon after of dozens of displaced people in a school in Raqqa. In fact, US bombing in March killed more Syrian civilians (260) than either Russia (224) or ISIS (119), dwarfed only by the massive toll of the Assad regime itself. This bombing has included the use of deadly depleted uranium. Not to mention the mass killing of hundreds of civilians in Mosul in Iraq in just one week in March, just a few of the thousands killed in recent months in the joint US, Iranian and Iraqi regime (ie, the US-Iran joint-venture regime) offensive in that city.

No “anti”-war movement has protested all this US bombing. No “anti”-imperialists have ever cared less about any of this. Because all these years of US bombing have been of opponents of Assad, have often been in direct collaboration with Assad, and have had the tacit support of the Syrian regime.

Then in recent months, under both the late Obama administration and Trump, this US role had become even clearer. From December, the US launched a more intense bombing campaign against Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in Idlib and western Aleppo, thus joining the Assadist and Russian slaughter from the skies in that region. Hundreds of JFS cadre were killed, and the bombings also hit other rebel groups at times. The US role alongside Assad, Russia and Iran in the latest reconquest of Palmyra was widely reported on. Calculating all US bombings in February from the US CentCom site (ie, the site of the US-led Coalition bombing Syria) shows that while 60 percent of US bombings were carried out in alliance with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, mainly the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, YPG), most of the other 40 percent was in alliance with Assad in Deir Ezzor, Palmyra and Idlib, some 195 strikes of the 548 in total. And that was in a month when the bombing of Idlib was minimal, compared to January and March. Even in SDF-controlled Manbij, the US landed forces to patrol the region with Russian and Assad troops to block the Turkish-led FSA Euphrates Shield forces from advancing.

Despite countless assertions that Trump’s Syria policy was “unclear,” everything Trump has said was very clear: for many months, he insisted the US must ally with Russia and Assad to “fight ISIS,” as he believed Russia and Assad were doing; and that the US should cut off whatever remaining fragments of “aid” he believed were still going to some vetted Syrian rebels. Even Defence Secretary James Mattis, who many have mistakenly seen as more anti-Assad than Trump, has always opposed “no fly zone” plans, and announced several years ago that the time to support Syrian rebels fighting both Assad and ISIS “had passed,” ie, he agreed with the Obama-Kerry line that the US would only support rebels who fought ISIS and Nusra only, not the regime.

Then in the very days just before Assad’s monstrous chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, three prominent US leaders made Trump’s US policy even clearer, announcing that Assad should be allowed to stay. On March 23, US UN representative Nikki Haley announced that the US was “no longer” (sic) focused on removing Assad “the way the previous administration was”; the Russia-connected US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, used Assad’s very words on March 30, declaring that the “longer term status of president Assad will be decided by the Syrian people” – a would-be obvious statement, if one assumed Syrian people could hold a democratic election under a tyrannical dictatorship; and the foillowing day, White House spokesman Sean Spicer declared that “with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept.” Of course this had long been unofficial US policy; and had even become partly official under Obama and Kerry when they agreed that Assad could continue to rule in an allegedly “transitional” regime following a political process. But the Trump team made this clear.

Then Assad goes and blows it by throwing sarin in their faces! The interesting issue is why Assad was stupid enough to do this, just days after he received so much explicit US support. Presumably, he was encouraged precisely by all this US verbal and actual military support, and so he decided to test the waters, to see if this meant that even sarin could now be re-normalised. But that just highlights the arrogance of power. The US was giving him everything; Obama’s “red line” against chemical weapons in 2013, and then his withdrawal from action, in the US-Russia-Israel deal that saw Assad’s chemical weapons removed, was saying to Assad you can use everything else except chemical weapons; and thus Assad did use everything else in the four years since, in unbelievable quantities, with complete US indifference, if not support. For Assad to then go and use the very weapons that the deal supposedly removed, and show off that he still has them, was simply impossible for the US to ignore in terms of its “credibility.” Assad was reading the messages correctly from this last week, that US leaders were encouraging him; he just read it wrongly that this could include sarin. Look at Nikki Haley, fuming in the UN; she had to fume, because three days earlier the same Nikki Haley had made the official announcement about Assad being good to continue ruling. Assad should have been more gracious about being kissed like that.

The US thus had no choice but to respond in some way for the sake of its alleged “credibility.” Many are claiming Trump is “taking advantage” of Assad’s action to launch a war, just because he likes war, to show what he is made of, to show that he did what Obama didn’t have the spine to do and so on, or alternatively that the strike aims to cover up Trump’s Russia connections that are under investigation at home, by showing he can stand up to the Russians, and so on. This is all a misunderstanding. Certainly, these may well be useful by-products of “taking action” for Trump. But they do not explain the action at all. No, Trump sent a bunch of missiles against the Assadist military facility responsible for the chemical attack, going against everything he wanted to do, and that his entire team wanted to do, as seen by their declarations in the very days beforehand, because Assad’s use of sarin had put US “credibility” at stake.

That is all from the point of view of US imperialism. But from the point of view of supporters of the Syrian revolution, and of liberation and humanity in general, can I ask in all honesty, what is the big deal? Why are 8000 strikes on opponents of Assad (and not only on ISIS), killing thousands of civilians, not “intervention,” yet when you finally get one strike against the biggest, most heavily armed and most highly dangerous terrorist group in Syria, the one currently occupying Damascus, after it slaughters dozens of children with chemical weapons, only that is considered “intervention,” that is supposedly something more significant, that is something we should protest. Really, what is the difference? Surely, if we oppose all US intervention on principle, then this particular bombing is nothing worse than all the other bombings against Anyone But Assad the last two and a half years; and if the left, on the whole, has not been actively demanding the end of US bombing of Syria – far from it – then surely we can say in as much as the US is already there, at least this particular bombing hit the most appropriate target to date.

Frankly, whoever has not been protesting the US bombing of Syria all along the last two and a half years, and who now suddenly protests this US “intervention” today, cannot in any sense be considered anti-war, or anti-imperialist, but simply an apologist for the Assad genocide-regime. As Joey Husseini Ayoub, who runs the excellent Hummus for Thought site, wrote, “For those who care, this is 7,899th US airstrikes in Syria since 2014. I don’t remember 7,898 waves of outrage or concern.”

And that is only noting the absence of protest against US bombings before this one. One might rightly criticise my post for focusing on these US crimes, terrible as they are, rather than the truly massive crimes against humanity that have been carried out by the Assadist regime, its airforce and torture chambers, and the Russian imperialist invader that backs it, the crimes that have left at least half a million dead and turned the entire country to rubble, even before this latest horrific atrocity. That is simply because I have been focusing on the issue of the inconsistency of those allegedly “opposing US imperialism,” indicating that this is entirely fake. But from the point of view of humanity, from the perspective of the part of the left that still believes in the politics of liberation, the malignancy of those “anti-imperialists” who only protest bombing now, but who have never protested the Assadist and Russian bombing, or in fact support this genocide, is far worse.

Meanwhile, while launching a singular “punishment” strike may have the potential to escalate beyond its purpose, this seems almost certainly not the intention of any wing of the Trump regime. As State Secretary Rex Tillerson explains, this punishment strike should not be confused with a US change of line on Syria:

“US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the attack showed the President “is willing to take decisive action when called for. ‘I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today’, he said. ‘There has been no change in that status. I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line and cross the line on violating commitments they’ve made and cross the line in the most heinous of ways’.”

by Michael Karadjis

_{Two rival linking plans at expense of Daesh (Grey area on map) in northern Syria: Green – FSA/rebels, Yellow – YPG/SDF. Pink area underneath controlled by Assad regime. At time of writing, the distance between rebel-controlled territory beyond the towns of al-Rai and Jarabulus was only 10 km, as shown on map. Since then, they have fully linked and Daesh expelled from the border.}

(An abridged version of this article appeared in ‘The New Arab’ under the title ‘Tensions tried and loyalties tested in northern Syria’, at https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/9/2/tensions-tried-and-loyalties-tested-in-northern-syria).

One week the United States rushed to the defence of its Kurdish allies, People’s Protection Units (YPG), when the Assad regime bombed them in Hasake; the following week many pro-YPG voices were accusing the same US of betrayal, for supporting Turkey’s intervention into Syria, with up to 5000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) troops, to expel ISIS from the border town of Jarabulus.

However, fickleness would not be a useful explanation of US behaviour. Rather, both events suggest that the outlines of a regional understanding on a reactionary solution to the Syrian crisis may be in the making. If this sounds conspiratorial, let me stress at the outset that none of it is set in concrete, much could change, and many of the players may be only half-pleased; nevertheless, the fact that states that appear at odds with each other conduct behind-the-scenes negotiations is hardly a huge revelation.

And above all, it is always important to keep in mind that when capitalist states half-back revolutions for their own geopolitical or other reasons, the aim is some kind of pressure or manoeuvre; it has always been the ultimate aim of all regional and global powers for the magnificent people’s uprising in Syria to be defeated, one way or another, even if via different routes.

Turkey: the AKP’s diplomatic back-flips

Some of this relates to the recent diplomatic back-flips of the Turkish government of Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a decisive supporter of the Syrian rebels. This includes Turkey’s widely publicised reconciliation with Russia and Israel (who themselves have been forming a very close alliance over the last year, with countless high-level visits between Putin and Netanyahu); the further strengthening of its relations with Iran (which have always remained strong despite backing opposite sides in Syria); and the declaration by prime minister Binali Yildarim (who recently replaced Ahmet Davutoglu) that Turkey is no longer opposed to a role for Assad in a “transitional” government consisting of elements of the regime and opposition, a position bringing Turkey into line with the position of the United States and in conflict with that of the Syrian opposition. Yildarim also recently stated that Turkey’s ties to Syria will “return to normal.”

US imposes first No Fly Zone in Syria: To defend Rojava

As is widely known, the YPG – connected to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – and the Assad regime have had a long-term, pragmatic non-aggression pact, which sometimes breaks into minor conflict, and at other times leads to collaboration – including aiding in the recent siege of rebel Aleppo.

However, the ferocity of the latest clash in Hasaka was new; this was the first time Assad launched his airforce against the YPG; the airforce is normally dedicated to slaughtering the civilian population of rebel-held areas.

This may have been a message from Assad to Turkey, a response to Turkey’s own feelers. A senior AKP official recently noted that while Assad is a killer, “he does not support Kurdish autonomy … we’re backing the same policy.” This is true; despite YPG pragmatism, Assad has forcefully rejected Kurdish autonomy. And given the current rise in the Kurdish struggle in Iran, the prominent Turkish-Iranian meetings are most certainly anti-Kurdish in content; Iran may be acting as a link between Erdogan and Assad.

Both Russia and the US have been key backers of the YPG. From the outset of the Russian invasion last September, the PYD/YPG declared in favour of Russia bombing “jihadists” (even though in practice it mostly bombed mainstream rebels and very rarely ISIS). In return, Russian air strikes were employed to aid the Afrin YPG against the rebels in February, helping it seize a number of rebel-held, Arab-majority towns in northern Aleppo, including Tal Rifaat, an iconic centre of resistance to both Assad and ISIS. But Putin’s high-level reconciliation with Erdogan, while being Assad’s main backer even as he attacks the YPG, suggests Russia has dropped the YPG like a hot potato.

The US alliance with the YPG, however, is far more fundamental. The US has been the permanent air force for all anti-ISIS operations led by the YPG, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance it leads which includes small non-Kurdish components, for two years now. The US has also fielded “special forces” to work with the YPG, and has set up its first military base in Syria in the eastern part of Rojava.

With so much invested in its SDF alliance, the US imposed its first No Fly Zone (NFZ) in Syria, over eastern Rojava. After Syrian SU-24 attack planes bombed the area on August 18, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis warned that regime aircraft “would be well-advised not to do things that place them at risk,” as US warplanes intercepted regime jets. US Coalition aircraft confronted regime warplanes again the next day, which “encouraged” them “to depart the airspace without further incident,” Davis said.

As an aside, the ease with which the US effected this NFZ belies all the talk about an NFZ to protect civilians from Assad’s genocidal bombing leading to WWIII. Of course, most of the world won’t notice the imposition of this NFZ, as long as it is imposed by the US to protect US forces, or the YPG; it will certainly not be seen as any kind of “US intervention” by the western “anti-war movement,” any more than two years of bombing , with hundreds of civilian casualties, has been seen as such; a huge uproar against “US intervention” will only occur if the US, in some parallel universe, uses the forces already intervening in Syria to protect hospitals and schools from being blasted to bits in rebel-controlled areas.

But then again, the irrelevance of the dinosaur which calls itself an “anti-war movement” even while, in large part, shilling for one of the most brutal wars on civilians in modern history, is hardly new information. Its irrelevance to world politics today is richly deserved indeed.

Beyond ‘New Cold War’ nonsense: Regional alliance for counterrevolution

Recent discussion of an alleged “Russia-Turkey-Iran” understanding on Syria usually claims that Erdogan’s new tilt to Moscow was caused by the reticent support the US gave to Turkey’s government against the recent coup attempt, the US refusal to hand over Gulen, who Turkey blames for the coup, and the large-scale support the US gave the YPG/SDF in helping them expel ISIS from Manbij in northern Syria, not far south of the Turkish border.

However, the discourse that Turkey was thereby “moving towards Russia and away from the US on Syria” is based on the idea that the “Cold War” still exists. In Syria at least, the US and Russia see the Syrian conflict “fundamentally very similarly” as US Secretary of State John Kerry has made clear. While this does not exclude minor rivalry or tactical differences, in reality Turkey’s new position that Assad can remain “temporarily” means that Turkey has now reached the US position via coming half-way towards the Russian position.

This “Cold War” discourse fails to explain the prominent US-Russian negotiations to engage in joint bombing of Jabhat al-Nusra, which would almost inevitably mean bombing non-Nusra rebels as well, given the actual geography of the uprising. Indeed, there were even reports of the US-led Coalition bombing rebels in Aleppo during the recent siege.

In fact, the “Russia-Turkey-Iran” understanding is better seen as a “Russia-Turkey-Iran-US-Assad” understanding, with, of course, points of difference.

Part of this understanding is anti-Kurdish, though, as we saw in Hasake, this will be only partial in the US case, especially as it still wants to use the YPG for the potentially suicidal task of taking on ISIS in its capital Raqqa, due south of Kobani.

Another part of this understanding is anti-rebel, but this is only partial in Turkey’s case. Turkey allowed arms to flow to the rebels as they fought to successfully break Assad’s recent total siege of 300,000 people in Aleppo, which if unbroken would have led to catastrophe. This aspect does not entail aiding the regime in the impossible task of totally crushing the rebels, but rather in restricting them to current areas, forcing them to stop fighting the regime while using them only to fight ISIS or even Nusra, and pushing them into a deal with the regime that includes Assad “temporarily.”

This was the model the US has enforced on the politically moderate, but militarily tenacious, FSA Southern Front. The US held it back from advancing towards Damascus, thereby helping the regime force the surrender of the revolutionary town of Darraya. Thus, while outside the scope of this article, the surrender and ethnic cleansing of Darraya, and now a number of other small revolutionary centres, appears to be part of this same counterrevolutionary “tidying up” process.

The Turkish intervention in Jarabulus: Between liberation and slaughter

It was in this context that the US – while guaranteeing for now YPD-SDF rule over the territory it controls east of the Euphrates River (ie, from Kobani through to Hasake and Qamishle) – sought to “balance” between its Turkish and SDF allies by providing air support to Turkey’s direct intervention into Syria, along with 5000 FSA fighters from the Azaz-Mare and Idlib regions, to evict ISIS from the border town of Jarabulus.

The Turkish regime, of course, has its own aims in this operation, which may coincide at times with, but are distinct from, the aims of the Syrian rebels. And there are indications that FSA fighters are not unaware of the dangers of being entrapped by interests different to their own. However, it must be emphasised that these north Aleppo-based rebels, who have fought ISIS for years, acted in their own interests in liberating the Arab-majority town of Jarabulus.

Squeezed into the Azaz-Mare pocket in northern Aleppo since the Russian-Assad-YPG offensive in February which cut them off from Aleppo city, these rebels needed to expand their area of operation. Unnoticed by the world, they had just liberated – largely on their own – the important town of al-Rai on the Turkish border the previous week, in an offensive from Azaz eastward. By now seizing Jarabulus, they aim to link back to al-Rai and thereby Azaz, gaining full control of this section of the border from ISIS.

In both Manbij and Jarablus, video evidence showed the populations were relieved to be rid of ISIS tyranny (and in Manbij, of US bombing which had claimed hundreds of lives), despite the two different liberators.

Turkey has long said it would not allow the YPG to move west of the Euphrates river. To the east of the Euphrates is the iconic Kurdish town Kobani, which resisted a furious ISIS siege in late 2014, and the PYD/YPG/SDF controls the entire Turkish border from there to Hasake and Qamishle in the northeast (ie, the Kobani and Jazirah cantons of ‘Rojava’). Kobani itself, and much of the Hasake-Qamishle region, is majority Kurdish, and the Kurds have exercised their rightful autonomous rule there for a number of years, carrying out their own revolutionary process.

However, the Tal Abyad region in between Kobani and Hasake, which the SDF and US airforce liberated from ISIS in 2015, is majority-Arab; the defection just days ago  of the main Tal Abyad-based FSA component  of that operation, Liwa al-Tahrir, from the SDF, suggests the driving back of ISIS may reduce the need of FSA-connected rebels east of the Euphrates to remain under YPG domination.

The Arab-majority town of Jarabulus is opposite Kobani on the west side of the Euphrates. Arab-majority Manbij is also west of the Euphrates, but not on the border; several months ago Turkey accepted the large-scale US air support to the YPG/SDF offensive to expel ISIS from Manbij, on the condition that the YPG then returned east once Manbij was secured. This was understood to mean leaving Manbij to the Arab, non-YPG components of the SDF, in particular, to the ‘Manbij Military Council’.

After liberating Manbij, SDF forces called the ‘Jarabulus Military Council’ moved north and seized a number of villages from ISIS, with the ultimate aim of taking Jarabulus. Turkish and FSA troops pre-empted this, however, by seizing Jarabulus first. As a strategic Arab-majority border town, the fact that the FSA received direct support from Turkey in expelling ISIS is no different fundamentally to the SDF receiving direct support from the US in expelling ISIS from Manbij.

However, what happened next was much more concerning. While information is scarce on the ethnic composition of these small villages south of Jarabulus, and of the local people’s relationship to the SDF liberators, these are issues that need to be worked out by local Syrian forces – the FSA and the SDF – on their own, without the Turkish military playing a role. However, when the FSA began fighting these SDF forces south of Jarabulus, Turkey took a direct role. This almost immediately degenerated further, as the Turkish airforce began bombing these SDF-held villages, leading, as may be expected, to war crimes, such as the slaughter of 28 civilians in Amarinah on August 27.

It is crimes such as these that further drive wedges between Arabic and Kurdish civilians, and between liberation movements among both peoples, just as the far larger-scale YPG collaboration with the Russian Luftwaffe in February, in seizing non-Kurdish territory from the rebels, had already done. While the current clashes are not on that order, any participation by the Syrian rebels in a possible Turkish drive to seize Manbij would certainly reach the heights of the Tal Rifaat disaster (though the US appears to also oppose such a move).

Turkey claims it is fighting YPG fighters, who haven’t gone east; Kurdish leaders such as PYD official Nawaf Xelil have publicly agreed that moving east was the understanding, and claim they have done so, so Turkey is fighting the local SDF; whereas others have charged the US with “betrayal,” and YPG spokesman Redur Xelil rejected the demand to move east and denied leaving Manbij. Meanwhile US Vice president Biden, on a state visit to Turkey at the time, sought to please his Turkish hosts, warning the YPG that it would lose US support if it stayed west of the Euphrates.

Some of this appears to be sabre-rattling, for public consumption, or to test the waters; both Turkey and the PYD have ambitions beyond the agreed-upon terms. Turkish leaders talk about clearing “all terrorists” – ISIS and YPG – from the region, and many critics of the Turkish operation claim that Turkey’s real aim is to destroy ‘Rojava’. Any Turkish adventure to attack actual ‘Rojava’ – ie, the SDF-run, Kurdish-majority regions east of the Euphrates – should indeed be condemned, but is unlikely to occur on any scale (despite some border clashes around Kobani) because it will be strongly opposed by the US.

Indeed, as the SDF was pushed south of the Sajoor river separating the Jarablus and Manbij regions, Pentagon spokespeople demanded the fighting stop, calling it “unacceptable,” called on Turkey to focus on ISIS, and stressed their continued support for the SDF.

This re-focus appears to have occurred; on September 3, more Turkish tanks crossed over in to al-Rai, to aid the rebels who have captured about a dozen more villages from ISIS in the region, hoping to close the gap with Jarabulus. [And since the time of writing, Turkey and the FSA have linked al-Rai to Jarabulus and completely expelled ISIS from the border, an unquestionably positive thing].

The YPG’s plans to “link” to Afrin: A catastrophe well-avoided

The SDF had already alienated rebel supporters with its unilateral imposition of its system in Manbij, by scrapping the popularly-elected Manbij council which governed the city before ISIS seized Manbij in 2014. As reporter Haid Haid explains:, quoting Hassan Hamidi, an activist from Manbij:

“We really appreciate everything the SDF fighters did in order to push ISIS out of Manbij. But it seems that we are moving from one dictator to another. Manbij’s local council, which was elected to run the city, was uprooted by ISIS before and now it is dissolved by the SDF.”

Haid also quotes  Mustafa al-Nifi, a local resident from Manbij:

“We were really hoping that the SDF would be able to share power with locals and allow them to govern themselves. However, it seems that it was a trick. Everything has been planned long in advance. They appointed people, who we do not know, to run the city. They also gave Manij a Kurdish name, which is ‘Mabuk’, and imposed a federal system on us. There is nothing left for us to decide.”

Haid notes that the PYD denies such accusations. “We are not imposing anything on anyone. We created a new local council and appointed people to run it temporarily, as it is difficult to organize elections in Manbij now,” said Kadar Biri, a member of the PYD party from Afrin. However, according to Haid, “although the creation of a local council was a positive step, imposing membership of the PYD’s choosing without coordinating with local notables, activists and members of the previous council has sent the wrong signals about the PYD’s commitment to inclusiveness and power-sharing with non-Kurdish communities in northern Syria.”

Further, according to leading spokesman on Kurdish issues, who is close to the PYD, Mutlu Civiroglu, the primary aim after taking Manbij was to “link” up with Kurdish Afrin in northwest Syria, by seizing the region in between (the PYD has been openly stating this was their goal for some time, eg, PYD co-chair Salih Muslim on July 3, PYD senior official Polat Can  some months earlier). Indeed, some of the talk of US “betrayal” is simply sour grapes that Turkey’s intervention has blocked this “linking” project; and many of the assertions that Turkey is “destroying Rojava” or denying the right of “the Kurds” to have their united autonomous region are based on the disruption of this link.

However, most of the border region from Jarabulus to Azaz is ethnically non-Kurdish, mostly Arab and Turkmen, and the claim that the entire north is all ‘Rojava’ appears to be based on nothing more than the fact that the PYD has declared it to be so. In fact, the area unilaterally claimed as the ‘Rojava/North Syria Federation’ is triple the size of Kurdish majority regions, and double the size of the areas even where Kurds exist as minorities. This region has no ethnic, historic, geographic or cultural validity as a separate region.

To conquer these thousands of square kilometres of ethnically mixed, largely non-Kurdish, territory would be impossible without the support of either US or Russian air power. Both have decided, wisely, to avoid this, and there is zero validity in complaints about such an adventurous scheme not being supported. Indeed, if either imperialist power were to force through such an operation, it would lead to catastrophic loss of life, and an enormous new refugee outflux.

While Turkey’s own aims in preventing such a unified PYD-run state are of course anti-Kurdish and connected to its brutal war against its own Kurdish minority in southeast Turkey, it also just happens to coincide with the justifiable desire of the largely Arab and Turkmen rebels to liberate areas which are their natural support base.

On the other hand, the situation is not without its dangers. There are Kurdish minorities in this mixed region, in particular in some rural areas further away from the Turkish border strip (see the demographic map linked to above). If Turkey does not rapidly withdraw, or if the FSA fighters become too closely connected to the intervening Turkish forces, they could risk being drawn into conflict with their Kurdish brethren at the behest of an outside power.

US, Russia, Iran, Assad: Why it became OK, for now, to allow an FSA operation  

Like the US, both Russia and Iran appear to have greenlighted the Jarabulus operation. While Russia has merely expressed “concern,” Iran initially remained “conspicuously silent,” while later suggesting that Turkey needs to move more quickly to complete its “anti-terrorist” actions in order to withdraw. Iranian sources have claimed that Turkey and Assad are coordinating through Iran.

While the Assad regime formally denounced a violation of its alleged “sovereignty,” Turkey claims to have informed it beforehand, with the deputy prime minister noting that “we believe Damascus is also bothered by what was happening in and around Manbij. They recently hit PYD targets.” Yildarim also suggested that Damascus understands that the PYD “has started to become a threat.” In the midst of the Jarabulus operation, Yildarim declared on September 2  “We have normalised our relations with Russia and Israel. Now, God willing, Turkey has taken a serious initiative to normalise relations with Egypt and Syria.”

However, the implication here that Assad may be secretly approving the Turkish operation, due to joint hostility to a Kurdish entity, has some holes in it. Most obviously, the fact that Turkey is working with the FSA, who are the very forces trying to overthrow his regime, regardless of his opposition to Kurdish autonomy.

Furthermore, the US support for this operation also comes with a question mark (and not only because Turkey apparently acted unilaterally at the last moment and upstaged US plans to exercise more control over the operation). To date, the central condition for US support to any rebels to fight ISIS has been the demand that they drop the fight against Assad – this was the case both with the ill-fated Division 30 in the north (indeed, the reason its numbers were so pathetically tiny), and the New Syrian Army in the southeast; while of course the SDF, the US’ favoured anti-ISIS force, mostly doesn’t fight Assad by definition. By contrast, while the Azaz-Mare-Tal Rifaat rebels have confronted ISIS in that region for years, they have never before received any substantial US support against ISIS (in fact, they normally get bombed by Assad whenever they fight ISIS in northern Aleppo).

Thus Erdogan’s push for a “safe zone” in northern Syria last year met out-of-hand US rejection, because the Syrian rebel groups who Erdogan wanted to let control it would have used it as a base to fight the regime. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner stressed “we’ve been pretty clear from the podium and elsewhere saying there’s no zone, no safe haven, we’re not talking about that here,” insisting it could only support an “ISIS-free zone” but not any kind of safe zone and certainly not one patrolled by the rebels.

But something important changed in February this year. By bombing the YPG/SDF into Tal Rifaat and other Arab-populated northern Aleppo regions, Russia cut the rebels in the Azaz-Mare pocket off from Aleppo city and thus effectively cut them off from the front against Assad. So now even though they want to fight Assad, and hardly any have made the pledge to drop that fight, effectively they can’t. So backing them to take over the Jarabulus-Azaz border strip became “safe” from the American point of view – and safer than previously from Assad’s view as well. How ironic that it was the YPG’s own eviction of the rebels in Tal Rifaat that has enabled US support for the Turkish operation that has blocked the YPG’s “linking” scheme!

Then there is a final reason why Assad may be grudgingly approving of Turkey launching an FSA-led operation against ISIS in the north: aside from the fighters from Azaz-Mare, the operation has also meant fighters from Idlib moving to a distant theatre rather than the key battleground of southern Aleppo. By early September, in the midst of the northern operation, the regime began a new determined attempt to re-impose the total siege that was broken several weeks ago in the truly magnificent operation by some 30 rebel groups working together [Update: since the time of writing, the full encirclement has been re-imposed]. This again raises theory popular among some pro-revolution circles: Assad allows Turkey to stop YPG in return for Turkey abandoning Aleppo rebels to Assad. Conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But not out of the question. And if true, catastrophic in its implications.

Changes in internal Turkish politics in relation to the safe zone

Turkey is overwhelmed by some 3 million Syrian refugees; the basis for much of the AKP’s opposition to Assad has been the need to remove the source of this massive instability, alongside the solidarity felt by much of the AKP’s moderate-‘Islamist’ base with these Syrian Arab refugees and their struggle – the same base which propelled the AKP to break Turkey’s decades of alliance with Israel and take up a pro-Palestine position. Ironically given the resurgence of the Kurdish war since 2015, this same moderate ‘Islamism’ had allowed the AKP to reach out to the Kurds in a way that the Kemalist Turkish-nationalist regimes had not done in 80 years, instituting important language and cultural reforms for the Kurdish minority and beginning a ‘peace process’ involving the PKK. Palestinians, Syrian Arab refugees and Kurds were all ‘Muslims’ after all, during the decade in which ‘Islam’ was temporarily elevated above ‘Turkishness’ as part of carrying out important changes in capitalist class rule in Turkey.

Erdogan’s regime needed to consolidate the new position in the state of the traditionalist Anatolian bourgeoisie that the AKP represented, after decades of playing second-fiddle to the big ‘secular’ Kemalist bourgeoisie. But once this new unwritten power-sharing arrangement was complete, the reconstitution of the Kemalist regime, albeit with slightly more ‘Islamist’ coloration, was on the order of the day. The contention that Erdogan’s increasingly repressive moves, since re-launching the war against the PKK and the Kurds in mid-2015, is part of setting up an ‘Islamic state’ is wide of the mark, and the contention that it is related to a new ‘Ottoman Empire’ is just Orientalism. The Kemalist Turkish national state is the vehicle through which the Turkish bourgeoisie rules.

In this context, Turkey can have its “safe zone” in northern Syria, that both prevents ‘Rojava’ from linking right across its southern border, and also allows a space for Turkey to transfer a section of its massive Syrian refugee population back into Syria. Indeed, Turkey aims to build whole “refugee cities” in the safe zone. Both aims allow for Erdogan to strengthen his new alliance with the opposition moderate (CHP) and right-wing (MHP) Turkish nationalists, both of whom despise Syrian refugees as much as they are hostile to the Kurdish struggle, and who have opposed Erdogan’s Syria policy from a pro-Assad angle; both support the current operation, as they can drive out refugees without the same “danger” of supporting the struggle against Assad as last year’s proposed zone entailed.

Yildarim’s statements on reconciliation with Syria since he replaced Davutoglu correspond closely with this general direction, as do Turkey’s increasing restrictions on the entry of Syrian refugees, which has led to a number of previously unthinkable brutal killings by Turkish border guards this year, and even the building of border walls.

Moreover, the strong ethnic Turkmen presence in this region also allows Turkey to attempt to control the safe zone via proxy ‘national’ forces, which gives Turkish nationalists an extra reason for intervening in this particular region. The relatively recent appearance of occasional pro-MHP fighters in Turkmen regions is connected to this new focus, following years of MHP opposition to the AKP’s anti-Assad policy.

Which rebel brigades are involved in the operation?

However, it remains a big question whether or not this will succeed. While the general analysis here indicates that the Assad regime may be, behind the scenes, generally part of this new consensus, this is only grudging, and Assad would also have reason to be nervous. Even if the analysis is correct that Turkey aims to hold the rebels in check within this zone, there is no guarantee that it will be able to control the significant rebel coalition now in operation in the region. The big majority of the FSA and rebel forces involved are neither ethnically Turkmen forces, nor specifically proxy forces in any other way. Most are genuine representatives of the Syrian revolutionary forces in the region. According to Charles Lister, who is someone who certainly knows what he is talking about, the groups involved in this Jarablus operation are:

• Sultan Murad (ethnic Turkmen FSA brigade, now thought to be heavily infiltrated by Turkish nationalists)
• Faylaq al-Sham (MB-aligned, very moderate; in Idlib it had been a member of the Jaysh al-Fatah coalition, but split away rejecting Nusra’s heavy influence in it)
• Jabhat al-Shamiya (the ‘Levant Front’, a very moderate-Islamist coalition, which generally takes the FSA label, includes many former fighters from Liwa al-Tawhid, Jaysh al-Mujahideen etc; those who think there can only be moderate Christians but certainly not Muslims could look at this video made by them)
• Nour al-Din al-Zinki (independent soft-Islamist, though recently roguish behaviour seems to have increased)
• FSA 13th Division (who have led the multi-month fight against Nusra in Idlib that erupted during the mass demonstrations during the ceasefire earlier this year)
• Suqor al-Jebel (FSA brigade from Idlib, formerly part of Syrian Revolutionaries Front, then the 5^th Brigade)
• Jaish al-Tahrir (ie, just defected from SDF, FSA from Tel Abyad)
• Hamza Division (FSA coalition of 5 groups, set up in Mare to fight ISIS)
• Jaish al-Nasr (FSA coalition of 16 groups, mostly in Hama and Idlib)
• Mutassim Brigade (well-armed by US, includes some of the former Division 30 fighters who the US armed to fight ISIS only; this appears to be the only of these FSA brigades known to have accepted this US diktat to drop the fight against Assad)
• Ahrar Tel Rifaat (ie, FSA fighters expelled by the Russian-YPG conquest of Tal Rifaat in February)
• Liwa al-Fateh (Islamist, formerly part of Liwa al-Tawhid)

Meanwhile, the latest news is that they have now been joined by fighters from:

• Jabhat al-Haq
• Syrian Revolutionaries Front
• Harakat Hazm

These last two were large FSA coalitions destroyed by Nusra in Idlib and Aleppo in late 2014-early 2015, some of whose commanders then took refuge in Turkey.

By no means can this collection be brushed aside as a “Turkish proxy force” (and as an aside, the commonly stated claim that Turkey backs Nusra is shown as obvious nonsense by the composition of this list). The very different reactions to Turkey’s intervention from revolution supporters reflect the fact that the final outcome will depend on the relationship of forces on the ground, regardless of varying motivations; the situation is fluid and contradictory.

Al-Bab

Even the fact that they are unable to fight Assad due to being cut off, as explained above, is a factor that can change. In particular, the fate of the very next big prize in the region – al-Bab, which is the last ISIS-controlled town in eastern Aleppo, away from the border, south of rebel-controlled al-Rai, west of SDF-controlled Manbij – is of critical importance. Both the rebel coalition and the SDF have indicated it is their next target; ISIS may try to hold onto it; and the regime may also try to take it, being just north of regime-controlled Aleppo. A catastrophic four-way contest is not out of the question.

Al-Bab’s fate probably depends on who the US and Russia will allow or facilitate to take it. Keeping the Turkish-backed rebels and the regime apart, which this analysis suggests is the plan, would require either ISIS remaining, or the SDF being allowed to take it, and thus establishing their “link” via occupied Tal Rifaat, but not on the Turkish border. But the momentum set in motion by Turkey’s action may make that unfeasible; and even if an ‘Assad-Erdogan Aleppo for Kurds’ deal is behind the events, it may not be easy for Turkey to hold back rebels who would be even more determined to take al-Bab, to pressure the regime from behind, if Assad’s full encirclement of Aleppo is re-imposed.

Conclusion: Necessity of people’s unity beyond ethnicity and sect

Of course, this is all very volatile, because no side comes out fully happy. But my conclusion remains that Turkey wants to cut an anti-Kurdish deal with Assad and Iran, with Russian backing, to include a Turkish-influenced ‘slice’ of the north; the US is in on it partly but won’t completely abandon the YPG, as long as it knows who is boss; and Turkey on its side won’t completely abandon the rebels, again, as long as they know who is boss.

The conflicts between Arab and Kurdish rebels, or between the FSA and its allies, and the YPG and its allies, and their pragmatic foreign connections, may not be responsible for this unwritten new reactionary alliance, but they most certainly facilitate it. Neither side is innocent in this regard – a long story in itself – but as a general statement, the current state of affairs underlines the necessity of finding a more cooperative relationship between forces fighting for liberation on the ground, of a more serious drive on all sides for Arab-Kurdish, and non-sectarian, unity in the struggle against tyranny and oppression in Syria

Above: Aleppo Free Syrian Army statement calls on “the honorable Kurds” in Efrin “to put pressure on those gangs to withdraw from those violated towns.”

by Michael Karadjis

This piece deals with an aspect that many involved in the Syrian issue have strong views on, and no doubt will make some very unhappy – the issue of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and their role in the current Russian-led Blitzkrieg against the Syrian rebels in Free Aleppo. As a long-time supporter of the Kurdish struggle for justice and self-determination, who formerly admired the PYD for the significant achievements it has made in Rojava, I had no interest in reaching such conclusions, but reality needs to be looked at in the face and analysed, not obscured by ideology and myths.

I welcome comments and discussion, and if that includes a reasonable amount of hate mail, that will indicate more about the haters than about my attempt at honest, if forthright, discussion of this important issue. All constructive criticism, even if harsh, will be seriously taken on board.

This piece is much too long, as much of it documents what exactly has been going on, and in particular which rebel groups are/were in control of various parts of Aleppo province that are under attack from the Russian-YPG alliance; both issues have been deliberately clouded by those defending this catastrophic course. Therefore, I have produced it more as a resource than an easy-reading essay.

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Introduction

Once the Russian Reich began its all-out Blitzkrieg against the Syrian revolutionary forces in Aleppo on behalf of the Assad regime – a massacre that has involved massive displacement, with tens or hundreds of thousands fleeing north towards Turkey, and the large-scale, deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools and other basic civilian infrastructure – a most unwelcome development occurred, that has led to much heated debate among supporters of the Syrian revolution.

Namely, the Kurdish-based People’s Protection Units (YPG), based in the Kurdish canton of Efrin on the western side of Aleppo province, launched an all-out attack on the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebels in Aleppo – ie, the very forces being bombed by the Russian imperialist onslaught – attacking and conquering rebel-held, Arab-majority towns throughout the region with the direct aid of Russian bombing.

Whatever the ups and downs in the relationship between the Syrian revolution as a whole and the ‘Rojava revolution’ before this point (and I believe both Syrian opposition and Kurdish leaderships can be faulted on many points), the only possible conclusion at this point is that the PYD/YPG has joined the counterrevolution on a massive scale, at its most murderous moment, the biggest knife that could possibly be put through any chances of Arab-Kurdish unity against the regime.

As many of the more progressive aspects of the Rojava revolution became apparent during 2014, I was as supportive and impressed as countless others were (though always holding back from the over-romanticisation of the process); I was also strongly supportive of what appeared to be a growing convergence between the YPG and the FSA during the defence of Kurdish Kobani against genocidal ISIS siege in late 2014.

Subjectively, therefore, I had no reason to want to reach such conclusions. However, for the Syrian revolution, the Russian imperialist Armageddon in Aleppo is every bit as decisive as Kobani’s resistance to the ISIS siege was for Rojava; yet, in contrast to the solidarity that the FSA extended to Kobani, the PYD has become a direct participant in the counterrevolutionary siege of Free Aleppo.

Of course, the YPG is a very small player in this act of mass homicide, whose major practitioners are Russia, Assad and Iran. Devoting an article to the role of the YPG does not suggest it bears the same level of responsibility. But these reactionary states do what reactionary states do; by contrast, when a supposedly revolutionary organisation claiming to be running a quasi-state on a radical-democratic basis joins the actions of imperialist invaders and the local fascist state, that deserves analysis.

One final point: Turkey. For months now, the Turkish regime has been waging its own war of terror against the Kurdish population in eastern Turkey, a brutal counterinsurgency against the PKK. Hundreds of civilians have been killed as the regime uses tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry to terrorise the population into submission. Turkey, for its own reasons, is a main supporter of the anti-Assad rebellion in Syria. The difference in scale, is of course, phenomenal; Erdogan’s operation has been going on for months and has killed hundreds; Assad’s has been going on 5 years and has killed nearly half a million. Anyone with an ounce of human solidarity should have no trouble supporting the popular uprisings, and opposing regime counterinsurgencies, in both cases, regardless of issues of geopolitics or tactical alliances. Opponents of oppression do not see this as a contradiction.

The excuse of the PYD/YPG, that it is fighting “Turkish-backed groups,” is cynical in the extreme; if the YPG could employ US imperialism, which has committed far more crimes on a world scale than the Turkish regime, to help defend Kobani from ISIS, why is it wrong for the Syrian rebels to get essential help from Turkey against this gigantic genocidal assault? After all, if anyone has their backs to a wall, and tgus forced to get help fromm wherever they can, it is the Syrian rebels; by contrast, ‘Rojava’ has been untouched by Assad and is permanently protected by the US airforce. If Turkey were invading and bombing Kurdish Efrin and Syrian rebels were acting as ground troops and expelling the YPG from Kurdish areas, it should be vigorously condemned, yet this is not happening; the exact opposite of that is happening.

Background: PYD, YPG, SDF

The three main concentrations of Kurdish population in Syria, Efrin in northwest Aleppo province, Kobani in the far northeast of the province, and the larger Jazirah canton, including the city of Hasaka, in northeast Syria, have been ruled since mid-2012 by the PYD, a political party allied to the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. The YPG, and its sister militia, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), are the armed forces led by the PYD, though theoretically other non-PYD elements participate as well. They have declared these regions to be ‘Rojava’, meaning West Kurdistan, but do not aim to separate from Syria to form an independent Kurdish state. Rather, their official policy is to promote “Democratic Confederalism” throughout Syria, whereby the current Kurdish-majority Rojava regions are a mere nucleus, which allow them to demonstrate their model.

Supporters claim this model is based on radical council-based grass-roots democracy, is strongly feminist, and is multi-ethnic and non-sectarian. Critics claim that while democracy may well thrive at the council level, all major decisions are made by the PYD, which rules a one-party state that represses political opposition. Nevertheless, there does seem to be genuine drive to empower women, which is far ahead of much of the region; while assessments of the multi-ethnic element are mixed, with constitutional aspects that appear very good combined very serious charges – disputed by the PYD – of large-scale mistreatment of Arabs in some areas where the YPG has driven out ISIS. It is beyond the scope of this piece to seriously discuss this issue.

In 2015, the ‘Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was set up as a front led by the PYD/YPG to incorporate some of its smallish non-Kurdish allies. Its aims speak only of fighting ISIS, not the regime, and it has been strongly backed by the US, which sees it as a useful vehicle via which to blunt Turkey’s objections to its military alliance with the YPG, while supporting an anti-ISIS force that makes no problem for the Assad regime, which the US aims to keep in power.

• In the Jazirah region, the YPG’s main Arab ally in the SDF is the al-Sanadid militia, based among the Shammar tribe (which indirectly involves the YPG in inter-tribal rivalries in the region). While the Shammar have mostly been anti-regime, there are some indications that al-Sanadid itself has had regime connections in the past. Whatever the case, it was never an FSA-connected group.
• In the Kobani-Raqqa region, the YPG was allied to a number of FSA groups in the defence of Kobani in late 2014, but the major local FSA group involved – the Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade – has seriously fallen out with the YPG (http://syriadirect.org/news/tribes%E2%80%99-army-disbands-in-north-amidst-accusations-of-ypg-blockade/), and so the US has refused to arm it to liberate its Raqqa homeland (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article41559747.html); there are however a few smaller FSA groups (eg Northern Sun Brigade) still allied to the YPG in the SDF; and if this includes some representation from Arab opposition in tiny Jarablous, this could give some validity to a YPG-led move against the far eastern end of the ISIS-held border strip.
• In Aleppo, the main non-YPG element of the SDF is Jaysh al-Thuwar, which seems to consist of a handful of ex-FSA fighters mainly motivated by vengeance against Nusra after the latter attacked and destroyed the FSA brigade Harakat Hazm in January 2015 (the vast majority of ex-Hazm cadres likewise detest Nusra, but continue to see the main enemies as Assad and ISIS and so joined other FSA brigades or the Shamiya Front in the region). In Idlib, Jaysh al-Thuwar/SDF seems to be essentially mythical.

‘Linking’ Kobane and Afrin: a reactionary irredentist plan

First I want to clarify something about the ethnic configuration of the region in question, which is very relevant in understanding the current conflict, and one reason for the PYD’s fateful decision. The PYD states that it plans to “link” the Kurdish canton of Efrin with the Kurdish canton of Kobane. Polat Can, a senior PYD official, recently stated that “We in the YPG have a strategic goal, to link Afrin with Kobani. We will do everything we can to achieve it” (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article41559747.html).

Aleppo is a very large province, not just the large city that is its capital. The Kurdish majority cantons of Efrin and Kobani, both along the northern border with Turkey, are situated at the far west and the far east of Aleppo province respectively. Both are part of the PYD’s ‘Rojava’ state.

However, the 60-mile stretch between Efrin and Kobani is not ‘Rojava’, as is often blithely claimed by Rojava-Firsters. Here is a demographic map http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/images/maps/Syria_Ethnic_summary_lg.png:

Enlarge the Aleppo section of it, and you can follow what I am talking about below:

• Beginning in the north-west of the province, the green section is Kurdish Efrin
• Next along the northern border is the yellow section, the heavily Arab-populated territory controlled by the rebels, currently under attack by the Russia/Assad/YPG alliance, beginning with a narrow neck on the Turkish border with the town of Azaz, just to the east of Efrin, and then widening out south of Azaz and forming the great bulk of western and southern Aleppo province (which then connects to rebel-held territory in neighbouring Idlib and northern Hama); this includes half the city of Aleppo itself (the other half is controlled by the regime, which is connected to a thin neck of territory further south, but it controls nothing north of the city).
• Back north to the Turkish border, to the east of the rebel-controlled Azaz-Marea-Aleppo ‘vertical’ corridor begins ISIS-controlled eastern Aleppo province. The bluish-coloured western part of the ISIS-run border strip is heavily Turkmen-populated, one of the most Turkmen-populated parts of Syria;
• Further east again, still under ISIS, is the Arab-populated Jarablus region, coloured yellow, on the west side of the Euphrates
• Just to the east of Jarablus, across the Euphrates, is green-coloured Kurdish Kobani

Quite simply, therefore, the PYD/YPG has no god-given right to “link” separate Kurdish-majority regions by annexing Arab-majority and Turkmen-majority territory! Yes, there are other Kurdish—majority regions under ISIS control further south from the Turkish border, which the YPG has a right to seize (eg Manbij, south of Jarablus), but clearly the only “link” that can be established between Afrin and Kobani is one based on Arab-Kurdish-Turkmen solidarity (ie, the thing that is being blown to bits at the moment)

Turkey’s opposition to the PYD’s aim of “linking” Kobani and Efrin is, of course, based on Turkey’s anti-Kurdish interests; it does not follow, however, that just because Turkish nationalist motivations are bad, that Kurdish nationalist plans to ride roughshod over non-Kurdish populations are justified. Thus the opposition of the local rebels, based among the local peoples, to this PYD plan, while it happens to coincide with Turkey’s interests, is just in its own right.

The dangerously Kurdish chauvinist aim would, if carried out, lead to massive bloodshed; is this part of the aim of the current YPG offensive under Russian air cover? And if so, doesn’t this suggest that the rebels were right all along to be suspicious of the PYD’s motives?

As for Turkey itself, the regime has two separate motivations in its Syria policy; one is its reactionary anti-Kurdish interest, especially as it now wages its own war of terror against its Kurdish population in eastern Turkey; the other is its interest in getting rid of the source of the massive instability on its borders that has led to Turkey being overwhelmed by 2.5 million Syrian refugees, ie, the Assad regime. Thus the article cited above by Roy Gutman is not wrong where it says that one of Turkey’s reasons to oppose such a move is that it “fears that if the YPG seizes the corridor, millions more Syrian Arabs and Turkmens will flee to Turkey” (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article41559747.html, though “millions” is certainly an exaggeration).

Moreover, as Leila al-Shami, co-author of ‘Burning Country’, puts it, the very “attempts to carve out a new state through linking the cantons” is in sharp contradiction to “the idea of democratic confederalism” which she says she “strongly supports” (https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/the-assault-on-aleppo/#more-368) – let alone  when such a state is created via military conquest, Russian air power and destruction of the revolutionary councils of the Arab peoples living in this “link.”

The demand for “evidence” of Russia/YPG coordination

Faced with the reality of the YPG’s flagrant participation in the Russian-led Blitzkrieg, a number of Rojava-Firsters have been demanding “evidence.” I have some trouble understanding the demand, since it is all over the news that the YPG has been attacking and conquering these rebel-held towns; and also that Russia is bombing these rebel towns. I was therefore unsure whether this meant that some hadn’t been reading the news, or whether it was a demand for secret documents proving coordination; because, for example, maybe Russia and the YPG attacking the same towns at the same time was just coincidence. Since I don’t have such documents, and consider such coincidence unlikely, I have just put together some “evidence” for those who simply haven’t been watching.

First though, it is true that there were initial reports that a few villages had asked the rebels to leave, and for the YPG to take over, not out of love for the YPG, but so that they wouldn’t get bombed into oblivion by Russia. In these instances, we cannot fault the YPG. But the idea that this was the rule, rather than the exception, was soon belied by massive evidence of fighting and armed resistance to these YPG conquests by the local FSA defenders.

But then there are other excuses. The PYD’s Salih Muslim asks “Do they want the Nusra Front to stay there, or for the regime to come and occupy it?” This actually combines two excuses. First, he asserts that it is OK for the YPG to seize these towns (even with the help of Russian bombing) if they are run by Nusra (me: it still wouldn’t be); implying that they are mostly run by Nusra (me: they’re not, as we will see below), indeed, the YPG has a habit of calling whichever rebels it is fighting, or Russia is bombing, “Nusra.”

Second, he is claiming that it is OK for the YPG to conquer these towns while the Russians bomb them, because the YPG’s intentions are good; the Russians are bombing them anyway, and Assad will try to conquer them, so better we conquer them, even against local resistance, because we are preferable to the regime.

Yet if the YPG had stood in solidarity with the local rebel brigades and said “we will not conquer you, but if the regime comes, we will help defend you,” then they would have been able to keep Assad out – not to mention what it would have done for Arab-Kurdish solidarity.

An even more fantastic version of the events is given by İlham Ehmed, Co-President of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political body connected to the SDF, in an unfortunate article in Green Left Weekly (https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/61132). Repeating the disgusting slander that “the majority of the opposition forces in the region are loyal to Jabhat Al-Nusra,” and “are proxies with no political program, she added the further lie that this “is why they ran away after recent Russian bombardments”! Ehmed claimed that the YPG was therefore “trying to prevent the advance of regime forces by capturing the areas evacuated by jihadis.” So all the countless reports, and videos, of YPG fighting against local FSA and rebel forces as they conquer these towns under Russian bombs are just phantoms; the YPG is merely occupying empty towns. I’m sure Orwell would love to meet these folk.

Below is some evidence of the YPG-Russian attack on rebel towns, and of rebel resistance:

Syrian Observer reports on how the Aleppo province council “has been forced to leave its main base in the town of Hreitein and carry out its work from inside a tent east of the city of Azaz” after being attacked by Russian warplanes and “the advance of Assad’s forces,” but this was not the first displacement of the council, as it was preceded by the displacement from its previous base in the town of Deir al-Jamaal, which the Kurdish People’s Protection Units seized months ago, as a result of Russian aircraft targeting the base” (http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/30611/Aleppo_Province_Council_Operating_Out_Tent_Near_Azaz).

In the article “Moderate Syrian rebel factions face wipeout’ (http://www.voanews.com/content/moderate-syrian-rebel-factions-face-wipe-out/3180474.html), we read:

“YPG and rebel factions have been protecting civilians as they travel from Azaz. But at the same time the YPG has launched attacks on Islamist and moderate rebel factions around Afrin, seeking to expand the Kurdish enclave. Russian airstrikes on Saturday helped Kurdish fighters alongside militiamen from Jaysh al-Thwar, a YPG Sunni Arab ally, to capture the strategic Tal Zinkah hill north of Aleppo,” and in the same article, PYD leader Salih Muslim is quoted as saying that “the Russian airstrikes are targeting terrorists, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra.”

Likewise, Syria Direct (http://syriadirect.org/news/side-campaign-in-north-aleppo-raises-fears-of-sdf-linking-kobani-to-afrin/), reports on the lead-up to the SDF capture of the Minagh airbase:

“Russian warplanes, which have been essential to the Syrian regime’s progress in the north, bombed rebel positions around the Minagh airport Wednesday as battles raged between the SDF and rebels, reported pro-opposition Aleppo News Network Wednesday. A war journalist present at the airport front confirmed to Syria Direct that Russian planes had carried out 16 airstrikes Wednesday on rebel positions there. On Tuesday, the SDF took control of two villages and a military base on the outskirts of the Minagh military airport” (and captured the base on Wednesday).

The same article, also reports on the truce negotiated at the end of the December skirmishes between the FSA and the YPG/SDF, stipulating that “the FSA would not move towards Kurdish-controlled areas and vice-versa.” It is fairly obvious who broke that eminently sensible truce, as the article continues:

“This week’s incursion into rebel-held areas in northern Aleppo is the fourth truce violation between them and the Marea Operations Room, Mohammed Najem a-Din, correspondent with pro-opposition Smart News, told Syria Direct Wednesday. “The SDF and Jaish al-Thuwwar have taken advantage of rebels being busy fighting the regime on Nubl and Zahraa” in order to make gains into their territory, said Najem a-Din.”

Syrian Observer (http://www.syrianobserver.com/EN/News/30560/Syrian_Democratic_Forces_Advance_Towards_Tel_Rifaat_Under_Russian_Air_Support) reported that:

“The Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces achieved a significant military victory in the area of Tel Rifaat in the northern Aleppo countryside, seizing control of the village of Kafrnaya to its south … one day after they captured Ayn Daqnah, in an effort to blockade the town from three sides. The sources said that Russian warplanes had been providing covering fire for the SDF during its attempt to enter the town and attacked opposition positions with dozens of rockets and bombs.”

According to Scott Lucas (http://eaworldview.com/2016/02/syria-daily-kurdish-pyd-we-will-not-pull-back-v-turkey-and-rebels/):

“With rebels under pressure from a regime-Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah offensive north of Aleppo city, Kurdish forces began advancing earlier this month into rebel areas, taking a series of villages and the town of Deir Jawad on the Turkish border. … Despite the Turkish intervention, the Kurdish forces are still advancing. They captured Ayn Daqna, east of Azaz, on Sunday. They also are continuing assaults on the important town of Tal Rifaat, having been repelled on Friday and Saturday. Russia is now openly supporting the Kurdish attacks with airstrikes — at least 15 were reported on Tal Rifaat on Sunday.”

Lucas report also noted that the media activist Ahmad Khatib “was killed in the fighting for Tal Rifaat,” as was his brother.

According to the just-released Amnesty report on the deliberate Russian/Assadist campaign to bomb hospitals (https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/syrian-and-russian-forces-have-deliberately-targeted-hospitals-near-aleppo#.Vtfha0kwkrg.twitter):

“Two doctors and an activist from the city of Tel Rifaat who left two days before the People’s Protection Unit (YPG), part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, took control of the town on 15 February, told Amnesty that all three health facilities – including a field hospital, a rehabilitation centre and a kidney dialysis centre – were directly targeted by missiles during the week of 8 February, just as the ground offensive on the town began. The attacks injured six members of the medical team and three civilian patients, leaving the population with no working medical facility. Doctor “Faraj” (his real name has been withheld for security reasons), who manages the field hospital, rehabilitation and kidney dialysis centre, told Amnesty:

“The Kurds started gaining control of some villages in the northern part of Aleppo Countryside at the beginning of February and they were advancing towards Tel Rifaat. As they approached, Russian and Syrian forces targeted medical facilities. As a result, the civilians injured from the indiscriminate shelling had to be transferred to the Syrian-Turkish border because the hospitals were no longer operational.”

Meanwhile, Roy Gutman (http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/16/syria-ceasefire-brings-turkey-closer-to-war/) writes:

“Moscow actually stepped up its barrage of missiles and cluster bombs targeting primarily rebel-held towns close to Aleppo and on their main supply route to Turkey. Russia has even coordinated its airstrikes with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which captured towns and villages held by anti-Assad rebels after an intensive bombing campaign,” going on to give some stunning detail:

“In Tal Rifaat, a town of 30,000 that lies close to the main route from Turkey to Aleppo, Russian aircraft carried out an average 100 airstrikes a day this past weekend, emptying the town of its inhabitants and thousands of displaced, who fled to the Turkish border, according to humanitarian aid officials. The YPG captured the town on Monday.”

Gutman continues with the claim that:

“Faced with a manpower shortage, the Assad regime is relying on the Kurdish YPG to seize key real estate from rebels on the main route to Turkey.”

I mean, is all this what is meant by evidence? Or is this all just coincidence?

Meanwhile, there have been so many tweets/direct reports from the field of YPG attacks/conquests with Russian air support that I could fill pages with them, but hopefully the facts are now clear. Here’s a few:

Syrian Kurds backed by Russian airstrikes advance on Syrian airbase
http://rudaw.net/NewsDetails.aspx?pageid=193414
Aleppo: Syrian Rebels recaptured Al Alagamiyah & Al Shil’aa after heavy clashes with YPG & treacherous so called “Jaish Thuwar” https://twitter.com/Malcolmite/status/697120652218798080
YPG has sent an ultimatum to the FSA and Ahrar Al-Sham and other groups, either give them the Menagh Airbase or they will take it militarily https://twitter.com/VivaRevolt/status/697096507250581506
Following airstrikes by the Russian Air Force, the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) in the enclave of Afrin in northern Aleppo province took control of Ziyarah
http://www.almasdarnews.com/…/ypg-take-ziyarah-in…/
YPG has captured Maarnaz from FSA-Ahrar Al-Sham. https://twitter.com/VivaRevolt/status/696428417584070657
YPG seized Maranaz and Deir Jamal villages in northern Aleppo after clashes with the rebels, mainly Shami front (former Tawheed brigade) https://twitter.com/Abduhark/status/696646293536563200
YPG/Jaish al-Thuwar have taken Deir Jamal from the rebels , with Russian air support https://twitter.com/Paradoxy13/status/696476896616390656

With Russian Airstrikes, YPG progressing around Azaz
https://twitter.com/DrPartizan_/status/695386827541184516

Kurds militias withdraw their positions surrounding #Azaz after heavy clashes with #FSA HEROES. #Aleppo cs #Syria FEB 11 https://twitter.com/AEJKhalil/status/697894948109225984

Finally, Jim Rodney M points us to http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/time/01.02.2016, which shows the day to day events; he has been following it closely and says its shows “the SAA and allies pushed up through the east of Aleppo city while Russian bombers destroyed everything in their path. They met resistance all along the way but advanced to Nubl and Zahraa where they were then face to face with the YPG between Dayr Jamal and Mayer but instead of confronting each other they shared a battle line against free Syrians while the YPG advanced west under Russian air power taking town after town culminating in completely cutting Arab rebels off from Aleppo. … There is no other way to describe the events other than to say the YPG and the Assadi axis are allied with each other in a common assault against free Syrians.”

Meanwhile, the #‎Aleppo LCC reports on alleged meetings between SDF, Russian and Assad regime representatives in Efrin, and claims “The Russian side asserted to SDF intensifying the airstrikes on Azaz city and Aleppo northern suburb so SDF can advance and take over ‪#‎Izaz city and ‪#‎Tal_Rafaat town and Assad’s forces can advance toward Aleppo city,” as well as an earlier meeting where they allegedly agreed for the SDF to take the Menagh airbase: (https://www.facebook.com/LCCSY2011/posts/1720204668120076?fref=nf).

Which rebel groups control the towns under Russian/YPG attack?

Map of northern Aleppo before latest fighting, showing control by Rojava Kurds (yellow), rebels (green), regome (red) and ISIS (black), source: https://media.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/untitled24.png

The other main issue often arising in discussion is that of which rebel groups control the various parts of Aleppo now under attack.

For many Rojava-Firsters, this is a good excuse to support this counterrevolutionary action: “Oh, but that area is controlled by Nusra, so it’s good that the “democratic” forces are ejecting them” (even if with Russian air power – let me try that: Oh, but Iraq is run by Saddam Hussein, who is an extremely brutal tyrant, so of course we need to fight on the side of the US Blitzkrieg to unseat him, etc etc).

A particularly disgusting (and disappointing in the extreme, given the source) example of this was a tweet sent by the head of the leftist/Kurdish-based HDP in Turkey, Selahattin Demirtaş: “Davutoğlu says #Azez won’t fall. Who’s in Azez? Al Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham. Rapists & people who sell women” (https://twitter.com/hdpenglish/status/701036280751247361).

Now the level of outright racism and dehumanisation in this tweet is unbelievable (so ordinary Arabic people don’t live there? Were the babies killed by Russian bombing of the maternity hospital there also rapists?); and of course it is also a lie that either Nusra or Ahrar al-Sham engage in a policy of rape (that would be the Assad regime) or sell women (ISIS), regardless of their other sins. But as we will see, it is also a lie about who is actually in control of Azaz.

………………………………………………………………………..

First, however, I disagree with the premise in any case. It is up to the local peoples to choose their political/military leaderships in revolutionary situations (in the same way as the PYD/YPG is in control of Kurdish regions), and to change them; and even if we dislike some of them, it is not up to an outside force; still less one operating with Russian air support, to forcefully eject them; and the ethnic factor in a military attack cannot be ignored, even if the SDF may theoretically be very good on the multi-ethnic issue.

And even in the case of Nusra, a group I detest, it is a new development in left-wing thinking that it is OK to be on the side of an invading imperialist power bombing the country to bits against even a reactionary local militia; in the conditions of this genocide from the sky, if even Nusra got its hands on good anti-aircraft missiles and shot dozens of Russian warplanes out of the sky it would be a victory for all humanity (and anyone wanted to now express outrage, kindly express it to children ripped to bits by Russian bombs in Aleppo).

In addition, most areas have been controlled by coalitions of rebel groups. Trying to single out areas allegedly controlled only by “Nusra” would be very frustrating; in general there is a loose military alliance between all the factions confronting the Assad regime/ISIS, necessary due to the overwhelming military superiority of those two (especially the regime), and their cooperation. Politically, Nusra tends to stand out on a limb compared to all other groups, but in military terms, it is entirely sensible for the FSA to reject the years-long US-prodding to wage war on Nusra now (though the FSA often finds itself clashing with Nusra *in defence* against Nusra transgressions). And in any case, as we’ll see below, Nusra has much less to do with the Aleppo fighting than is commonly made out.

But anyway, below is a little summary.

Azaz

First, on Azaz. In September 2013, ISIS seized Azaz from the ‘Northern Storm’ brigade of the Free Syrian Army. Before that, Northern Storm had put up a several-month resistance to furious ISIS siege, thereby also protecting PYD-controlled Afrin further west; the YPG did not lift a finger. But in January 2014, the FSA and other rebels drove ISIS out of the whole of western Syria (and temporarily much of eastern Syria), and so it was of course driven from Azaz. Since January 2014 Azaz has again been the major connection between the rebels and sources of funds, arms, trade, refuge etc in Turkey. That is why it is so crucial for the rebels to keep control of Azaz.

Since then, the main militia controlling it has again been FSA Northern Storm (Liwa Asifat al-Shamal (according to this well-researched article from January 2015: http://www.aymennjawad.org/15865/special-report-northern-storm-and-the-situation), just as it was before September 2013; therefore, the YPG has attacked, with the aid of Russian airstrikes on children’s hospitals, those who previously protected it. This article continues: “also present within Azaz town but lacking any governing authority is Syria’s al-Qa’ida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra” (it runs a mosque), while Northern Storm “also solely controls the (nearby) town of Sawran” (http://www.aymennjawad.org/15865/special-report-northern-storm-and-the-situation).

Notably, despite long-term tension between Azaz and Efrin, there has also been significant cooperation, which underlined the potential, and the folly of the YPG’s siege of Azaz:

“However, there was some limited cooperation of convenience in the fight to drive ISIS out … Since Northern Storm returned to Azaz officially under the authority of Liwa al-Tawhid and the Islamic Front in Aleppo (now the Levant Front), there has been official neutrality despite suspicion that reinforcements come from Afrin to the regime-held Shi’a villages of Nubl and Zahara. Securing water from Afrin would therefore require greater outreach to the PYD, which may be one of the underlying reasons behind the agreement publicly announced in February (2015) between the PYD’s military wing the YPG and the Levant Front, stipulating a united judicial system, establishing joint Shari’a and da’wah offices in Aleppo and Afrin, and working together to crack down on crime. Of course, Jabhat al-Nusra is opposed to any such arrangements with the PYD/YPG, which it considers to be apostate entities” (http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/the-administration-of-the-local-council-in-azaz/).

Menagh airbase

Syria Direct (http://syriadirect.org/news/side-campaign-in-north-aleppo-raises-fears-of-sdf-linking-kobani-to-afrin/) reports that the base had been held by a combination of Ahrar a-Sham and Jabha al-Shamiya (also known as Shamiya Front, or Levant Front). Meanwhile, we also read that the “YPG has sent an ultimatum to the FSA and Ahrar Al-Sham and other groups, either give them the Menagh Airbase or they will take it militarily” (https://twitter.com/VivaRevolt/status/697096507250581506), while a statement by the FSA FastaqemUnion claims it was “under the national brigades of the FSA” (https://twitter.com/FkoUnion/status/698990013007196168). Rudaw also claims the YPG seized it from “the Levant Front,” ie, Shamiya Front (http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/11022016).

Thus it seems we had FSA, Shamiya Front, and Ahrar al-Sham. The claim that “Nusra” was there at all now seems most likely to just be standard YPG propaganda. Leaving aside the FSA, these other two forces may be called ‘Islamists’; as Leila al-Shami explains, “the Islamists represent the conservative culture of rural Aleppo. They are comprised primarily of Aleppo’s sons, brothers and fathers” who “have strong local support” (https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/the-assault-on-aleppo/). However, they are two very different strads of ‘Islamist’. Ahrar al-Sham is a relatively hard-line Islamist militia, but as al-Shami says, genuinely based in the community, and moreover, it has continually condemned violations by Nusra (eg, see this vigorous condemnation of Nusra’s attack on the Druze in northern Idlib https://twitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/609449774673211392), and even clashed with it recently.

As for the Shamiya Front, while it can also be broadly described as ‘Islamist’, this is only true in the same sense that various Christian “liberation theology” movements could be described as “political Christian” (for those who immediately express outrage, I recommend quickly checking your pulse for Islamophobia levels). A coalition of starkly moderate, FSA-aligned ‘Islamists’ – nothing like Ahrar al-Sham or Jaysh Islam – who have all played leading roles in the war against ISIS, the Shamiya Front’s ‘Islamist’ credentials are best shown in this video where they treat ISIS prisoners to a mock execution, with a terrific ending: http://www.news.com.au/technology/syrian-rebel-brigade-al-shamiya-front-punk-isis-prisoners-with-mock-execution/news-story/a70b7280f010cccbd6a7136c03848e84.

In a recent Op-Ed in FP, Shamiya Front leader Abdallah al-Othman says they are “local fighters who wish to attain democracy and defend our hometowns from slaughter,” and declares “the Levant Front desires a Syria that is free and pluralistic, with respect for human rights, peaceful elections, and the rule of law” (http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/17/fighting-for-aleppo-abandoned-by-the-world-islamic-state-levant-front-isis/).

Does an ‘Islamist’ group like this really deserve to be attacked by YPG/SDF thugs supported by Russian terror bombing?

Tel Rifaat

It is very difficult to get a clear idea of who exactly “controls” the iconic revolutionary town Tel Rifaat, if not simply a coalition like elsewhere. What we do know is that it was in Tel Rifaat that ISIS mastermind, Hajji Bakr, was killed by rebels as the anti-ISIS war began in earnest early January 2014; and his family was taken prisoner by Liwa al-Tawhid, the strikingly moderate ‘Islamist’ brigade that previously dominated Aleppo before breaking apart when its leader was killed by Assad. So ‘moderate’ in fact, that one former part of it, the Northern Sun Brigade, is now with SDF (so they have ‘Islamists’ too!), though most simply became Shamiya Front.

Tel Rifaat has seen months of demonstrations in support of the revolution, demanding that the revolutionary brigades unite to face their enemies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hEBtN-RK-Y), where the only flags we see are FSA flags; activists in Tel Rifaat released a statement demanding leaders resign to take responsibility for recent defeats , leading to the deputy commander of the Shamiya Front doing just that, in a small sign of grass-roots democracy in action (http://syriadirect.org/news/rebel-leader-resigns-amidst-aleppo-protests/). Not quite the kind of town that needs to be “liberated” by hundreds of Russian air strikes (as one of the sources I quoted above described).

Meanwhile, here is a charming video showing victorious YPG fighters (well, that is if you call victory by Russian air strikes a “victory” by the YPG) gloating over the bodies of FSA defenders of Tel Rifaat: https://www.facebook.com/BABAMAMABOBO/posts/1118834781494675

Mare (Marea)

In fact it is still uncertain whether or not Mare – another iconic revolutionary centre and the front-line in the war against ISIS – has fallen to the Russian-YPG offensive or not. Some days ago, YPG sources claimed that the local rebels had reached a deal with them. Of course this is possible – when confronted with the dilemma “do you want to let our Russian allies obliterate you, and Assad forces take over, or just give up and let us take over?” Which is hardly an argument that that YOG is carrying out a humanitarian operation. But in any case, FSA sources claim to still be in control.

Mare is run by the Mare Operations Room. According to the very reliable ‘archcivilians’ site (https://twitter.com/archicivilians/status/671741957706788864/photo/1), this consists of the Suqor al-Jabal Brigade (FSA, also known as the Falcons of Mount Zawiya Brigade, previously part of the 5^th Corp), the Fursan al-Haq brigade (FSA, now fused with other FSA groups as the Northern Division), Liwa Ahrar al-Surya (FSA), the Fastaqim Kama Umirt Union (FSA), and Faylaq al-Sham, the Muslim Brotherhood connected brigade, also loosely associated with the FSA on the same ‘soft-Islamist’ wavelength as the Shamiya Front. A Wikipedia page adds the Shamiya Front, which would seem likely. Some sources (http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/30384/Free_Syrian_Army_Expels_ISIS_from_Aleppo_Villages), add the Turkmen-based Sultan Murad Brigade (FSA), and some add Ahrar al-Sham, both of which also seem likely. No sources anywhere suggest Nusra.

It has been the Mare Operations Room that has been signing ceasefires with the YPG over the last 6 months of on and off skirmishes connected to the appearance of a handful of embittered ex-FSA fighters known as ‘Jaysh al-Thuwar’ (the main non-YPG component of the SDF in Aleppo). The last ceasefire in December called for neither side to cross into the other side’s territories (which Jaysh al-Thuwar had done in December, seizing four FSA-held towns, with Russian air support). It is pretty obvious who has now broken the ceasefire.

According to this article, ISIS and the YPG are both attacking revolutionary Marea at the same time: http://syriadirect.org/news/is-and-sdf-each-attack-rebel-held-marea-%E2%80%9Cevery-brigade-is-striving-to-build-their-dreams-on-our-guts%E2%80%9D /

Aleppo City

As for Aleppo itself, a mega-coalition, Fatah Halab (Aleppo Conquest), dominates here, initially set up by 31 mostly FSA brigades (all the big ones, eg Fursan al-Haq, Divisions 13, 16 and 101, others listed above in Marea), along with all the soft-Islamist brigades (Shamiya Front, Nour al-Din al-Zenki, Authenticity Front, Jaysh Mujahideen, Faylaq al-Sham), and also Ahrar al-Sham, but not Nusra (http://archicivilians.WORDPRESS.com/2015/06/18/infographic-fatah-halab-military-operations-room-coalition-of-31-rebel-factions-syria). It was later joined by another 19 small, locally-based FSA brigades (https://twitter.com/BosnjoBoy/status/626060428519571456).

Much has also been written about the system of local councils in Aleppo, though years of barrel bombing have no doubt made these much less functional than they might be. However, this description of grass-roots struggle in Aleppo by Leila al-Shami gives a good picture of what is at stake:

“When we talk of ‘liberated areas’ it’s more than just rhetoric. Under threat in Aleppo are the different local councils which ensure the governance of each area and have kept providing services to the local population in the absence of the state. We are talking about more than 100 civil society organizations (the second largest concentration of active civil society groups anywhere in the country). These include some 28 free media groups, women’s organizations and emergency and relief organizations such as the Civil Defense Force. It also includes educational organizations such as Kesh Malek which provides non-ideological education for children, often in people’s basements, to ensure school continues under bombardment. Under Assad’s totalitarian state, independent civil society was non-existent and no independent media sources existed. But in Free Aleppo democracy is being practiced as the people themselves self-organize and run their communities” (https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/the-assault-on-aleppo/).

Where is Nusra?

It is interesting to note that, despite the constant refrain of “Nusra” being everywhere, this close reading of the sources suggests Nusra only has a secondary presence in Azaz, that it may or may not be represented at the Menagh base (and if it is, again in a very secondary role), that it does not exist in Mare or Tel Rifaat, and that in Aleppo it is the only militia excluded from the grand military coalition. Of course, Nusra does exist, and operates more on its own, as well as in a separate military front with Ahrar al-Sham (Ansar al-Saria, ie, Ahrar operates in both Fatah Halab and in Ansar al-Sharia); and appears to be more present further south, in southern Aleppo near its main base in Idlib.

But its relative absence is in fact no mystery: mid-last year, when Turkey began calling for a “safe zone” along the Turkish border to settle refugees, allegedly to include a Turkish-backed push by rebels to expel ISIS from the region between Azaz and Jarablus – a plan blocked by the US – Nusra was the only brigade in Aleppo to oppose this plan. Strikingly, for a group that is often bandied about as “Turkish-backed,” Nusra declared Turkey to be motivated only by its “national security interests” and not by Syrian interests, declaring it to be “not a strategic decision emanating from the free will of the armed factions,” though the rebels “have the ability to combat ISIS — if they unite through means sanctioned by sharia law… without seeking the help of international or regional forces” (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565709-nusra-withdraws-from-turkey-border).

Therefore, Nusra  announced its withdrawal from Azaz, Marea, Tel Rifaat and all the more northern and eastern regions, which have now been under attack (thus even the first link above, which in January 2015 said Nusra had a secondary presence in Azaz, may be old information).

In a later interview, Nusra chief Joulani explicitly declared that Turkey’s “national security” issue, which Nusra did not want to be involved with, was “the Kurds,” and clarified, that Nusra withdrew from northern Aleppo countryside not to ease the way for the Turkish zone as some had suggested, but because “we don’t see it permissible to fight ISIS under a Turkish or an international coalition air cover” (https://t.co/3gldQBYqY9).

(As an aside: Regardless of my very low opinion of Nusra, this declaration actually showed a strange political intelligence; much as I would be sympathetic to the reasons for the entire non-Nusra rebellion supporting such a Turkish move, it is interesting that the most reactionary organisation had the clearest understanding that Turkey would be acting in its own interests which do not necessarily coincide those of the Syrian masses. So calling Nusra a Turkish-backed group has no basis. And the fact that Nusra saw these Turkish interests, which it wanted no part of, as being anti-Kurdish, indicates that Nusra’s hostility to the PYD is more political (opposed to the PYD’s politics) and monopolistic (Nusra has attacked FSA brigades far more than it has attacked the YPG), rather than “anti-Kurdish” as such).

Conclusion: An attack on the Syrian revolution and possible suicide for Rojava revolution

It is difficult to call this turn of events anything other than an outright betrayal of the revolution by the YPG leadership, with likely catastrophic results for all concerned. Right now, the YPG is a direct participant in the catastrophe of the Arabic peoples of the Aleppo region and their revolution, in direct partnership with the Russian Blitzkrieg and therefore indirect (to be charitable) partnership with the fascist regime and its Iranian-led global sectarian invaders.

Tomorrow, this betrayal may also be catastrophic for the Kurdish civilians and their own revolution as well. While it is not unusual for nationalist leaderships to make decisions based on the narrow interests of their own nation (one would have expected better from an officially left leadership, but anyway), in this case it is short-sighted even from this narrow point of view. The Assadist representative at Geneva, Bashar al-Jaafari, made a point of telling the PYD that they should forget about autonomy or federalism, “take the idea of separating Syrian land out of your mind” … “we have said before our theme for these talks is Syrians in Syria and our precondition is to protect the unity of the land and Syrian nation” (http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/310120162). When you add to this a couple of recent regime bombings of the YPG, the regime is essentially laughing at the Kurdish leadership even as it declares that “these Syrian Kurds supported by the American administration are also supported by the Syrian government” – a “support” which goes for now as the YPG serves its purposes (http://www.trtworld.com/mea/assads-un-envoy-reveals-regime-support-for-pyd-49189), but certainly not for the day after.

Hence, the position now being implemented by the PYD/YPG in this conflict is crucial both to the future existence of the revolution as a whole, and to the Rojava revolution. Getting it wrong here can mean that all the stories of setting up a radical-democratic, non-sectarian, multi-ethnic, feminist model – and despite exaggerations and romanticisation, a certain amount of this is undoubtedly true – may shortly afterwards turn to dust. What has protected the Rojava revolution for three years, while it was untouched by Assad’s barrel bombs, ballistic missiles, sarin etc, so that this model could be built, was none other than the enormous sacrifice by the rest of the country, the Syrian revolution in Arab Syria, the blood of hundreds of thousands of people outside Rojava, who continually fought and died in the struggle against Assad (and whose similarly revolutionary-democratic councils were bombed into oblivion); they were a wall protecting Rojava, and the moment they fall, Assad, with mathematical precision, will turn Rojava into dust, with no-one left to help (I’m reminded of a poem by Martin Niemoller: http://allpoetry.com/First-They-Came-For-The-Communists). At that point, Assad and Erdogan may find they have less problems with each other than they thought.

The PYD appears to be relying on the idea that its current US and Russian sponsors will save it some autonomy due to their own interests, even if it means Assad, or an ‘Assad regime without Assad’, won’t be able to fully carry out the threat to “unify” the country. Nothing is out of the question. As SDF Co-President İlham Ehmed speaks of Syria being divided into three “federal regions,” with the northern one ruled by them (https://anfenglish.com/features/ehmed-three-federal-regions-will-be-formed-in-syria-part-ii), corresponding closely to the plan recently flagged by the US Rand Corporation (http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE182.html), John Kerry now says that partition may be part of a ‘Plan B’ if a ceasefire cannot be achieved (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/23/john-kerry-partition-syria-peace-talks?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail). Yet putting the PYD/SDF in charge of a “northern” federal unit outside that extends beyond ethnically Kurdish areas is not the same as Kurdish autonomy, and would instead turn it into a US-Russia-backed police force guarding a brutal occupation of land seen as occupied by the Sunni Arab majority there, not to mention by those millions driven from northern Syria in this gigantic Nakbah. WE are reminded of other dark events in Mideast history. Even then, I suspect this “solution” would be temporary while the post-Assadist state re-gathers its resources.

I have no interest in reaching these conclusions. I always supported the Rojava revolution along with the rest of the revolution, and despite disagreeing with many uncritical supporters of the PYD leadership and its views, I was willing to recognise the relatively politically advanced nature of the process in Rojava. Moreover, regardless of this process, I’ve always supported the right of self-determination for the Kurds throughout the region, including, if they choose, an independent state. But the leadership has made these decisions, and needs to be held accountable.

Responsibility of Arab and Kurdish leaderships for Arab-Kurdish disunity

It is true of course that the various opposition leaderships, both political and military, share responsibility, for not having taken a clear position in support of Kurdish national self-determination. The initial refusal of the exile-based Syrian opposition to agree to dropping the word “Arab” from “Syrian Arab Republic” was an important symbolic example. The opposition advocates general rights for Kurds and other minorities, and the Kurdish National Council (KNC) consisting of some 15 parties, is part of the Syrian National Coalition. When it officially joined the Coalition in 2013, a joint declaration was released in which the Coalition confirmed its commitment to “constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people’s national identity, considering the Kurdish affair an integral part of the general national cause in the country, the recognition of the national rights of the Kurdish people in the framework of the unity of the Syrian people and lands, the cancelation of all discriminatory politics, decrees and measures against Kurdish citizens, the treatment of their effects and repercussions, granting the victims compensation and returning rights to their rightful owners.”

Nevertheless, the KNC still fights within the Coalition for a clearer position on the issue. A crystal clear position in support of self-determination (as opposed to the emphasis on “the unity of the Syrian people and lands”), is essential to win national minorities such as the Kurds to the side of revolution. Significantly, however, the Syrian National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, to which the PYD has long been affiliated with, does not have no clearer position on the Kurdish issue than the Syrian National Coalition.

This is a longer-term discussion that needs to be had about the ultimate fate of the revolution. However, supporters of the Syrian revolution have rarely given their support on the basis that its various leaderships are politically advanced; the exile-based leaderships are conservative and bourgeois, and widely criticised by the revolutionaries on the ground; while the internal civil and military leaderships of the FSA and the LCCs etc are empirical revolutionaries who arose from the grass-roots, without strong traditions of political consciousness, crushed as political thought was for 40 years under the Assads. In contrast, the PYD leadership comes from a consciously left-socialist tradition, and one would therefore have expected a better approach than the treacherous one now being implemented.

Moreover, it is not even clear that the Kurdish masses – whatever suspicions they may rightly have about sections of the opposition – are necessarily in support of these current moves, or that their mistrust of the opposition is driving the PYD’s current actions (here is statement of a Kurdish FSA faction condemning the PYD’s actions: http://en.eldorar.com/node/1500). While the Kurds have been nationally oppressed in Syria – especially by the Assad regime – it has been the Sunni Arab majority that has suffered far and away the most over the last five years, subjected to massive slaughter and large-scale dispossession, while the Kurds in Rojava were left alone. In such circumstances, it is just as much the stance of the Kurdish leadership – especially a leftist Kurdish leadership – towards their Arab brothers and sisters that is crucial as is the reverse. Moreover, the position of the PYD leadership in relation to the uprising against Assad was unclear from the outset, and over time evolved into a “plague on both your houses” position, casting themselves as a third alternative, rather than seeing their role as providing a critical left perspective in support of the revolution.

Assad withdrew from the main Kurdish regions in late 2012 and handed them over to the PYD. Of course, Assad did not do this to support Kurdish autonomy, but to be able to focus on slaughtering the more immediate threat of the rest of the revolution; the PYD did not accept because it is pro-Assad, but because it saw the sense of building their own Rojava project rather than demanding to be barrel-bombed. They can hardly be condemned for the latter. However, this situation tended to harden this position of “third-force” neutrality, leading many oppositionists, rightly or wrongly, to see the PYD as a stalking horse for the regime, which often led to, mostly small-scale, clashes (as well as other instances of revolutionary cooperation).

While the PYD claims its Rojava project is multi-ethnic, and in some places this seems to be valid, the momentum of Arab-Kurdish joint demonstrations against the regime throughout 2011-2012 took place independently of the PYD (see this article to get a feel for this period: http://www.developmentperspectives.ie/serdar-ahmad-the-story-of-a-syrian-grassroots-leader/). Some have even argued that the separation of Rojava and its withdrawal from the anti-Assad struggle tended to dull this momentum, ironically enough. I have no information to sustain this view, but it is notable that when the PYD used repression against Kurdish opposition – most famously in Amuda in 2013 (http://www.syriauntold.com/en/2013/07/amuda-shouts-once-again-he-who-kills-his-people-is-a-traitor/) – it was directed against Kurdish activists with strong links to the wider revolutionary movement.

The rise of jihadist forces, first Nusra and then ISIS, led to further conflict, especially as these forces were based mostly in the north and east of the country, and thus tended to vie for some of the same regions, resources and border crossings as the PYD. In late 2013 in particular, they launched murderous attacks on the Kurds in the northeast. While the Syrian opposition did not endorse these jihadist attacks, some small rebel formations on the ground in eastern Syria found themselves stuck between the jihadists and the YPG, where local, conjunctural factors often played a role in deciding who was their chief opponent at the moment’ and in some cases local FSA groups seem to have taken an anti-YPG position. However, the simplistic assertion that “the FSA joined the jihadist attacks on the Kurds” in late 2013 is essentially slander, especially as the FSA was also already at war with ISIS in this period.

Considerable study would be required to ascertain the various errors made by both Arab and Kurdish leaderships. Yet ultimately, it is difficult to see the PYD’s current actions in Aleppo as mere “mistakes” of a revolutionary left leadership under extreme pressure of events, as has been put to me (and amusingly, the same people often tell me how wicked it is for the Syrian rebels to be receiving aid from the Erdogan regime in Turkey – as if it is not the rebels who are the ones under extraordinary, super-human, pressure, and for whom the opening to Turkey, and the little support they get via Azaz, is an absolute lifeline; talk about the pot calling the kettle black!).

How did the PYD arrive here?

No, the PYD’s current betrayal is rooted precisely in it not surpassing the bounds of being a nationalist force, despite the rhetoric. In particular, this is combined with the nature of large-scale decision-making in a one-party state, no matter how much power the democratic councils have in local decision-making. For example, the PYD has just banned the Kurdish publication ‘Rudaw’ from operating in Rojava, and “also banned journalists and freelancers from sending their work to Rudaw and warned all agencies and organizations to cut off all contacts with the media network” (http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/250220161). Was this act of political repression decided upon by local councils, with relevant information, discussing the issue across Rojava and coming to this decision? Or was it a ruling by some Political Committee of the PYD?

Further, it is my view that the road to becoming a ground force for Russia’s counterrevolutionary Blitzkrieg in Aleppo today was set by the evolution of the PYD/YPG into the main ground force for the US-led Coalition also bombing Syria.

The initial cooperation with the US, when the US airforce came in to bomb ISIS away from Kobani in late 2014, was undoubtedly necessary, when defence against the threat of ISIS subjugation and terror in Kobani was a question of survival. When FSA forces formed an alliance with the YPG for the defence of Kobani, this was also a high point of revolutionary unity between the Arab and Kurdish masses and their leaderships.

However, the US-YPG arrangement then turned into a long-term alliance, and not one for immediate defence as in Kobani, but one for offensive operations against ISIS. Much as the Islamic State is a monstrously reactionary state that needs to be overthrown, it is questionable that this can be achieved via the military actions of a nationalist Kurdish militia on the ground, completely reliant on US air strikes, where the Islamic State is based among Arabs. Since early 2015, every offensive operation by the YPG against ISIS relies on US air-strikes; these US bombings are netting an increasingly higher number of civilian casualties (even this week, the US bombed a bakery and killed 28 civilians in the town of Shadada in Hasaka region, at the onset of a YPG offensive against ISIS: http://www.orient-news.net/en/news_show/103136/0/US-led-coalition-jets-kill-civilians-in-Hasakah-countryside); the YPG is the only ground force sharing coordinates with the US; US special forces have arrived in Rojava and work with the YPG; and even a US airbase has been set up on Rojava soil.

This pattern of dependence on foreign imperialist powers thus emerged, along with a haughtiness, an arrogance, that comes with the idea that you will always be protected by powerful foreign states. This has now reached a tragic climax.

One final point: there is some talk that this move by the PYD is a “pro-Russian” move away from alliance with the US. It isn’t. This view relies too much on the “Cold War” myth, and ignores the “fundamental similarity” of US-Russian views on Syria, as John Kerry rightly put it – especially the studied, deliberate, cold US indifference to the current Russian-led slaughter of the revolutionary forces in Aleppo.

Is it really surprising that the very weeks that the YPG is acting as the Russian ground force in Aleppo, the US and YPG launch a new offensive in Hasaka region; that the SDF includes the logo of the US-led Coalition in their list of allied militias (https://twitter.com/defenseunits/status/700741630618370049); that US Government Counter Terrorism Center, which had linked the PKK and PYD in 2014, removed this reference in 2016 (https://twitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/701451967692845056); and that Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the anti-ISIS Coalition, paid an official visit to the PYD in Kobani “in what appeared to be the first official trip to Syrian territory for several years” by an official from the Obama administration, where he was presented with a plaque by YPG founding member, and former PKK member, Polat Can (http://www.nrttv.com/en/Details.aspx?Jimare=5199). Thus, the counterrevolutionary position currently adopted by the PYD is an embodiment of the US-Russia agreement on Syria, not a problem for their alleged “Cold War.”

Today we are watching bloody counterrevolution, imperialist barbarism, in its most naked form, most visibly in the combined Blitzkrieg against the people of Aleppo and its northern countryside being carried out by the invading Russian air force, the fascistic regime of Bashar Assad with his barrel bombs, the invading Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their imports including Iraqi Shiite-sectarian death squads, Hezbollah and various manipulated, impoverished Shia troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan, with ISIS to some extent, and the US-backed Kurdish YPG on a huge scale, opportunistically joining in from either side like vultures.

Meanwhile, much the same continues in the south, with people still starving to death, even as world attention has gone away, in the various towns surrounding Damascus that are being carpet-bombed  by Assad and Russia, besieged and starved by Assad and Hezbollah. This scene from some apocalypse (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153676629524823&set=gm.495267943990549&type=3&theatre) is actually between Moadamiyeh and Daraya; this picture of Hiroshima is actually what the regime has done to to the once beautiful city of Homs: https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10153492613721939/?pnref=story. Further south, regime and Russian bombing continues day and night against the mighty, and starkly moderate, Southern Front of the FSA, which has had its already miserable level of “support” cut off by Jordan and the US; 150,000 people have been uprooted in the latest offensives.

Returning to Aleppo, the bombing has reached extraordinary levels http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/06/aleppo-under-bombardment-fears-siege-and-starvation?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail:

“The bombs are falling so fast in Aleppo now that often rescuers don’t have time to reach victims between blasts. If the deadly explosions that struck on just one day last week had been evenly spaced, they would have struck every other minute around the clock.

“Sometimes there are so many airstrikes, we are just waiting and waiting at our headquarters, and the jets don’t leave the skies,” says Abdulrahman Alhassan, a 29-year-old former bank engineer from the city who coordinates “white helmet” rescue teams in the city.

“When at last we can’t see any more, we have to rush to all the sites to rescue people and evacuate them at once,” he said. On Friday, the group counted 900 airstrikes by government forces and their Russian backers, apparently throwing every weapon they have at the already devastated city.”

That is, 900 airstrikes on the city in one day.

As is widely reported, the targets include countless hospitals, schools, markets, bakeries, mosques and so on. This video shows the results of the deliberate Russian bombing of the children’s and maternity hospital in Azaz: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/not-terrorists-or-fighters-just-babies-syrian-charity-video-shows-devastation-after-azaz-hospital-a6875496.html, on the same day in mid-February that three other hospitals and two schools were bombed (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/world/middleeast/syria-hospital-airstrike-doctors-without-borders.html).

Of course, a bloody counterrevolution being carried out by a fascistic regime does not always involve “imperialist barbarism,” as I put it above; the Syrian regime has been doing the same for years before the Russian invasion. But as far as any foreign intervention by a world-class military power savaging a small country far from home goes, the current Russian invasion and terror bombing of Syria is second to only few.

However, Russian imperialism has been the chief armer of the regime with massive quantities of advanced weaponry for years, so there are no surprises here, and apart from our outrage, perhaps no need to dwell on the obvious (though if an anti-war movement existed in the West, calling for an end to this Russian barbarism would be its obvious aim; but alas).

US policy and the Oslo-style “peace process”

Yet it is the calculated indifference of the United States that stands out here; while this should not be a surprise, it is to those who still think the US was merely a weak and ineffective supporter of Syrian freedom. In fact, US Defence Secretary John Kerry was being completely truthful when he recently stated, not only that that the US does not support regime change in Syria (old news), but also that the US and Russia see the Syrian conflict “fundamentally very similarly” (http://abcnews.go.com/International/john-kerry-meets-russian-president-vladimir-putin-seek/story?id=35782171).

It may seem ironic that the current Russian Blitzkrieg is taking place in the shadow of the US-Russian driven Vienna/Geneva “peace process.” This process supposedly aimed to forge a ceasefire, and press a select group of oppositionists into a “transitional” government with the regime or parts of it, who would then jointly wage a war, supported by all the imperialist powers, against ISIS, Nusra and any other opposition forces declared to be “terrorists.”

However, while accepting negotiations for some kind of “political solution,” the Syrian opposition had some red lines. One was that, before real negotiations could begin, the regime needed to show some good faith by first implementing UN resolutions on lifting starvation sieges, stopping barrel bombing, releasing detainees and so on. Secondly, while the opposition was willing to begin negotiations with Assad, their bottom line for eventually agreeing to any political solution was that, at some point, Assad himself and his immediate entourage had to step down, so that the “transition” government they were to join would be formed with parts of the regime but not Assad himself.

However, the US, the UK, France and other western states began falling over each other to declare that Assad’s alleged “stepping down” can take place at the “end” of the “transition government” period rather than at the beginning; and then the length of this Assad-led “transition” kept getting lengthened beyond the “several months” initially discussed. This was made even more emphatic in an internal US State Department document which specified that Assad would continue to head the “transitional” regime, which the opposition was expected to join, until March 2017 (http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-us-sees-assad-staying-syria-until-march-081207181–politics.html); and then further, the US delivered new Russian-Iranian diktats to the opposition, moving from the concept of “transition” to that of the opposition forming a “national unity government” with Assad, while strongly rejecting the opposition’s conditions regarding sieges and so on.

According to Lina Sinjab, writing from the Geneva talks, a “US official was adamant that Secretary of State John Kerry wants to end the violence, and is determined to succeed. But everyone here thinks the opposite. Almost at every corner, you hear the same thought: The US has handed over Syria to the Russians for free” (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35490273). And as Assadist/Russian bombing continually increased throughout the “peace” conference, Kerry claimed on February 5 that “the Russians have made some constructive ideas about how a ceasefire in fact could be implemented” (http://www.todayszaman.com/world_kerry-says-in-talks-on-syria-ceasefire-will-know-in-days-if-possible_411600.html).

As  reported on February 6, Syrian aid workers said Kerry told them on sidelines of the donor conference, after the Geneva “peace” talks broke down, that “the opposition will be decimated” and to expect 3 months of bombing, blaming the opposition for the Russian Blitzkrieg: “He said, ‘Don’t blame me – go and blame your opposition’” (http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/opposition-blame-syrian-bombing-kerry-tells-aid-workers-1808021537). Another source in the same article, who claimed to have been a liaison between the Syrian and American governments, said Kerry had passed the message on to Assad in October “that the US did not want him to be removed,” but that if he stopped barrel bombing, could “sell the story” to the public.

As Russia then launched into the current apocalyptic bombing of Aleppo, Kerry and Lavrov stitched together a “ceasefire,” which, however, would begin after a week, allowing plenty of time for Russia’s hundreds of strikes a day to perform maximum devastation in the meantime, while excluding all operations against ISIS, Nusra and “other terrorists” from the ceasefire. Since Russia and Assad declare everyone they bomb to be either ISIS, Nusra or “terrorists,” this ceasefire was simply a cover for the genocide to continue, while outlawing the rebels from shooting back!

When Kerry announced the “ceasefire” alongside his Russian counterpart, he put all the blame on the Syrian opposition, and as usual praised his (new) allies to the skies, stating emphatically that “it was not Russia or Iran who stopped a ceasefire from being adopted at the very beginning. I want to make that very, very clear” (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/12/russia-big-winner-syria-flawed-truce-assad-europe-us?CMP=share_btn_tw).

Then as Russia and Assad responded to the “ceasefire” by stepping up their genocidal bombing of Aleppo, Kerry said this has to stop, but told the opposition to stop “whining” about it, telling them it won’t stop “by walking away from the table or not engaging” (https://twitter.com/USEmbassySyria/status/696046559486607360).

It may be objected that these are just statements, perhaps driven by diplomacy. However, statements have a context. In the context of such horrific crimes being committed by Russia as we speak; of the US pressuring its “allies” to cut off the miserable aid they had provided the rebels (see below); of the US pushing the opposition into a national unity government with Assad for one and a half years; in the context of US bombing never touching the regime or its death squad allies, but often hitting non-ISIS rebel targets; these “mere statements” represent policy, not diplomacy.

US “betrayal”?

Below I have attached what is one of the better commentaries in mainstream media in recent weeks on the so-called US “betrayal” of the Syrian people in the face of this bloodthirsty Russian-Assadist-Iranian Blitzkrieg on Aleppo.

Of course, its use of words like “betrayal,” and the idea that the US is “handing” Syria over to Russia and Iran (clearly the US is handing it to Assad) still reveal a hint of the grand illusion that perhaps “real” US interests would have been to act differently, or that the open US-Russia ad US-Iran collaboration in Syria somehow represents the US abandoning its own interests in favour of those of others.

Actually, the author only just still borders on these illusions – like any serious observer, the author can see that the facts have long ago depleted most illusions. The author writes for example “Washington seems oblivious to the simple truth that diplomacy has a cost, as does its failure — probably because this cost would be carried by the rebellion, for which the United States has little respect or care anyway.” He is right that the US has “little respect or care” (“none” would be more correct) for the rebellion, but this very fact makes the word “oblivious” at the beginning of the sentence meaningless. This author can at least be congratulated on showing 90 percent cynicism of basic US motives and positions on Syria throughout the conflict, and only 10 percent remaining illusions of the US being “oblivious” to its interests. Far ahead of most.

It is high time, in my opinion, to call a spade a spade. This has nothing to do with the fact that there has been no “US intervention,” still less a call for it. In fact, those constantly warning against “US intervention” wilfully ignore that the US has been bombing Syria for some 17 months, just that it bombs Anyone But Assad (see my article on who the US bombs: . https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/who-has-the-us-bombed-for-in-syria/).

At this point, it doesn’t even have that much to do with the many years of very active US intervention against the revolution, to ensure that no Syrian rebels, not even the most “moderate”, could get their hands on any anti-aircraft weapons, the major defensive need of the rebels since mid-2012 when massive airpower became the main form of regime aggression; with the fact that sympathetic regional states were blocked from sending them, and that the FSA was even blocked when it tried to get them from the black market. No, this is all well-established; as one tweet put it concisely, “the only consistent, thorough, well-implemented US Syrian policy is tracking hunting and stopping MANPADS from reaching any opposition group since 2012” (https://twitter.com/THE_47th/status/659114328012931072); and the criminality of denying such weapons as the rebels face such apocalyptic bombing right now is for all to see. But it is even more than that.

All the reports from recent weeks, if not months, tell of the US winding down, if not cutting off, the already pathetic level of “support” to some “vetted” rebels (or, put more correctly, of the US forcing Saudis, Qatar and Turkey to wind down or cut off their support). As the author notes in the article below: “In the south, the United States has demanded a decrease in weapons deliveries to the Southern Front, while in the north, the Turkey-based operations room is reportedly dormant.” According to Syrian National Coalition Khaled Khoja, external support for armed opposition factions in Syria came to a complete halt following the Vienna talks in October 2015 (http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2016/2/6/the-fate-of-the-syrian-opposition-left-without-support), while videographic evidence shows that use of Saudi-supplied TOW anti-tank weapons on the battlefield “had trickled off in the last months of 2015 and totally vanished in the first two weeks of 2016” (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/05/are-u-s-missiles-taking-out-high-ranking-russian-military-officials.html).

So let’s call the spade by its name: the US is opposed to, and has always been opposed to, the Syrian revolution. Period. Things have worked out this way not because the US was “weak,” or “incoherent,” or endlessly (for 5 years) makes “mistakes,” or “bungled it,” or unwittingly “handed over victory” to someone opposed to US interests etc; no, things turned out this way, have been this way for five years, because it is US policy.

One final comment: The author says it is “ironic” that this international Blitzkrieg against Free Syria is occurring at the moment the US and UN have been organising the Oslo-style Geneva “peace process”. Here I’ll allow a little conspiratorial thinking currently prevalent among many Syrians, who have more right to be cynical than anyone. That the Geneva farce – such an obvious farce – was organised as a cover to politically disarm and distract and try to divide the Syrian rebellion while the “final military solution” was being planned all along.

​

Obama’s Disastrous Betrayal of the Syrian Rebels

How the White House is handing victory to Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran.​

​BY EMILE HOKAYEM​

​FEBRUARY 5, 2016​

​https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/05/obamas-disastrous-betrayal-of-the-syrian-rebels/

What a difference a year makes in Syria. And the introduction of massive Russian airpower.

Last February, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its Shiite auxiliaries mounted a large-scale attempt to encircle Aleppo, the northern city divided between regime and rebels since 2012 and battered by the dictator’s barrel bombs. Islamist and non-Islamist mainstream rebels — to the surprise of those who have derided their performance, let alone their existence — repelled the offensive at the time. What followed was a string of rebel advances across the country, which weakened Assad so much that they triggered Moscow’s direct intervention in September, in concert with an Iranian surge of forces, to secure his survival.

Fast-forward a year. After a slow start — and despite wishful Western assessments that Moscow could not sustain a meaningful military effort abroad — the Russian campaign is finally delivering results for the Assad regime. This week, Russian airpower allowed Assad and his allied paramilitary forces to finally cut off the narrow, rebel-held “Azaz corridor” that links the Turkish border to the city of Aleppo. The city’s full encirclement is now a distinct possibility, with regime troops and Shiite fighters moving from the south, the west, and the north. Should the rebel-held parts of the city ultimately fall, it will be a dramatic victory for Assad and the greatest setback to the rebellion since the start of the uprising in 2011.

In parallel, Russia has put Syria’s neighbors on notice of the new rules of the game. Jordan was spooked into downgrading its help for the Southern Front, the main non-Islamist alliance in the south of the country, which has so far prevented extremist presence along its border. Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military aircraft that crossed its airspace in November backfired: Moscow vengefully directed its firepower on Turkey’s rebel friends across Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Moscow also courted Syria’s Kurds, who found a new partner to play off the United States in their complex relations with Washington. And Russia has agreed to a temporary accommodation of Israel’s interests in southern Syria.

Inside Syria, and despite the polite wishes of Secretary of State John Kerry, the overwhelming majority of Russian strikes have hit non-Islamic State (IS) fighters. Indeed, Moscow and the Syrian regime are content to see the United States bear the lion’s share of the effort against the jihadi monster in the east, instead concentrating on mowing through the mainstream rebellion in western Syria. Their ultimate objective is to force the world to make an unconscionable choice between Assad and IS.

The regime is everywhere on the march. Early on, the rebels mounted a vigorous resistance, but the much-touted increase in anti-tank weaponry could only delay their losses as their weapons storages, command posts and fall-back positions were being pounded. Around Damascus, the unrelenting Russian pounding has bloodied rebel-held neighborhoods; in December, the strikes killed Zahran Alloush, the commander of the main Islamist militia there. In the south, Russia has fully backed the regime’s offensive in the region of Daraa, possibly debilitating the Southern Front. Rebel groups in Hama and Homs provinces have faced a vicious pounding that has largely neutralized them. Further north, a combination of Assad troops, Iranian Shiite militias, and Russian firepower dislodged the powerful Islamist rebel coalition Jaish Al-Fatah from Latakia province.

But it is the gains around Aleppo that represent the direst threat to the rebellion. One perverse consequence of cutting the Azaz corridor is that it plays into the hands of the al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra, since weapons supplies from Turkey would have to go through Idlib, where the jihadist movement is powerful. Idlib may well become the regime’s next target. The now-plausible rebel collapse in the Aleppo region could also send thousands of fighters dejected by their apparent abandonment into the arms of Nusra or IS.

The encirclement of Aleppo would also create a humanitarian disaster of such magnitude that it would eclipse the horrific sieges of Madaya and other stricken regions that have received the world’s (short-lived) attention. Tens of thousands of Aleppo residents are already fleeing toward Kilis, the Turkish town that sits across the border from Azaz. The humanitarian crisis, lest anyone still had any doubt, is a deliberate regime and Russian strategy to clear important areas of problematic residents — while paralyzing rebels, neighboring countries, Western states, and the United Nations.

Assad all along pursued a strategy of gradual escalation and desensitization that, sadly, worked well. Syrians already compare the international outcry and response to the IS’ siege of Kobane in 2014 to the world’s indifference to the current tragedy.

To complicate the situation even more, the regime’s advances could allow the Kurdish-dominated, American-favored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to conquer the area currently held by the Free Syrian Army and Islamist militias between the Turkish border and the new regime front line north of the Shiite towns of Nubl and Zahra. This would pit the SDF against IS on two fronts: from the west, if the Kurds of Afrin canton seize Tal Rifaat, Azaz and surrounding areas, and from the east, where the YPG is toying with the idea of crossing the Euphrates River. An IS defeat there would seal the border with Turkey, meeting an important American objective.

The prospect of further Kurdish expansion has already alarmed Turkey. Over the summer, Ankara was hoping to establish a safe zone in this very area. It pressured Jabhat al-Nusra to withdraw and anointed its allies in Syria, including the prominent Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, as its enforcers. True to its record of calculated dithering, President Barack Obama’s administration let the Turkish proposal hang until it could no longer be implemented. Turkey faces now an agonizing dilemma: watch and do nothing as a storm gathers on its border, or mount a direct intervention into Syria that would inevitably inflame its own Kurdish problem and pit it against both IS and an array of Assad-allied forces, including Russia.

​Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the rebellion’s main supporters, are now bereft of options. No amount of weaponry is likely to change the balance of power. The introduction of anti-aircraft missiles was once a viable response against Assad’s air force, but neither country — suspecting that the United States is essentially quiescent to Moscow’s approach — is willing to escalate against President Vladimir Putin without cover.

Ironically, this momentous change in battlefield dynamics is occurring just as U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura yet again pushes a diplomatic track in Geneva. But the developments on the ground threaten to derail the dapper diplomat’s peace scheme. Fairly or not, de Mistura is tainted by the fact that the United Nations is discredited in the eyes of many Syrians for theproblematic entanglements of its Damascus humanitarian arm with the regime. Despite U.N. resolutions, international assistance still does not reach those who need it most; in fact, aid has become yet another instrument of Assad’s warfare. Neither Kerry nor de Mistura are willing to seriously pressure Russia and Assad for fear of jeopardizing the stillborn Geneva talks.

Seemingly unfazed by this controversy, de Mistura’s top-down approach relies this time on an apparent U.S.-Russian convergence. At the heart of this exercise is Washington’s ever-lasting hope that Russian frustration with Assad would somehow translate into a willingness to push him out. However, whether Putin likes his Syrian counterpart has always been immaterial. The Russian president certainly has reservations about Assad, but judging by the conduct of his forces in Chechnya and now in Syria, these are about performance– not humanitarian principles or Assad’s legitimacy. For the time being, Moscow understands that without Assad, there is no regime in Damascus that can legitimize its intervention.

Ever since 2011, the United States has hidden behind the hope of a Russian shift and closed its eyes to Putin’s mischief to avoid the hard choices on Syria. When the Russian onslaught started, U.S. officials like Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken predicted a quagmire to justify Washington’s passivity. If Russia’s intervention was doomed to failure, after all, the United States was not on the hook to act.

Russia, however, has been not only been able to increase the tempo of its military operations, but also to justify the mounting cost. And contrary to some pundits, who hailed the Russian intervention as the best chance to check the expansion of IS, Washington knows all too well that the result of the Russian campaign is the strengthening of the jihadist group in central Syria in the short term. This is a price Washington seems willing to pay for the sake of keeping the Geneva process alive.

The bankruptcy of U.S. policy goes deeper. The United States has alreadyconceded key points about Assad’s future — concessions that Russia and the regime have been quick to pocket, while giving nothing in return. In the lead-up to and during the first days of the Geneva talks, it became clear that the United States is putting a lot more pressure on the opposition than it does on Russia, let alone Assad. Just as Russia escalates politically and militarily, the Obama administration is cynically de-escalating, and asking its allies to do so as well. This is weakening rebel groups that rely on supply networks that the U.S. oversees: In the south, the United States has demanded a decrease in weapons deliveries to the Southern Front, while in the north, the Turkey-based operations room is reportedly dormant.

The result is a widespread and understandable feeling of betrayal in the rebellion, whose U.S.-friendly elements are increasingly losing face within opposition circles. This could have the ironic effect of fragmenting the rebellion — after years of Western governments bemoaning the divisions between these very same groups.

It’s understandable for the United States to bank on a political process and urge the Syrian opposition to join this dialogue in good faith. But to do so while exposing the rebellion to the joint Assad-Russia-Iran onslaught and without contingency planning is simply nefarious. Washington seems oblivious to the simple truth that diplomacy has a cost, as does its failure — probably because this cost would carried by the rebellion, for which the United States has little respect or care anyway, and would be inherited by Obama’s successor.

The conditions are in place for a disastrous collapse of the Geneva talks — now delayed until late February — and a painful, bloody year in Syria. All actors understand that Obama, who has resisted any serious engagement in the country, is unlikely to change course now. And they all assume, probably rightly, that he is more interested in the appearance of a process than in spending any political capital over it. As a result, all the parties with a stake in Syria’s future are eyeing 2017, trying to position themselves for the new White House occupant. This guarantees brinksmanship, escalation, and more misery. 2016 is shaping up as the year during which Assad will lock in significant political and military gains.​