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.
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’.”
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.
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 Manbijand 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.
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 5th 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)
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.
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).
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
“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.”
“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:
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?
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.
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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/).
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.
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 5th 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.
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.
“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.”
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!
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.
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.
Below is a compilation of Russian crimes against humanity in Syria, in early 2016 alone. The last few months of 2015 would show an equally horrific, and longer, toll. As I write, the United Nations has finally postponed its bogus Syria “peace” talks, even they finally recognising that holding a talk fest, while the state-terrorist group currently occupying Damascus, and its invading Russian backer, dramatically step up their already prolific level of mass murder, is not going to achieve anything.
“They are quite concretely attempting to destroy the nascent inner workings of Free Syria. Destroying the very functionality of liberty. Russia has been able to do it with brutal precision. The last major hospital in North Aleppo has been destroyed by the Russian air force. Filthy cowards. May they all die horribly.”
Very appropriate words. But of course, despite our justified anger, the cowards won’t all die horribly, just yet, not with the advantage of all that advanced mass-murder equipment they employ safely from the skies. Some will, of course: the ground troops, the cannon fodder. That is, what is today still called, farcically, the Syrian “Arab” Army: the army of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah traitors, Iraqi Shiite death squads, and countless dirt-poor Afghan Hazara and even Pakistani Shia, sent to Syria by the Iranian hang-man regime either by force, manipulation or lies.
Perhaps one reason why Israel has continually declared itself so happy about its alliance with Russia since Russia took the lead role in defending the Assad family’s power away from Iran, is that it kills two birds with the one stone: on the one hand, Israel’s asset in Damascus is defended just as well if not better, by a pro-Israeli ruler like Putin rather than someone who feels compelled to issue a lot of anti-Israel noise like Khameini; on the other, just in case some of these Khameini rabble, particularly a few Hezbollahis, were ever inclined to take the anti-Zionist rhetoric seriously, then using them as cannon-fodder keeps them busy, and buries plenty of them at the same time as they bury Syrian rebels and civilians. As they choose to be cannon-fodder for a gigantic Zionist-style Nakbah in Syria, they won’t be mourned.
But the Assadist and Russian cowards in the skies remain untouched. For now. But the struggle continues. For months and months of Russian carpet bombing, very little was achieved militarily, even as thousands of civilians were slaughtered. But ultimately, the superiority of Russian warplanes will wear down the resistance; and possibly now we may see a victory of Assadist/Russian air power over the people of northern Aleppo. We’ll see.
But even if so, this blood-drenched occupation will confront perhaps years of ongoing guerrilla struggle, during which many of these cowards will be picked off one by one, or blown to bits. The Assad family dynasty may think they can finish this via employing an invasion by the Russian superpower (I don’t really care whether one calls Russia “imperialist” or not in the circumstances; theoreticians may discuss that, but for now, the second major military power on Earth has been savaging a small country for months and months without a peep from those opposed to … “foreign intervention”). But if they think that, they will be entertaining the same illusions that the new Zionist state had in 1948; that it’s all over. Still isn’t.
Meanwhile, anyone on the left still putting up squeamish liberal arguments against the right of the Syrian rebels to receive *massive* quantities of *the best* anti-aircraft weapons (because manpads, which the US has meticulously blocked for years, would only be useful against the lower and slower flying Syrian helicopters barrel bombing the country to pieces for years, but not against this highly advanced Russian mass-murder equipment), from *anywhere* they can get them, *right now*, is a direct participant in this massive new Nakbah.
With no means of defending themselves and their communities against this gigantic aerial massacre, the one and only Russian killer-plane shot down was hit by Turkey a couple of months ago; regardless of Erdogan’s own crimes inside Turkey, I was amazed that when I wrote that the downing of this Russian plane was “one small victory for humanity” (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/turkey-russia-spat-one-standard-for-murdered-syrian-children-another-for-the-warplanes-that-kill-them/), some leftists actually had the gall to condemn this stand. On the other hand, I was most pleased to see ‘Red Flag’, the newspaper of Australia’s Socialist Alternative, take a stand worthy of the left by publishing my article under the heading ‘One Small Victory for Humanity’ (https://www.facebook.com/thomas.tomtom1/posts/10153755391629250). Let there be many more.
Below I have put together a compilation of Russian war crimes from early 2016 alone as a ready reference for anyone remaining confused on this issue (the article on the downing of the Russian plan, just linked to above, begins with a summary of Russian war crimes in 2015, to add to this list).
Russia Is Bombing Syria’s Children: These Are Their Stories
Moscow claims its airstrikes target ISIS in Syria, but the reality on the ground is that hundreds of children, rebels, aid workers, and civilians have been killed. BuzzFeed News’ Borzou Daragahi talks to victims of Russia’s campaign.
More from Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently: Russian warplanes kill more than 100 civilians in 3 days in Raqqa, with hundreds injured, “their names are documented”: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZuA_JKXEAEdMvx.png
The public information office of the city Haritan || Witness during the work of the civil defence team out of the martyrs from under the rubble: https://youtu.be/wN2CxBrBWO4
And who Russia wanted to invite to Geneva as the Syrian “opposition”
One version of Russia’s 15-member “opposition” list. Includes people who assembled in Cairo late last year under auspices of Assad’s ally and fellow blood-thirsty tyrant al-Sisi.
4 members of the Kurdish PYD (OK, regardless of what one may think of the PYD, especially now as it praises the genocidal Russian bombing of Syria, the YPG obviously does represent a force that needs to be represented in any talks, though whether it can be defined as “opposition” is another question; the rest below, however, would appear to represent exactly nobody but themselves)
2 members of the Qamh movement (pro-Assad “authorized opposition,” including the Haytham Manna, who recently praised Assadist death-squad Hezbollah and told them that the Syrian rebels were “terrorists”)
2 members of the “loyal opposition” PCLF (the Moscow-based former Assad regime deputy PM Qadri Jamil and Mazeb Maghribiya )
1 member of the Peaceful Change Path Movement (pro-Russia “authorized opposition”
Randa Kassis, Paris-based Pro-Russia leader and probably only member of the Movement for a Pluralistic Society
Abbas Habib, general coordinator of the pro-Assad Council of Syrian Tribes’ leadership
Samir Aita, the Arabic editor of Le Monde Diplomatique
Rim Turkmani, a Syrian-born astrophysicist at Imperial College London
According to two articles attached below this post, a number of changes have been taking place in southern Syria, where the Southern Front (SF) of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) holds sway over much of Daraa and Quneitra provinces, and shares a border with Jordan, through which the US, Saudi Arabia and Jordan itself attempt to exercise sway over the situation.
The first article (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/566514-daraa-rebels-ordered-to-stop-fighting-syria-regime-report) claims that the Military Operations Room (MOC) in Amman, Jordan, through which these countries have contact with the SF, has ordered the SF to stop fighting the regime, and even to avoid the more patchy conflicts with ISIS (merely because ISIS has so little presence in the south), and instead to make war against Jabhat al-Nusra. The second article (http://www.mei.edu/content/article/has-jordan-acquiesced-assad-regime-offensive-southern-syria) describes how the Kingdom of Jordan, where the MOC is based, is coordinating with both the US and Russia, and has essentially acquiesced with the Assad regime’s current Russian-backed offensive to re-take the south; and that the US has cut off its already miserable “support” to the SF, a claim in accord with many other sources of late.
Who is the Southern Front
As is widely known by those seriously following Syria, the Southern Front (SF) of the FSA is perhaps the most clearly secular/anti-sectarian part of the anti-Assad resistance in the country. Its founding statement, in February 2014, 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. We represent many classes but our goal is one: to topple the Assad regime and give Syria a chance at a better future. 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” (https://www.zamanalwsl.net/news/46545.html).
In order to try to control the SF’s movements and attempt to co-opt it in future, the US and Saudi Arabia have sent a certain amount of aid to the SF via the MOC in Jordan (more specifically, Saudi Arabia has often tried to send more, and the US has tended to restrict this as much as possible even at the best of times). Most of this “support” is nothing to write home about, especially when compared with the need, in confronting the massive arsenal of advanced killing equipment used by the Assad regime and continually re-supplied in enormous quantities by Russia and Iran, not to mention the actual Russian airforce and thousands of Iranian and allied troops.
However, it is the political purpose of such “support” that is the issue here; and this tends to become apparent whenever the SF starts winning.
After the SF made a 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 (corresponding to a similar string of victories by the rebels in the north in Idlib and Hama), the US and MOC imposed a series of “red lines” on the SF, where the SF was not to go. These reportedly included the central al-Mahata area of Daraa city (the regime-controlled capital of Daraa province, which is largely controlled by the SF), the neighbouring Druze-majority province Suweida, anywhere north towards the key city of Sasa, and any attempt to link up with the rebel-held outer suburbs of Damascus or to advance on Damascus itself (http://eaworldview.com/2015/08/syria-daily-regime-carries-out-another-mass-killing-in-douma/#daraa).
In other words, as elsewhere, the US did not want the regime to totally crush the SF, as this would leave the Sunni populations no alternative but to gravitate to the more Islamist or even jihadist militias; and also because the US hoped to use a weakened, and thus more dependent, SF in future as part of a ‘Sawha’ operation that would make peace with the regime and merely fight ISIS, or Nusra, or both, or even other Islamists; however, it also certainly did not want the SF to advance and threaten victory over Assad.
As we have seen with US attempts to turn some FSA-connected fighters into Sawha, there is never any success; the $500 million attempt to train and equip fighters to fight ISIS only, and give up the fight against Assad, netted about 100 fighters, who collapsed in a heap as soon as they entered Syria last year. This is because the whole point of the FSA’s existence is to overthrow the fascist regime.
Not that the FSA had any problem fighting ISIS; the FSA declared war on ISIS (and vice versa) in July 2013, and from January 2014 led other rebels in launching a nationwide coordinated attack on ISIS that drove it from the whole of western Syria, the most massive defeat for ISIS anywhere in Syria by anyone. But this was on their own initiative; they certainly never dropped the war on the regime, on the contrary the FSA recognised that the Assad regime and ISIS not only tended to collaborate with each other, but moreover were both enemies that needed to be defeated.
On the other hand, while the FSA has continually clashed with Nusra, this has mostly taken a defensive form; Nusra, unlike ISIS, has tended to direct most of its fore against the regime (and against ISIS), and has tended to be much more reticent about imposing the kind of furious theocratic repression that defines the Islamic State. Therefore, the FSA has long rejected the US diktat, active since 2012, to defer the fight against Assad and instead launch an all-out war against Nusra (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/americas-hidden-agenda-in-syrias-war).
The FSA well-understands that Nusra is a sectarian danger to the revolution that will need to be dealt with at a time of their own choosing, but with far more powerful and far more murderous enemies, they also understand that the US demand that it launch a premature attack on Nusra is merely an attempt to get the democratic and Islamist opponents of Assad to eliminate each other while the regime laughs.
Moreover, the Syrian composition of Nusra (unlike much of ISIS) means that a significant section of its ranks are only in Nusra due to its better arms, finance and organisation, and not due to ideological commitment; therefore, the continual US bombing of Nusra since 2014, while the mass-murdering regime remains untouched, is perceived by Syrians as an indirect attack on the revolution, regardless of their opinions on Nusra (see the condemnations of US air strikes by most FSA and rebel forces in 2014: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/syrian-rebels-overwhelmingly-condemn-us-bombing-as-an-attack-on-revolution/).
SF walks fine line: No cooperation with Nusra, but no war with Nusra
In the case of the SF, unlike its FSA allies in the north, where conditions dictate they need to militarily collaborate with a range of Islamists, including even Nusra, the SF declared in 2015 that it would no longer coordinate even on a simple military level with Nusra, due to the fundamental ideological differences:
“[We] reject 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 … [We] consider the Southern Front the only military [entity] representing the Syrian revolution in southern Syria” (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565114-fsa-moves-against-nusra-in-south-syria).
FSA advisor Usama Abu Zeid explained the move as having a number of causes (http://eaworldview.com/2015/04/syria-interview-why-southern-rebels-distanced-themselves-from-jabhat-al-nusra/). First, the FSA said that “from a place of responsibility towards the nation,” Nusra needs to split with al-Qaida. Second, while “the Syrian revolution can absorb differences in ideas and opinions,” they must “fall within the framework of the national Syrian revolution” and thus “transnational agendas” must be rejected. Zeid also noted the tendency of Nusra to claim responsibility for SF victories, and foreign media played this up (whereas the same media tended to blame the SF when there were defeats).
“The Southern Front condemns in the strongest terms the horrible massacre that happened to our people in Luweiza in Idlib committed by the Nusra Front and considers it a crime committed against common living and Syrian diversity in general and announces its readiness to protect Druze villages in Idlib as an additional step to protect Syrian diversity and richness” (https://www.facebook.com/solidaysyria/photos/a.634790499897689.1073741830.625693980807341/913965731980163/?type=1).
However, in the same interview cited above, FSA advisor Usama Abu Zeid emphasised that it has no intention of going to war against Nusra, understanding who the main enemies are:
“Jabhat al-Nusra needs to understand that this is not a declaration of war. The FSA has exercised self-restraint in several situations, and has made the national interest and the gains of the Syrian revolution the top priority. The FSA has not taken upon itself the decision to face off [with Nusra]. Jabhat al-Nusra needs to understand that its connection to Al Qa’eda hurts the Syrian interest.”
This shows the fine line the “moderate” yet revolutionary militant SF has tried to walk.
The context: Regime aims to finish off southern resistance for Vienna “peace process”
This is the general background to the news we read in these two articles below, about the MOC ordering the SF to fight Nusra instead of Assad, and the US cutting “support.” The more specific context of these moves includes the increasingly savage Russian bombing all over the south (ie, of an area where ISIS does not exist) and of regime starvation sieges of the revolutionary towns and suburbs around Damascus.
The US knows it cannot use the proudly independent SF for its own purposes, and so it will only begin again to send some “support” if the SF turns itself into a US proxy to fight Nusra, and enters into alliance with the regime as part of the Vienna ‘peace process’, ie, enters into a “transitional” regime with elements of the regime, and as is now official US policy, these “elements” include Assad himself, and his immediate circle of henchmen – Assad will still head the “transitional” regime till mid-2017!
In this, the role of Jordan at the southern border is crucial – the Jordanian monarchy has placed itself as the go-between for the US and Russia, both of which it has excellent relations with; Jordan is essentially allied to the line of Egypt’s tyrannical regime of al-Sisi (pro-US, pro-Russia, pro-Assad). It was therefore no surprise that, tasked with drawing up a list of “terrorist” organisations to be excluded from the Vienna “peace process,” against whom all-out war is to be launched by the “transitional” regime and all foreign states currently bombing Syria, Jordan came up with a list of some 160 rebel groups, some half the anti-Assad insurgency (http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordan-presents-list-160-terrorist-groups-syria-international-council-2106399989)!
The betrayal of the SF and the question of “moderates”
One final comment about the search for Syrian “moderates.” Most supporters of the Syrian revolution hate the Orientalist way that western imperialists and the western left use this term to decide who are “good” and “bad” Syrians when they are fighting for their very survival against such a barbaric regime bombing its entire country to bits. One would not feel very “moderate” in such circumstances. If being “moderate” means responding to a fascist regime using every conceivable weapon bar nuclear against its people, by forming prayer groups and engaging in letter writing campaigns rather than shooting back, then sure there are few “moderates,” and who would want them.
However, “moderate” might also be used as a not-very-precise political identification. Thus, rebels who are politically “moderate” might either be politically secular, that is believe in full separation of church and state, and the setting up of a civil state, or, if Islamist, be only of the mildest kind, opposed to forcible imposition of so-called “Islamic law” and so on; and more generally, to support democracy, women’s rights, and equality for Syria’s various ethnic and religious groups. That is, “moderate” as opposed to advocates of theocratic repression. In this case, there are of course plenty of “moderates” fighting the regime in Syria (http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/yes-there-are-70000-moderate-opposition-fighters-in-syria-heres-what-we-know-about-them), of which the SF is a prominent example, and of course they deserve our support.
Using this meaning, the only thing worse than hearing imperialist leaders complaining that there are hardly any “moderates” to support, and if you do arm them, they give their arms to the “extremists,” is listening to the imperial “left” criticising imperialist rulers for ever thinking there were any “moderates” at all, and agreeing that if they did exist, they would give their weapons to “jihadists”. Because, after all, the imperial left knows even better than the imperialist leaders that there can be “no good guys” in a place like Syria; everyone there, of course, is scum.
Unfortunately, finding many among the imperial left to be even more racist than imperialist rulers on this question is no longer surprising.
But what the incident with the failed US attempt to forge an anti-ISIS brigade that would not fight Assad, on one hand, and the betrayal of the genuine, powerful SF, on the other, reveal, is that finding politically “moderate” forces fighting the regime who are powerful enough is not really the problem it is made out to be. The problem is that for the US and other western states, “moderate” also means being ready to serve western “interests” rather than the interests of the Syrian revolution. And the FSA has never been “moderate” like this. Because this means ending the revolution and joining an Assadist regime, with or without Assad (and now it means explicitly with).
Explaining why the US was not arming the Syrian rebels back in 2013, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said that the Obama administration was opposed to “even limited” US military intervention in Syria as no side represented US interests (http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde/2013/08/22/a-moment-of-truth-in-damascus-and-washington): “Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides… It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favour. Today, they are not.”
The Amman-based Military Operations Center (MOC) directed Southern Front factions to focus their efforts against Al-Nusra Front.
BEIRUT – The Amman-based Military Operations Center (MOC) that helps coordinate rebel operations in southern Syria has ordered Free Syrian Army-affiliated factions to stop attacking regime forces and instead focus their efforts against the Nusra Front, according to a Lebanese daily.
Al-Akhbar reported that the MOC informed the commanders of several Southern Front coalition fighting forces—including the Omari Brigades, Youth of Sunnah Brigade, and Yarmouk Army— of the new strategy during a meeting January 8 in Amman.
“The goal of the meeting was to inform the armed groups of MOC’s new direction, the schedule for the coming period, and the types of support that [foreign backers] would provide the militants through the operations room,” security sources told the pro-Damascus newspaper in an article published Wednesday morning.
The sources added that the FSA-linked groups were told by Jordanian, US and British intelligence officials to “stop operations against the Syrian army and avoid periphery battles,” in reference to intermittent rounds of fighting between the rebels and ISIS-affiliated groups in southern Syria.
Instead, the Southern Front factions present in the Amman meeting—as well as the allied Army of Free Tribes group backed by Jordan—were instructed to concentrate on fighting both the Al-Nusra Front and Islamic Muthana Movement, which is close to the Al-Qaeda affiliate.
“The decision to liquidate the jihadists in the south has been taken,” the newspaper’s sources claimed.
The Amman meeting, as depicted by Al-Akbhar, would serve as the final blow to the Southern Front’s increasingly struggling efforts to fight regime forces in the Daraa Province.
The FSA-linked coalition had notched a series of stunning successes against government troops in the spring of 2015, however its campaigns ground down in the summer after the failure of the “Southern Storm” offensive to seize the provincial capital Daraa.
Reports began to emerge in September that the MOC had scaled back its support for the coalition, while rebels started complaining about a lack of assistance as their military successes dried up.
MOC promises new aid for new mission
Al-Akhbar claimed that the foreign powers operating the MOC promised rebels renewed aid in return for them agreeing to change tracks and launch a major campaign against Nusra.
“Each faction that joins the campaign will receive five tanks with full training for their crews as well as other incentives related to salaries and armament,” sources told the pro-Hezbollah daily.
The rebel leaders present in the Amman meeting all agreed to the MOC’s new plan, except the Youth of Sunnah Brigade chief, who eventually consented following further guarantees of support.
According to Al-Akhbar, the rebels were also promised training in a US-prepared base that will be staffed by military experts from Britain, Jordan and other Western states.
Russia-Jordan rapprochement
The MOC’s alleged decision comes within the context of “warming ties” between Amman and Moscow following Russia’s aerial intervention on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
On October 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced in Vienna that his country and Amman had agreed to coordinate military actions in Syria with a “special working mechanism” based in the Jordanian capital.
A month later, Jordanian King Abdullah II met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital during a visit in which he said that the “only way of finding a political solution in Syria is with the strong role that both [Putin] and Russia play.”
Jordan was also tasked in November by Washington and Moscow with formulating a list of terrorist groups in the war-torn country that would be the target of mutually agreed upon airstrikes by the rival powers currently intervening in the conflict.
An unnamed source in the FSA’s Southern Front told Alaraby Aljadeed that coordination between the two countries would not bode well for rebels in the Daraa province.
“The Southern Front have been aware that the Jordanian authorities are in contact with Russia and possibly the Assad regime to coordinate some issues. But the [implementation] of these contracts may signal the start of a new phase, which could have negative implications,” he said in an interview with the London-based newspaper.
In a further sign that Jordan was shifting stances regarding the course of fighting in Daraa, Syrian National Security Bureau chief Ali Mamlouk allegedly recently visited Amman to discuss the border region.
Al-Quds al-Arabi reported in November that Mamlouk had met with high-ranking officials in Amman during his “important and secret” trip to discuss potential security issues.
The newspaper did not go into detail on what specific matters the Bashar al-Assad regime’s pointman broached, however it said they were related “by necessity” to southern Syria.
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Has Jordan Acquiesced to Assad Regime Offensive in Southern Syria?
Jordan is yet to react publicly to a fresh land assault by Syrian regime forces, backed by Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fighters, against rebel-held towns in southern Syria. The land campaign was launched on December 28 with air support from Russian jets, and has been intensifying since. The governorate of Dara’a, and in particular the strategic town of Sheikh al-Maskeen, has been bombed by the Russian air force on a daily basis since the beginning of the year, in a bid to recapture territories from opposition forces in the south, along borders with Jordan, and in the southwest, close to the cease-fire lines with Israel.
The recent campaign aims at strengthening the bargaining position of the Damascus regime, and its Russian and Iranian allies, ahead of planned negotiations between the government and the opposition later this month.
Russia’s involvement in the campaign has raised questions about an earlier ‘understanding’ reached between King Abdullah of Jordan and President Vladimir Putin not to change the status quo in the south of Syria. The king had met Putin in Moscow on November 25, where it was reported that an agreement with the Kremlin was reached a month earlier to ensure “Russian bombing of targets in southern Syria, which borders the country, does not target Western-backed rebels known as the Southern Front—a grouping it supports as a buffer against the spread of hardline Islamist groups.”
That understanding was dubbed by Jordanian political analyst Mohammad Abu Rumman “a gentleman’s agreement.” He told this author that, according to that deal, Jordan had suspended the work of the Military Operations Command (MOC), an operations room staffed by Arab and Western military forces, including the United States, and “forced its biggest ally, the Southern Front, to halt all military actions.”
The Southern Front, which is largely made up of Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters and other groups, including elements of Jabhat al-Nusra, had managed to push government forces back at least 30 miles to the north. Jordan has managed to build good working relations with the Southern Front in a bid to stem the flow of Syrian refugees and to create a buffer zone between the kingdom and Islamic State militants, also known as ISIS or Daesh.
The recent conflagration in Syria’s south may have triggered a fresh wave of refugees who are now stranded along the Jordan-Syria borders. Jordan’s State Minister for Information Mohammad al-Momani told AFP on January 11 that at least 16,000 Syrian refugees are now in make-shift camps near the border with Syria. Jordan has been criticized for not facilitating the passage of refugees, claiming that they have to go through security screening first.
Abu Rumman said that there are grounds for Jordan’s concerns regarding the latest military offensive in Dara’a. “There is clearly an Iranian-backed scheme to control southern Syria or at least the Houran plains, which could result in the fleeing of one million Syrians to Jordan,” he said. “Clearly this is a bold challenge to Jordan’s national security.” He added that Jordan’s silence reflects the state of confusion at the decision-making level.
But Sultan Hattab, a Jordanian political commentator, disagrees. He said that Jordan’s lack of response means that the kingdom has no problem with the government forces taking over the southern region. He said that “Jordan wants a safe zone in southern Syria and if the Syrian regime takes over then that goal will be met.” He added that such a development might even allow Syrian refugees in Jordan—numbering more than 1.5 million—to begin to return to Dara’a. “Jordan and Russia are coordinating and Amman must have been informed about the latest campaign,” Hattab said. The Russian intervention in Syria has changed Jordan’s perspective on developments inside that country, he added.
Fahd al-Khitan, a Jordanian political analyst, agreed with Hattab that Jordan and Russia are coordinating militarily, adding that Amman and Moscow “are in agreement over the future of southern Syria.” In his view, Jordan has no problem with the return of the regime to the south since “this could result in reconciliation between Amman and Damascus under Russian auspices.”Khitan added that Jordan must have received guarantees from Russia regarding possible changes in the balance of power in southern Syria.
But in spite of weeks of heavy bombing by Russia and bloody confrontations in Sheikh al-Maskeen, which lies on the Damascus-Amman highway, regime forces have not managed to expel opposition fighters or recapture the town. A spokesman for the Southern Front’s Seif al-Sham Brigades told the Financial Times on January 7 that southern Syria “was one of their last cards (MOC), the one area where there was still a functioning relationship between the rebels and the international community.”
Jordanian military expert Mazen al-Qadi blamed the Americans for “lacking a clear vision on Syria,” which has allowed the Russians to change the reality in southern Syria. He told the author that Jordan has managed its borders with Syria as best as it could—preventing the conflict from spreading into the kingdom and hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees at the same time. “But with the weakening of the U.S. position, which resulted in Washington halting weapons supplies from reaching the FSA, Jordan had to cope with such developments,” Qadi said. He said that the “rules of the game” have changed in Syria and it is Russia that is dictating the new rules.
The United States has not commented on the Russian-backed military offensive in southern Syria. King Abdullah, who is in Washington this week, has met with defense officials but news reports did not say if the latest developments in the south were discussed.
Abu Rumman said that Jordan’s perceptions of various aspects of the Syrian conflict have been pragmatic. “In all its dealings with the regime and some opposition groups, Amman maintained flexible relationships,” he said. “But all along it has kept a safety margin regarding its interests in southern Syria through alliances and understandings with the local community and the FSA. Now, with the latest offensives, such alliances and understandings are being tested,” he said.
Throughout the world, people have been shocked by the scenes of starving people in the Madaya concentration camp in southern Syria, besieged by the Assad regime and its allied death-squad Hezbollah (which has invaded Syria from Lebanon). Some 40,000 people are trapped, besieged and starved as a weapon of war by the dictatorship which has used every conceivable means to maintain its power over the last five years; people are reported to be eating grass, insects and cats and dogs.
Yet it appears that many leftists – ie, many opponents of exploitation, oppression and injustice, advocates of a “another world is possible” – believe the main task confronting us is once again to find whatever excuses, whatever obfuscation, whatever mitigation they can on behalf of the tyrannical fascist regime responsible.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, though, they are often as incompetent as they are mendacious. I am referring to a number of allegations about several false images that have published in some media. As examples, I will just use three links that were sent to a list-serve I am involved with, the GreenLeft Discussion Group:
From the Baathist organ El Akhbar: ‘Fake Images of Starvation in Madaya Surfing the Web’ http://el-akhbar.com/en/Fake-Images-Starvation-Madaya-53082/ (while obviously media connected to a fascist state is not leftist media, it is being spread by leftists)
Thus, even if every image published were fake – which would be a problem, certainly, and call into question motivations etc – it wouldn’t alter the facts of what is going on.
The issue of false images
Second, the overwhelming majority of images would appear to be genuine. According to chief official of the UN representative for the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Yacoub El Hillo, “It was at times difficult to determine whether what we were seeing was actually fabricated or exaggerated,” but after stepping foot in Madaya, he confirmed, “It is not. It is not. I am sad to say it is not. These are true stories coming out of Madaya” (http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-12/united-nations-confirm-images-of-starving-children/7084492).
However, it is true that some images have been published which are not from Madaya, whether intentionally or otherwise. Given that the numbers of images coming out of this terrible war are probably in the millions, it is hardly surprising that fake images abound on all sides. The absolute experts on it are the regime and its armies of propaganda outlets, spin doctors, death squad allies and the Russian and Iranian Fox News equivalents. The difference is that, whereas in the case of Madaya, it appears a few fake images have slipped into the story of a genuine tragedy, the regime’s propagandists sometimes create “events” that are backed in their entirety by nothing other than fake images.
One good example was the ‘Adra massacre’ of late 2013. According to the Putinist spin machine RT, the militia Jaysh Islam, based in the bombed out, besieged, Gaza-Plus ghetto of East Ghoutta, invaded Adra, another Damascus suburb held by the regime, and carried out a particularly gruesome massacre of some 80 people of the largely minority (Christian and Alawite) population. The problem is that the entire “evidence” produced for this “massacre” was a bunch of images all of which were fake (see: http://lopforum.tumblr.com/post/70411153632/alleged-adra-massacre-collated-media).
In comparison with this level of dedication to manufacturing “facts” out of air, the relative handful of fake images produced about Madaya, a crisis that cannot be denied, simply does not compare (although such unprofessionalism and sloppiness is not alright – especially because it gives the tyrant-lovers an opening to divert attention from the real issue of mass starvation to their conspiracies and irrelevancies).
But now let’s look at the three stories by Assad-lovers who believe finding fault with the oppressed and terrorised is more important than condemning the oppressors and terrorisers.
The article ‘Madaya: BBC caught recycling footage from Yarmouk’ (https://thewallwillfall.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/madaya-bbc-caught-recycling-footage-from-yarmouk/) shows that the BBC used footage from the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in southern Damascus in June 2014 in a video about Madaya. Yes, clearly a mistake was made. The article shows both youtubes with the image of a young man shouting about the situation. However, on the Madaya video, this scene from Yarmouk lasts a total of two seconds. The rest would appear to be Madaya.
Why would the BBC deliberately fake one image for a mere two seconds, “to build the climate for war on Syria” as the Assadists would have us believe, when they have plenty of genuine footage, especially given that the genuine footage is so much more harrowing than a healthy-looking young man shouting? Surely this is just minor incompetence?
The Baathist el-Akhbar source (‘Fake Images of Starvation in Madaya Surfing the Web’ http://el-akhbar.com/en/Fake-Images-Starvation-Madaya-53082/) provides several images which were taken at other times. It begins with one about a smiling young girl which some twitter sites claimed is a Madaya resident:
“This photo that has gone viral on the web to win the world sympathy and turn it into a global condemnation of the Damascus government has been taken in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and belongs to a Syrian refugee covered in an al-Arabiya news channel report in January 2014, where she was called Syria’s Mona Liza.”
It is certainly incompetent to post a photo previously run in al-Arabiya and claim it is something else. But although Akhbar claims the photo has “gone viral,” I must say that I had not seen it until now on countless pages about the Madaya crisis. There have been a number of photos of starving people, including children, that have gone viral, but none of them that I’ve seen a lot of are among these handful of fakes.
One interesting general point about all this is that Akhbar shows that this one is from Jordan’s massive Zaatari refugee camp, which houses 100,000 who have fled Assad’s terror; the starving boy she is being juxtaposed against (the fake image claims they are the same person) is actually from East Ghoutta; another image of a starving man is from East Ghoutta; and a starving baby is also from Yarmouk. Incompetent, even deliberately, perhaps; but what these Baathist mouthpieces try to skip over is that the reason photos of starving children and adults can be found in Yarmouk and East Ghoutta is the same reason that abundant images are available from Madaya: yes, the Assad regime also bombs, besieges and starves East Ghoutta, Yarmouk, Moadamiyah, Daraya and countless other poverty-stricken southern communities which resist its rule.
For the apologists, mixing up which children are being starved to death by Assad is a much bigger crime than starving all of them to death. For East Ghoutta, Akhbar claims the man “died of cold, malnutrition and disease,” but of course it does not tell us why. With the baby in Yarmouk, it says “Palestinians have long been taken hostage by the ISIL and al-Nusra Front terrorists.” However, the photo was taken on March 31, 2014, according to Akhbar, yet ISIS did not invade the camp until April 2015! The starvation, as is well-known, was due to the long-term Assad-regime starvation siege on Yarmouk, nothing to with ISIS. Baathist organs are thus just as incompetent as those they are critiquing, and in this instance, far more malicious. Nevertheless, this Akhbar article at least has some real exposure, unlike 2 seconds of a 2 minute video, as in the first source.
The third source, Cunningham’s article (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43915.htm), is mostly just his wild Baathist propaganda (he should at least be credited for his good imagination), but it does touch on the question of images, and gets it all wrong. Cunningham begins:
“Take the image of the malnourished little girl whom the BBC and the British Independent newspaper claimed was from the Syrian town of Madaya. Turns out the girl is from south Lebanon. Her name is Marianna Mazeh. The photo published widely this week by Western media is from three years ago … Turns out too that Marianna’s family are infuriated that her forlorn image is being circulated for propaganda purposes. “I live in Tayr Filsey [south Lebanon], not Madaya, and I am fine,” the little girl told Al Manar news agency.” [go to Cunningham’s article for embedded links].
Trouble is, the image that Cunningham shows at the BBC and Independent links – a baby in a hood that has indeed “gone viral” and is seen on a great many Madaya solidarity pages – is not the same image as the one that “Marianna” claims to be in his other link. “Marianna” in Lebanon claims to be the same smiling young girl that Akhbar claims is a Syrian refugee in Jordan – so while Cunnningham gets his images all wrong, Cunningham and Akhbar make rival claims about who the smiling girl is.
Cunningham assures us that “she is now aged seven and apparently has made a full recovery from her earlier emaciated condition,” noting “the reason for her previous illness is not clear.” Of course, the smiling girl photo was not of an emaciated girl with an illness.
Regarding the claim that “Syria’s Mona Liza” is actually “Marianna” from Lebanon, the link provided is a video of Marianna and her father speaking. Is it the same girl several years later? While not impossible for a face to change shape, it is unusual for eye colour to change from green to dark. At no time in the video does Marianna or her family show a photo of Marianna several years earlier, except a blurry one within a family photo, still less a copy of the actual photo which they claim to have taken.
Like much else on the Internet, therefore, the Baathist exercise in disproving either propaganda or incompetence turns out to be propaganda and incompetence. Meanwhile, Assad’s war against the southern communities goes on.
The Political Context
Around a million communities throughout Syria are currently under siege, and of 52 active sieges, 49 are imposed by the regime, 2 by rebels in Idlib (of the Shiite villages Foua and Kefraya) and one – Deir Ezzor – by both ISIS and the regime (https://breakthesieges.org/en).
The context of Assad’s starvation siege of Madaya is his stepped up war against the working-class communities around Damascus which have been in revolt against the regime since the outset, and stepped up Russian bombing all over the south (where, needless to say, Russia engages in its “war on ISIS” in a region where ISIS does not exist, like elsewhere). In the context of the current flurry of imperialist-driven “peace” discussions, the regime is going out of its way to consolidate its position with an all-out carpet-bombing and starve-till-you-submit campaign.
It is deeply ironic that the pro-Baathist propaganda machines claim the “propaganda” around Madaya is, yet again, you guessed it, part of some imaginary imperialist war-drive against the nice “elected, secular government” of Assad (a particularly egregious example of this pro-Baathist propaganda, oblivious to facts is this dreadful piece: (http://blackagendareport.com/madaya_victim_of_war_against_syria). These people, who presumably still haven’t noticed some 16 months of actual US bombing of Syria – bombing everyone except Assad – have reality turned on its head.
The US, European and Russian Vienna “peace process” aims to get the regime and selected opposition representatives to form a “transitional” authority, which would keep Assad in power till at least March 2017, after which “elections” would allegedly take place. The US has now explicitly accepted this timetable for Assad to remain in power another 14 months (http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-us-sees-assad-staying-syria-until-march-081207181–politics.html).
In the meantime, this “transitional” regime, and Russia, the US and various other countries currently bombing Syria, would together launch an all-out war against ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and any other opposition militias deemed to be “terrorists” by these countries. An initial list drawn up by the Jordanian monarchy included the names of 160 rebel groups (http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordan-presents-list-160-terrorist-groups-syria-international-council-2106399989)!
In the initial discussions, the US and other western governments pushed for a 6-month “transition” period in which Assad would remain in power (note that even this 6 months, or even one day, was rejected out of hand by the every wing of the opposition, who agreed to negotiate with Assad only on the basis that he resign at the beginning, not end, of the transitional regime).
However, as analyst Scott Lucas explains, these earlier goals to get the process moving earlier (and finished earlier) were “ unlikely to be met amid disputes over which opposition and rebel groups are acceptable, continued Russian and regime bombing of opposition areas and assassination of rebel commanders, and Assad’s rejection of discussions until “terrorists” have been defeated” (http://eaworldview.com/2016/01/syria-daily-us-plan-assad-stays-until-march-2017-in-political-transition/).
Put another way, once the regime and Russia responded to these meekly put western proposals by continuing this bombing, assassinating, rejecting and so on, the US and the West decided, OK, let’s give Assad an extra year to finish bombing the opposition to bits, assassinating more leaders, starving more communities to death, torturing to death thousands more, and hence properly defeating all the troublesome “terrorists” (ie, everyone fighting Assad), who, after all, are no more loved by the US than they are by Assad and Russia.
In particular, given that the opposition rejects the US-EU-Russian blueprint for Assad to remain in power throughout the alleged “transition” period, it seems most likely that imperialist rulers have decided to look the other way while Assad bombs and starves their support base into submission; and so given this extra year or more by the “international community” to continue bombing all these “terrorists” (aged from under one to 100 or more), Assad is now going for broke to fulfill this international expectation.
Commenting on the delays by the UN and other international organisations, Ahmed Moadamaini, representative of the Coordination Committees of Moadamiyeh, another southern town under siege, claimed “quite frankly, today the street no longer trusts the United Nations and considers them partners in these crimes.” In reference to the international plan to keep Assad in power till 2017, Ahmed further noted that:
“After all this misery, we are sure that the UN, in one way or another, doesn’t want Assad to leave… so they do not make a move to stop this disaster taking place and to try him for war crimes.”
UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura claims this alleged “political solution” will be facilitated by “local ceasefires” in bombarded and besieged areas, but, according to reporter Imogen Lambert, “Syrians say that this forces them out of their homes and cities, and allows Assad to gain further ground in opposition-held regions,” giving as an example the Assad regime “issuing strongly worded threats to Moadamiyeh that the city will be annihilated if locals do not immediately evacuate, with sieges intended to put more pressure on locals to accept deals.”
For those less concerned with whitewashing fascist regimes and being apologists of the use of starvation as a war tactic, the slogan “drop food, not bombs” became a rallying cry:
Meanwhile, the international campaign over the starvation in Madaya did score an important success, in forcing the regime to allow the UN to bring in food, thus temporarily breaking the starvation siege. For all the nonsense talk about a “propaganda” campaign uses fake images to beat the war drums, the reality is that the campaign brought food to children’s stomachs (though of course this is only temporary and not nearly enough; people are still dying of starvation).
Meanwhile, a group of Lebanese Shiites published a document rejecting the siege and Hezbollah’s role in the war in Syria, rightly comparing the “siege logic” to tactics used by Israelis against Arabs and Palestinians for decades, and they condemned the sectarian displacement of population in Syria, declaring full solidarity with the Syrians demanding freedom. They reject Hezbollah’s claim to be acting on behalf of the Shia (https://twitter.com/mustafafahs/status/685527418040270848)
Madaya, and the rebel-besieged towns in Idlib
While a small victory has been won, it must be noted that this aid had been held up despite the UN knowing for some time how desperate the situation was. As the ‘Break the Sieges’ site (https://breakthesieges.org/en) explains:
“The UN is choosing not to deliver aid to the besieged areas in Syria without the Assad regime’s permission. This is permission the UN does not even need, since Security Council resolutions 2165, 2191 and 2258 authorise it to deliver aid without the regime’s consent. Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles are being created as people starve, in some cases just a few minutes away from stockpiled aid.”
It seems that one reason for this was to appear so-called “even-handed,” by delaying aid to Madaya until its arrival could be synchronised with aid arriving in the besieged Shiite towns Fuaa and Kefraya in Idlib. While this may sound very fair, the reality was that people were starving to death in Madaya by the day, as delays continued, while this was not the case in Fuaa and Kefraya.
And here may be the place to say a few words about these sieges. The Baathist cheer squad has made much of these two sieges, claiming they allegedly don’t get the same coverage as the 49 sieges the regime is imposing on opposition communities.
Fuaa and Kefraya are not simply “Shiite villages;” they are armed regime outposts in opposition-controlled Idlib province. Surrounded by rebel-held territory, it is hardly surprising that the rebels launch offensives against regime-held territory. Irresponsible claims that they are targeted “because they are Shiite,” and the rebels of course “hate the Shia,” ignoring the fact that they are regime camps, are irresponsible. Moreover, one reason the rebels haven’t prioritised taking these towns, despite being vulnerable and completely surrounded, and instead have pushed south into (mostly Sunni) south Idlib and Hama province, is precisely because of opposition to the rebels within these towns.
However, what this has meant is that the rebels have tended to increase or reduce the pressure on these towns in response to greater or lesser regime pressure on besieged towns in the south, such as Zabadani and Madaya. By thus using them as bargaining chips, however, the rebel leadership is effectively locking in the sectarian logic pushed by the regime. A rebel leadership with a less sectarian outlook than some of the actors in Idlib (especially Nusra) would make genuine anti-sectarian overtures to the Shia communities in these two towns, like the deals they have done with small Alawite communities in neighbouring Hama (http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/even-assads-supporters-are-baulking-now#full – notably, Nusra is less prominent in the Hama front, which is dominated by Ahrar al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army).
Actually, there is some evidence that non-Nusra rebels, even Ahrar al-Sham, have tried to resist the sectarian logic driven by the regime and its Iranian backers. Notably, during the negotiations to end the regime-Hezbollah siege of Zabadani (a town nearby Madaya) several months back, where Ahrar al-Sham negotiated on behalf of the Zabadani population directly with Iran, the Iranian-Hezbollah demand was for a complete population swap between Zabdani and Fuaa/Kefraya. Ahrar, backed by other rebel groups, rejected this plan for mutual sectarian cleansing.
That said, however, there is a difference between legitimate military offensives and actual siege. The difference is that in a siege, civilians are not allowed in and out to obtain food and so on, under threat of violence. If the Idlib rebels are imposing actual siege on Foua and Kefraya, then this must be condemned like all sieges (and of course, it is condemned by every international declaration on Syria; see Amnesty’s even-handed condemnation of both sides: https://t.co/eune0Fd7I8).
An important difference exists, however, related to the question of power in Syria. Only the Syrian regime has an airforce. Apart from using it to bomb the country back to the Stone Age, it also uses it to drop food – and arms – to the besieged communities in Idlib. This is one reason people are not starving in these two towns, though the situation is reportedly grim. In addition, the Syrian Red Cross entered Fuaa and Kefraya in December, with the rebels’ authorisation, and evacuated 450 wounded pro-Assad fighters and civilians as part of the final Zabadani deal (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-evacuation-idUSKBN0UB0DE20151228).
Moreover, though further research may be necessary, evidence suggests that “the siege in the two Idlib towns apparently was a lot looser … “In Madaya, food prices have hit astronomical levels with rice costing a staggering $256 per kilogram, according to information collected by the Syrian American Medical Society. In Fuaa and Kefraya, rice cost $1.25 per kilogram prior to this week’s deliveries, while tomatoes cost under a dollar, and potatoes about 50 cents each, according to residents there who were in direct communication with besieged residents in Zabadani … Unlike Madaya, where the siege was enforced by snipers and landmines, some goods could apparently still reach the two Idlib villages” (http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/15/u-n-knew-for-months-madaya-was-starving-syria-assad/).
In contrast, it is not only in Madaya, but also in other towns besieged by Assad – towns that haven’t got a mention during the Madaya crisis, such as Moadamiyah – that people are dying of starvation. Thus the mantra of being “even-handedly” giving focus to rebel-besieged towns where no one is starving had the effect of keeping the focus away from other towns where they are.
All sieges must end. But when people are being deliberately starved to death, anyone claiming to believe in justice and to oppose oppression knows what the priorities are. ‘Drop food, not bombs’ to break the siege was a slogan that arose from genuine solidarity, and the very heart of the meaning of being ‘on the left’ is solidarity – if the word is to have any meaning at all.
The Russians have targeted the Free Syrian Army (FSA) nearly all the time, and have mostly bombed provinces with zero ISIS presence, except when slaughtering civilians in Raqqa; and all this to aid a fascist regime that has already been bombing its entire country into a moonscape for years; in just a three-week period in November, regime bombing killed 338 and injured 1607 people in an offensive in the sprawling Damascus outer suburbs of East Ghoutta alone (http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2015/11/20/syrian-regime-offensive-in-eastern-ghouta-has-killed-338), just one of many theatres of the war; an exterminationist regime.
As such there can be nothing but wild cheers from Syrians for the downing of a warplane that has been slaughtering their children. The fact that these weeks and weeks of the most grueling, the most overt, targeting of civilians by an invading army of a superpower has only resulted in a little chiding by Russia’s imperialist partners, and complete indifference (if not support) by the imperial left; yet when one of the warplanes engaged in this mass homicide comes down it is treated as a big deal; is testament to the sick morality of the imperialist world order, including some of those within it imagining they are not part of it.
But questions of celebration and hypocrisy aside, it is useful to look at some specifics here. And I do not mean the irrelevance of which side of the Syrian-Turkish border the Russian killer plane was technically flying in when shot down; that discussion assumes it had the right to be on the Syrian side of the border in the first place. “Anti-imperialists” who join in this imperialist discussion ought to take a look at a map, and notice that Syria in fact is not part of Russia; actually, it is a significant distance away. Therefore there’s little point in a discussion about who was technically right or wrong, since by any standard, Russia did not have the “right” to be flying around killing Syrian people in the first place.
If, for example, it were American warplanes flying around and carpet-bombing a country far from home – Iraq for example – and one got shot down right on the Iranian border, with a dispute over which set of square inches the plane was in, I imagine we would judge the American and the Iranian actions somewhat differently, and rightly so.
Some estimates of the flight across the border are higher. According to Telegraph Middle East correspondents Louisa Loveluck and Richard Spencer, “In recent days, thousands of civilians have fled over the border, saying they feared Russian bombing raids in support of regime forces” (http://www.vox.com/2015/11/24/9792830/russia-plane-turkmen).
One Turkish official, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper, declared that “Turkey won’t be indifferent to attacks targeting the life security of Turkmen” (http://www.vox.com/2015/11/24/9792830/russia-plane-turkmen) – indicating that the downing of the Russian plane may have had more to do with the context of this slaughter than with the boring “legal” formalities.
Most ethnic Turkmen brigades in Syria are affiliated to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), so it is not surprising that Russia has been bombing them, since the FSA has been Russia’s main target in its alleged intervention “against ISIS.” To state the obvious, the province the Russian plane was bombing, Latakia, has had no ISIS presence whatsoever since the FSA drove them out root and branch in early 2014 (when the FSA drove ISIS out of about half of Syria).
However, there are a couple of side issues raised by this incident. One was the shooting of one of the pilots who was parachuting to the ground after the plane was hit; the other was the fact that the fighter who shot him, Alparslan Çelik, was not an ethnic Turkman, but a Turkish fascist, the son of a Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) mayor (http://anfenglish.com/news/turkmen-commander-turns-out-to-be-turkish-nationalist).
The latter detail is somewhat odd, given that the MHP supports the Assad regime, as we will see below; but first let’s examine the shooting issue, and the state of Turkmen militias in Syria.
Shooting pilots – and a little digression about Vietnam
Decades ago, US Republican leader John McCain was flying around in an American warplane bombing and killing Vietnamese peasants, that is, engaged in the same kind of activities as the Russian airforce is in Syria. Vietnamese revolutionaries shot him down, using anti-aircraft weapons supplied by the Soviet Union – ie the kind of weapons denied to the Syrian revolutionaries by the US even after years of aerial genocide – and took him prisoner.
McCain spent time in the famous “Hanoi Hilton,” as American POWs nicknamed the main POW prison. For years McCain complained that his Vietnamese captors had tortured him (and as a result McCain, to his credit, was one of the few semi-neocon Republicans who was critical of the Bush regime’s practice of torturing Islamist prisoners, if inconsistently, unlike Bashar Assad who actively participated in the US “rendition” program). I have no real information on whether this was true or not; obviously, if true, then, like all torture it should be condemned.
Yet for anyone whose sympathies were with the oppressed, the terrorised, McCain’s alleged plight could garner little sympathy; when I lived in Vietnam for some years, a common retort by anti-war Americans now living in Vietnam – often working to help Vietnam overcome the ongoing legacies of US genocide such as Agent Orange and unexploded ordinance – regarding McCain’s whinging decades later, was that “he should be happy he wasn’t shot as a terrorist” as soon as he was captured.
Of course, the Vietnamese army, despite the genocide being inflicted on them for years by the US, did not do this; it did the right thing and kept him alive till the war ended. While someone bombing people from the sky arguably is an aerial terrorist, at the end of the day the individual remains an employee in uniform of the political, economic and military regime who sent him there on behalf of a ruling class that doesn’t put their own children in that kind of danger. But it would surely not be difficult to imagine the terrorised people below – whether in Vietnam then or Syria today – wanting to take the aerial terrorist apart.
So while the shooting down of a warplane is something I consider to be a humanitarian action (in pretty much all circumstances), the shooting of a parachuting pilot is to be condemned, and is considered a war crime. Notably, it violates stated policy of the Free Syrian Army and of the Syrian Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary Forces (usually called “Syrian Coalition”, the exile-based political opposition leadership with which the FSA is vaguely associated with).
Therefore, it somewhat makes sense to find out that the action was carried out by a fascist from Turkey rather than a local Turkman FSA brigade. But that then raises the question of who are the Turkman brigades, and are they all, uniformly, a bunch of fascist ‘Grey Wolves’ as they are being slandered by various racists across the internet?
The Turkmen and their brigades
There were up to 200,000 Turkmen in Syria before the revolution, but the Assadist aerial slaughter has forced around 90 percent of them over the border into Turkey (a reasonable introduction to the Turkmen issue can be found at: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/24/9792830/russia-plane-turkmen). Turkmen have been involved in the revolution from the outset, in particular, their hostility to the fascistic “Arab” policy of the Baathist regime, which banned their language, being an important factor in addition to the fact that they are also Syrians rising against a dictatorship, like others.
There are many Turkmen brigades of various political shades. There are 8 Turkmen brigades listed as affiliated to the National Coalition (so in this sense we can broadly call them FSA): Sultan Mohamad Al Fatih Brigade, Sultan Suleiman Brigade, Seljuk Brigade, Sultan Selim Brigade, Anwar Al Haq Batallion, Sultan Murad Brigade, Ashab Al Yamin Brigade, Jabal Al Turkman Brigade (http://en.etilaf.org/coalition-components/national-blocks/turkman-component-of-the-syrian-national-coalition.html), along with various Turkmen political organisations which have seats in the Coalition’s parliament. They support the Coalition’s program of the unity of Syria with equal rights for all ethnic and religious minorities. These forces are also organised under the Turkish National Assembly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Turkmen_Assembly), which has declared: “Regardless of any ethnic or religious identity, a future in which everybody can be able to live commonly under the identity of Syrian is targeted in the future of Syria” (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=238&nid=36998).
Thus assertions that all Turkmen brigades are either ‘Grey Wolves” or creations of the Turkish regime’s MIT intelligence agency are irresponsible essentialist claims that deny that Turkmen are just as capable as anyone else of running their own organisations and having a variety of political views.
It is hardly surprising that the MHP, the main ultra-rightist, opposition party in Turkey, associated with the infamous Grey Wolves fascistic militia, would try to get involved and spread their Turko-chauvinist poison where ethnic Turkmen exist; they probably see such areas – especially northern Latakia – as part of a ‘Greater Turkey’, a view sharply at odds with the Turkmen organisations that have been in National Coalition since the outset. Possibly the shooting of the parachuting pilot may have been a deliberate stunt to gain some nationalist/extremist credibility among the Turkmen communities being massacred from on high.
However, this particular brigade is not representative of Turkmen fighters and brigades in Syria, and still less does it invalidate their struggle against the regime and their struggle to survive under regime and Russian bombing.
The MHP in Turkey: Send the refugees back to Assad!
The irony of the nationalistic MHP seeming to be onside with forces fighting the Russian invasion in a place where ethnic Turkmen exist is that in the bigger picture, the MHP calls for the expulsion of the 2 million Syrian refugees from Turkey and has supported Assad, and condemned the AKP’s anti-Assad Syria policy, since the outset!
Just before the mid-year Turkish elections, the MHP’s Gaziantep deputy candidate Ümit Özdağ tweeted regarding the Syrian refugees: “The 500,000 Syrians will go, 500,000 tourists will come to Gaziantep.” Talking to the Doğan Media Group right before the elections, the new MHP deputy said the MHP would start negotiations with Assad when they come to power in order to “cut the main logistics behind jihadists who are supported by the U.S.” (http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/merve-sebnem-oruc/2015/06/10/what-will-turkish-elections-bring-for-syrian-refugees).
“Jihadists supported by the US undermining Assad!” Sounds like the views of a lot of the imperial left!
Unfortunately, the mainstream Kemalist CHP are hardly better:
“The chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, included an election promise in his campaign speeches, vowing that the CHP will send Syrians back to their homeland if his party comes to power. The CHP, which has supported the Assad regime and has not cut its relations with Damascus yet, has always accused the government of plotting against the Syrian regime. According to the CHP, Syrians were not actually refugees, but were brought to Turkey to destabilize the country.”
The MHP, in other words, not only supports Assad – except against the Turkmen – but has much ideologically in common with the Syrian Baath party. Just as German and French fascists might argue about Alsace-Lorraine, so Assad and the MHP might argue about Turkmen regions.
So while the AKP soft-Islamist regime has opportunistically moved closer to the MHP’s position on the Kurds over the last year (away from its own policy of the “peace process”), the essential difference between the contrasting rightist ideologies of nationalism/fascism and Islamism needs to be understood, to understand why the Islamist AKP can welcome 2 million Syrian Arabs as refugees, and be influenced enough by their catastrophe to want to oust Assad, whereas the ethno-chauvinist MHP wants to return the Arab untermenschen, who they denounce as either criminals or “jihadists”, to Assad’s tender mercies.
And of course none of that justifies the AKP’s own resumption of the Turkish state’s war against the Kurds, which seems at least in part to have been driven by the most narrowly opportunistic political concerns between the two Turkish elections. But beggars can’t be choosers – if Turkey, overwhelmed by 2 million refugees from the Syrian apocalypse, needs to get rid of Assad to help deal with this problem, so much the better for the Syrian rebels, as long as they don’t become mere tools for Turkish policy – something there is no evidence for.
Meanwhile, for Kurdish supporters finding a bad taste in their mouths if anything positive is said about any Turkish action, they might ponder how they would react if a Turkish warplane bombing Kurds in eastern Turkey were brought down by the PKK. Consistency has much to be said for it.
Conclusion
Of course this has been something of a digression from the issue here. Since the incident, Russia has taken revenge on the people of Syria by stepping up its terror, bombing intensively along the Turkish borders of Latakia, Idlib and Aleppo, all regions with zero ISIS presence, indeed it has launched an intensive bombing campaign against the Syrian rebels in the Azaz region of northern Aleppo, including bombing Turkish aid trucks (http://eaworldview.com/2015/11/syria-daily-russia-hits-back-with-bombing-of-turkish-aid-trucks/). Azaz is the one point in Aleppo where the Syrian rebels have a border crossing into Turkey, and where they are in confrontation with ISIS-held territory just to their east. In fact, while Russia has been bombing the rebels in Azaz in early December, ISIS has also been attacking them, and seized the town of Kafrah from the rebels, essentially under Russian air cover (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/566317-isis-advances-in-flashpoint-north-aleppo).
Let me just say that again for anyone *still* spouting nonsense about Russia “fighting ISIS” – Russia is bombing the anti-Assad, anti-ISIS rebels of northern Aleppo, those who have held the main confrontation line with ISIS in the region for two years, while ISIS is attacking those same rebels, with no Russian retaliation. Russia is bombing the rebels in concert with ISIS; but this should not be as surprising as it sounds, because the Assad regime has been doing precisely the same thing the last two years in that region.
Where this ends is unclear. The US is not making any noise about Russia’s Azaz campaign; several days ago, the US demanded that Turkey close its border, and some speculate that the aim now is to allow Russia to forcefully close the border, even if it means temporarily using ISIS, and choke off the rebels; then the US and Russia could join forces to remove ISIS from the border, without the complication of the FSA taking over, who would use it as a base to fight the regime (which ISIS in that region does not do). The picture should emerge more clearly in the next few days.
But to end where we began, with the issue of warplanes and civilian lives; there is a good argument that all air war is almost by definition a war crime. Even genuine concern for civilian life – something the Russian airforce clearly has none of – is almost never any guarantee. For years, Syrians have called for anti-aircraft weapons, to make their own DIY no-fly zone; for years well-known supplies of manpads, shoulder fired anti-aircrafts, have been blocked by the US, fearful that they may actually let the rebels win, which is against US policy, rather than merely hold a little ground. Even when rebels try to get manpads outside official channels, the US remains vigilant; “at least four major Syrian armed opposition groups have tried in recent years to independently purchase manpads on the black market,” according to conversations their leaders had with Charles Lister, yet “somehow, the Americans found out and our purchase was blocked” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-lister/russias-intervention-in-s_b_8350266.html?ir=Australia).
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 that’s why, just as when Vietnamese brought down American warplanes, when any Assadist or Russian warplane is shot down in Syria, it is one small victory for humanity.
As the gradual Russian build-up went ahead in Syria, bolstering the regime of Bashar Assad, we saw US leaders claiming to have some concerns, while fundamentally welcoming Russia as a new “constructive” ally in the allegedly “anti-terrorist” coalition. US Defense Secretary, John Kerry, declared Russia was largely engaged in “self-protection” of its forces already there (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34329961).
On September 30, this turned into flagrant aggression with devastating Russian airstrikes launched against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Homs, Hama, Idlib and Daraa – all major centres of the revolution, where there is no ISIS – killing dozens of civilians on the first day. In response, Kerry announced that “If Russia’s actions reflect a genuine commitment to defeat ISIL, we are prepared to welcome those efforts” (https://twitter.com/JohnKerry/status/649290920739926016), while issuing a joint statement with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov, about their mutual interest in “fighting ISIS” and the need for US and Russian air forces to “deconflict.” The US would agree to the Russian bombing “with conditions” (http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2015/9/30/us-agrees-to-conditional-russian-deployment-in-syria).
However, while the US position is hardly surprising to those of us closely watching Syria, some may have been more surprised by the even more emphatic welcome given to the Russian moves by Israel.
Israel’s Walla website stressed the importance of the coordination within electronic cyberspace, as “the Israeli navy is keen to ensure that the electronic activities of Russian aircrafts and ships do not have a negative impact on strategic Israeli submarines that are active opposite to the Syrian and Lebanese coasts,” which “carry out espionage operations and collect intelligence in addition to transporting special units that carry out operations” outside Israel’s borders (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/21318-russian-israeli-coordination-in-syria-includes-air-sea-land-and-cyperspace).
Putin made good on his word just before Russian bombing began:
“Russian government officials made contact with Yossi Cohen, the national security adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as with senior figures in the Israeli defense establishment about an hour before the Russian attack, saying that Russian planes would shortly thereafter be bombing targets in Syria … In a briefing with reporters in New York after his meeting on Monday with U.S. President Barack Obama, Putin acknowledged that Israel has security interests in Syria, and that he respects this” (http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.678247).
There can be little doubt about Israel’s hostility to the Syrian people’s uprising against the Assad tyranny when it offers such a degree of collaboration with the armed forces of the imperial state that has done more than anyone to bolster the Assad regime. Yet, Netanyahu’s rhetoric remains at least partly directed against Iran/Hezbollah as well. But isn’t Russia allied to Iran, they being the two key allies of Assad’s regime? So how to understand such contradictions?
Israel would not have reacted to a massive Iranian build-up in nearby Syria by making some polite rumblings of disquiet for a few days, and followed it with a trip of top IDF generals to Tehran to discuss aerial coordination and intelligence sharing, surely?
No, although before one declares that, on the contrary, Israel would have launched WWIII over that, let’s remember that there already has been a massive Iranian build-up in Syria over the last two years. Iran is the major occupying armed force in Syria, to the point that the Assad regime has almost become an Iranian colony. To the point, in fact, that there are open rifts within the regime over this, and probably even Assad himself feels the need for some room to manoeuvre (see this article on this question: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syria-leader-assad-seeks-russian-protection-from-ally-iran-a-1056263.html).
And, no, Israel hasn’t begun WWIII, but the massive Iranian build-up has been enough to shift Israel’s position from the solidly pro-Assad position it held in 2011-2013 to a more “both sides kill each other” position in 2013-2015, combined with taking potshots on Hezbollah forces when they operate in the far south, close to the Israeli-stolen Golan Heights (but quite pointedly, nowhere else in Syria).
Therefore, the marked contrast between Israel’s welcome of Russian intervention and its anti-Iran rhetoric tells us, once again, that Assad’s regime is not the problem for Israel.
Israel, Russia, Iran: Points of Agreement
Let me put it right out there in a way many people will say is just wrong: Iran, Russia and Israel have the same fundamental view on Syria.
Of course, Iran and Israel haven’t much looked like they do over 2013-2015. That’s because Israel and Iran have a clash over the broader region, which then gets partly played out in Syria when Iranian proxy forces (eg Hezbollah) get close to the stolen Golan, or when Iranian missiles are getting moved across Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But that’s not really about Syria, or Assad, as such; that’s about Assad’s survival becoming increasingly dependent on the Iranian occupation.
So what do I mean the three countries, including two declared enemies, “agree” on Syria?
Basically, Plan A is that the the Assad regime must be preserved, and if possible restored to control over larger areas of Syria, as the power to look after their interests in Syria. These interests include, for Russia, its Mediterranean naval bases in Tartous on the north coast; for Iran, its connection to Hezbollah in Lebanon via the Qalamoun region between the Lebanese border and Damascus; for Israel, restoration of Assad to his role as best border cop protecting Israel’s control over the Golan.
More generally, all three are threatened by a revolutionary uprising dominated by the largely Sunni Arab masses of Syria, but then again, so are the Gulf states, Turkey, US imperialism etc, without such specific interests; and all three, like their mutual friend al-Sisi of Egypt, are particularly good at using “anti-jihadist” language to justify this stance.
However, if this is impossible, then Plan B calls for the creation of an Alawite-dominated statelet (even if unofficial), consisting of the heavily Alawite coastal provinces (Latakia and Tartous) through the Lebanese border region (Homs and the Qalamoun) down to Damascus. Such a sectarian partition would aim to keep the “great unwashed” Sunni masses of “jihadists” (ie, the worker-peasant Sunni Arab majority, the backbone of the revolution) at bay behind defensible lines.
Such a statelet would serve the key Iranian interest, which is centred on the Qalamoun, and the key Russian interest, which is centred on the coast. But if it didn’t reach beyond Damascus down to the Golan “border,” it would not be able to serve the key Israeli interest.
While Israel has relied on a pliable Assad to not fire a single shot on the stolen Golan for 40 years, and to prevent Palestinians or anyone else getting near the “border,” the reality now is that Assad is unable to re-take control of Daraa and Quneitra provinces (those adjoining the Golan); and he can only even try with the help of Iran/Hezbollah, in precisely the part of Syria Israel doesn’t want them, creating a clear dilemma for these two “non-allied allies.”
However, for Israel, this idea a sectarian Alawite statelet faced against the bulk of the Arab masses – similar to the sectarian Christian-dominated Lebanese state for decades, and similar to itself – has been a long-term option. For example, the Jerusalem Post in 2011 wrote that “the result would be the formation of a bloc of states in the western Levant which would share the common interest of avoiding Sunni domination. For the first time, Israel would have actual state allies in the region, as opposed to temporary peace treaties” (http://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/The-Alawites-and-Israel). This echoed a view expressed by US geopolitical strategist Robert Kaplan two decades earlier: (http://www.fairobserver.com/article/could-demise-assad-lead-israel-alawite-alliance).
And since Iranian domination of the region is proceeding on the basis of sectarian conflict, cutting out an Alawite-dominated statelet in part of Syria is precisely an Iranian plan as well. With the difference that, unlike Israel, Iran is actually able to make it happen, with its prominent role in the massive sectarian cleansing of the Qalamoun region which connects Damascus to the Lebanese border, and of the Homs province connecting this to the Alawite coast (and thus resulting in 1.1 million refugees in Lebanon). The role of Hezbollah in the recent two-month Assadist siege of Zabadani (http://www.syriauk.org/2015/08/the-cleansing-of-zabadani.html) – the first town liberated and run by the FSA in 2012 – and the role of Iran in leading “ceasefire” talks on behalf of the regime, that involved an exchange of populations – ie completion of the ethnic cleansing of Qalamoun – makes this Iranian strategy clear (http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=73098).
Behind the Israel-Iran conflict
The problem being, of course, that this makes – *at least for now* – this cleansed statelet an Iranian rather than an Israeli asset. The “enmity” in this case expresses itself in competition over hegemony within such schemes of sectarian statelet creation.
However, one might still ask – if both Israel and Iran have a policy of uprooting and “cleansing” millions of Arabs as they strive to dominate the region, and since they are effectively separated from each other by the mass of largely Sunni Arab humanity that they both see as Untermenschen, why can they not be allies rather than competitors in this?
For some, that is easy: they believe, comic-book-style, that Iran, despite its class nature as a brutal capitalist tyranny, is motivated by anti-imperialist intentions, and aims to use Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israel until Jerusalem and the Palestinians are liberated (even those less sure about such motivations believe this Iranian quest for liberation is a remaining result of the “forever deepening and broadening Iranian revolution” some half a century or so ago). And the Netanyahu-type reactionary populists running Israel pretend to be in full agreement with these starry-eyed leftist admirers of reactionary mullahs. But now, moving beyond the realm of fantasy.
I’ve discussed this issue recently (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/the-syrian-war-israel-hezbollah-and-the-us-iran-romance-is-israel-changing-its-view-on-the-war/), and my basic view is that the Zionist and Iranian theocratic projects both need the “great enemy” of each other to justify themselves. Israel couldn’t believe its luck when a nutty mullah like Ahmedinejad organised a Holocaust-denial conference and invited the KKK, and the same regime pushed a nuclear program. Perfect for Zionist homogenisation: a “holocaust denying regime wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and is building nuclear weapons to do it with!” Nothing quite like having a 4th Reich in the neighbourhood. As for Iran, well, for how many decades has the “road to Jerusalem” gone through either Baghdad, or Damascus or some other unfortunate Arab capital over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Arabs?
In reality, their distance from each other is precisely what makes this propaganda game safe. It was only the actual contiguity of a Lebanese Shiite population under brutal Zionist occupation in southern Lebanon for two decades that led to the growth of Hezbollah and thus actual confrontation. But Israel was evicted from Lebanon in 2000 – 15 years ago – and as such Hezbollah has not the slightest interest in using its new Syrian presence (or even its Lebanese presence) to “liberate Jerusalem,” or even to fire a rocket. However, the propaganda “war atmosphere” requires occasional Israeli potshots when Hezbollah gets within striking distance of the Golan.
Actually, I believe there is another reason: there is a specific kind of strategic competition. Not the kind of competition that exists between Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who are all medium-level Muslim capitalist states who can actually compete for economic/ideological hegemony among the masses of the Mideast – Israel by its nature can only lose hands-down in that competition. No, competition for the position of regional cop as recognised by world imperialist powers, especially the US.
Now of course, most readers would say that is far-fetched, which it is, for now: that mantle currently belongs to Israel. But the emergence of a powerful non-Arab state of 70 million people from imperialist sanctioned isolation to imperialist-blessed prominence, via and since the nuclear accord, cannot but be seen as a threat to its position by Israel in the medium-term – if not to replace it, at least to rival it – especially as this rival gets stuck in its own corner of enmity to the Arab world via a Zionist-style program of sectarian cleansing.
But whatever the case, let’s just agree that Israel sees the Iranian-Hezbollah role in bolstering Assad differently to how it sees the Assad regime itself. Therefore: Enter Israel’s friend Russia to help deal with these dilemmas.
So, enter Russia
Enter Russia on the same side, as a balance against the regime’s Iranian dependence: Russia thus saves Israel from the dilemma of wanting to support Assad but not his Iranian benefactors (as this Foreign Affairs article, among many others, argues: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/israel/2015-10-03/strange-bedfellows-syria). So we have a rather different reaction from Israel. Not only from the Zionist military/intelligence elite – which has been far less enthusiastic about playing Netanyahu’s strictly political anti-Iranian game of showmanship – but from showman Netanyahu himself.
What was Russia’s response to Netanyahu’s “concerns” that Iran was supplying Hezbollah with weapons and his fantasy that they might use the Russian presence to launch attacks on Israel from southern Syria?
Putin’s response was rather clear: According to Netanyahu, after telling Russia Israel would continue to strike Hezbollah targets if they “threaten” Israel, “there were no objections to our rights and to what I said.” Putin declared:
“All of Russia’s actions in the region will always be very responsible. We are aware of the shelling against Israel and we condemn all such shelling. … In regard to Syria, we know that the Syrian army is in a situation such that it is incapable of opening a new front. Our main goal is to defend the Syrian state. However, I understand your concern” (http://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-to-allow-israeli-strikes-on-syrian-arms-transfers-pm-says/).
Of course, there has been no shelling of “Israel;” except for one recent incident, the only shells that have fallen have been within the Israeli-stolen Golan Heights. Moreover, even these mere handful of times have mostly been accidental spill-overs of the conflict in southern Syria. Hezbollah hasn’t shelled Israel at all, except in January in response to Israel killing some of its members; Hezbollah is far too busy killing Syrians to indulge in any of that. Netanyahu lies for a reason, of course: he wants Israel to have full freedom of action within an undeclared zone close to the Golan. By agreeing with this lie, Putin gave him this.
And if Russia is giving Israel freedom of action in its zone of interest, we can be sure that Israel has promised Russia the same freedom of action over the rest of Syria, ie, playing a vanguard role in Assad’s bloody counterrevolution. Referring to Netanyahu’s meeting in Moscow, Zvi Magen, a former Israeli ambassador to Moscow, explained “Israel made clear to him (Putin) that we have no real problem with Assad, just with Iran and Hezbollah, and that message was understood” (http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21669563-though-opposite-sides-syrian-conflict-binyamin-netanyahu-and-vladimir-putin-agree).
Actual Israeli interests
However, what of the fact that Russia is also coordinating with Iran in its current operation? Two points are worth considering here. First, while obviously preferring Russian to Iranian leadership in defence of Assad, is Israel necessarily hostile to Iranian/Hezbollah activity further north, away from the Golan? Secondly, even on the Golan, if I believe that Netanyahu’s expressed “fear” of Hezbollah rockets liberating Jerusalem, or even landing on the Golan at all, is a farce, then what is the Israeli interest in the south?
These two questions were more or less answered together by IDF spokesman Alon Ben-David in May:
“The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border.”
This tells us that: further north from the Golan, Israel is essentially supportive of Iranian/Hezbollah action to defend the regime; and that Israel wants leeway in the south not only to carry out its current potshots at Hezbollah, but to be in a position to resist the dangerous future scenario of a fall of the Assad regime and the likelihood that any successor would be less amenable than Assad to continuing Israeli occupation (“battle-hardened jihadists” needs to be understood as code for any Syrians resisting occupation).
Moreover, as we saw when the Druze issue raised its head some months ago, Israeli interests in the south go beyond any immediate issues it may have with either Hezbollah or “battle-hardened jihadists.” Israeli propaganda then focused on threatening to intervene to “protect” the Druze in south Syria against Nusra, even “mulling the creation of a safe zone” – ie, a new Zionist land grab – “on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in order to aid Druze refugees” (http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-weighs-safe-zone-for-syrias-embattled-druze/).
A stance which raises yet another option for Israel if Syria comes apart: if an unofficial Alawite-Shiite statelet stretching from Damascus northwest to the coast can only be formed under Iranian rather than Israeli hegemony, Israeli could try to opt for its own sectarian project in the far south, focused on the Druze, thus forming a new “buffer region” to protect its 50-year Golan “buffer region.”
While that may be just speculation, it is clear that the wording of Israeli and Russian statements about their agreement strongly indicate that Israel’s key demand was freedom of movement in the south, and that Russia acquiesced with that.
Russian-Iranian rivalry and differences?
Which raises the further question of whether Moscow and Tehran are working together, or as rivals, in their support for Assad. Of course, reality is likely to be a combination of the two. There is little love lost between any of the regional or global powers on either “side,” all are rivals advancing their own capitalist interests in the region. While Saudi Arabia and Turkey may be both aiding the anti-Assad side, they are also bitter rivals (especially in conflict over the Turkish-supported Muslim Brotherhood); so likewise Russia and Iran have every reason to distrust one another.
Indeed, while Russia supported the US opening to Iran, in the long-term it cannot but be concerned about the possibility of a post-isolation Iran becoming more of an American partner, especially if the faction around Rafsanjani gains an upper hand. Much commentary has speculated that this is at least part of the motivation for both Russia and Israel to strengthen their own bonds.
One issue is that, while Russia is bolstering the regime along the coast where the Alawite population is concentrated and where Russia has naval bases, for Russia this is only a pragmatic step to strengthen the Russian position, but still with the ultimate aim of finding a deal that preserves – or creates – a stable bourgeois regime in Syria. To this end, the current Russian strengthening of the regime in its “natural” regions is not necessarily counterposed to a negotiated solution that could see Assad himself “transitioned” aside, and an ‘Assadist state without Assad’ forms a coalition with conservative sectors of the opposition leadership, ie, the US-favoured ‘Yemeni solution.’ However, Russia insists that for now, until the “defeat of ISIS” (by which it means the defeat of all Assad’s opponents), Assad must stay.
Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia fundamentally agree with this “conservative” position, for want of a better word. But on the one side, Egypt under al-Sisi’s bloody dictatorship is very close to the most pro-Assad Russian position, and it has welcomed the Russian invasion as a blow to “the spread of terrorism” (http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-says-russias-intervention-syria-counter-terrorism-222034415.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc). In contrast, the Saudis are at the opposite end of the conservative spectrum, the most trenchantly opposed to any role for Assad, due to KSA’s role as official head of Sunni Islam and the thrashing it would get from anti-Saudi Sunni Islamist movements if it compromised on Assad himself.
On the other hand, Iran on the regime side, and Turkey and Qatar on the opposition side, have tended to be less “conservative” in as much as they have been willing to rely on a certain amount of controlled “mass” politics, the former with Hezbollah, the latter with the Muslim Brotherhood and other mainstream Syrian Islamists. Russia may find Iran’s sectarian project too potentially destabilising (see http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syria-leader-assad-seeks-russian-protection-from-ally-iran-a-1056263.html for excellent discussion of this); what for Russia may be tactical, may be more strategic for Iran. Russian connections have also been mostly with the national Syrian Army rooted in the traditional state apparatus, Iran has built up its own sectarian Alawite-based militia, the National Defence Forces.
Israel straddles the two tendencies; while the preference would be for a conservative solution that restoes the regime right to the “border” to carry on its traditional role of border-guard, the recognition that this may be impossible makes Israel go for the best of both worlds via the Russian agreement: everywhere beyond the far south, Russia leads a war against the rebellion with the ultimate aim of a state-preserving conservative solution, while Israel is allowed to toy with its own partitionist solutions in the “buffer” region if it finds it necessary.
Admittedly this is speculative, and the two “tendencies” here should not be mistaken for hardened “positions,” but they can indicate tactical differences among the powers involved.
Israel’s shift back and forth on Assad
Washington’s one-year war, in which it has hit not only ISIS, but every other armed force in Syria except the Assad regime (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/who-has-the-us-bombed-for-in-syria/), has seen the US and Assad’s barrel bombers share control of Syria’s skies. This is called bolstering the Assad regime without saying so. The difference with Russia is that it openly says and does so.
So it is hardly surprising that the US has largely welcomed Russia’s move, while being concerned about the loss of face and “credibility” that such bold actions by the rival superpower have caused. Over the 2013-2015 period, US and Russian positions on Syria have converged. In the first two years of the revolution, 2011-2013, while fundamental US policy was the same – preserve as much of the regime as possible by politely asking Assad to “step aside” – the anti-Assad rhetoric was influenced by the preferences of its Gulf and Turkish allies, and by the pro-Arab Spring pretences of the Obama administration.
The rise of ISIS from late 2013, by contrast, has allowed the more pro-Assad shift since then to be couched in traditional “anti-terrorist” rhetoric.
However, some may have been more surprised by the even more emphatic welcome given to Russia by Israel. If it had been in 2011-2013, there would have been no surprise; Israel’s then dominant view was resolutely pro-Assad (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/israel-and-the-syrian-war/). Even the key move that highlights the US shift in September 2013 – the US pull-back from the alleged threat to launch strikes against Assad for his chemical attack – was the result of a deal with Assad to hand over his chemical weapons, in which both Putin and Netanyahu were involved (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-15/israel-helped-obama-skirt-red-line-on-syria).
But Israel soon after this “crossed-over” the US road in the opposite direction, turning up the rhetorical heat on Assad over 2013-2015. This occurred when it became clear that the new US accommodation with Assad was intertwined with the US move to relaunch negotiations with Iran, following the rise of the Rouhani pseudo-reformist leadership there – especially given that Assad was becoming increasingly dependent on Iran in the same period.
That is why the new Russian move to take leadership of the fight to defend the regime has allowed Israel to slip back into its more natural position. Writing in the Maariv newspaper, IDF spokesman Alon Ben-David quoted a source within the Israeli Joint Chiefs of Staff saying that “although no one in Israel can say this publicly and explicitly, the best option for Israel would be for the Assad regime to remain and for the internal fighting to continue for as long as possible” (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/21318-russian-israeli-coordination-in-syria-includes-air-sea-land-and-cyperspace).
Meanwhile, also in Maariv, right wing writer Caroline Glick stressed that Israel must provide Russian with the necessary intelligence to help them in their fight against the mainstream Syrian opposition, which unlike ISIS actually threatens the Assad regime. She claimed the Russians will find “the appropriate way to pay Israel back for its help.” Israel’s former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni – of Operation Cast Lead fame – went one step further, claiming “the world looks at Iran and Hezbollah as legitimate partners in the confrontation against Daesh” (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/21466-israel-to-provide-russia-with-intelligence-about-syrian-opposition).
Statement by Syrian Opposition Coalition and 70 armed rebel factions on Russian aggression, Assad and “international community”
* Russian imperial aggression unites the Syrian opposition
Comment: The “icing on the cake”, if we can possibly use such language to describe Russia’s devastating aerial bombing of the Free Syrian Army and Syrian civilian population, is this tendency to unite the broad Syrian opposition, armed and unarmed, as Assad’s genocidal counterrevolutionary war morphs into a colonial war. Below is a statement by the Syrian Opposition Coalition and 70 armed rebel formations on the ground, a great many of which are not affiliated to the Coalition. The main points are:
* condemnation of Russia’s aggression
* rejection of any role for tyrant Assad, including in any “transitional” role as has been recently flagged by most imperialist leaders
* rejection of a recent UN initiative to form working groups to hammer out ceasefires etc – there is obviously no basis for such discussion now
* confirmation that they all ultimately support a “political solution” based on achieving the goals of the revolution, but such a political solution “must ensure that the current regime is not reproduced”, ie, a rejection of the western-backed “Yemeni solution” of an Assadist regime with Assad
* at the same time though, they “emphasize the need to preserve state institutions and prevent their disintegration”
* The “Syrian people have completely lost confidence in international community”
* Assad is responsible for the rise of ISIS and continues to collaborate with it
Before reproducing the full statement below, here are a number of other statements by revolutionary forces in Syria over the last few days, indicating the depth of resistance to this new colonial war and to western imperialist attempts to make them accept a “transitional” Assad.
For those on the left currently talking muddle-headedly, if with good intentions, about the need for all global and regional powers to “negotiate in good faith” etc – as if that hasn’t been going for years already – and imagining this to be an anti-imperialist critique, let me just explain why you have this wrong, in fact, on its head.
It is the western powers trying to bludgeon the Syrian resistance into accepting either a “transitional” Assad regime or an “Assad regime without Assad.” As can be seen here, it is the entirety of the Syrian revolution that rejects this. And of course there is another side that rejects any “negotiations in good faith” – the Assad regime, which just invited in Russia to bomb its country even more than it has done already! During the last major imperialist-sponsored negotiations, in Geneva in January 2014, only half the Syrian uprising even agreed to the imperialist demand that they turn up to negotiate with Assad; the rest furiously rejected this idea. Yet after the conference, Assad declared that all the rebel formations and individuals that *had* turned up to negotiate with him were on his “terrorist” list!
So what do all these good western-based anti-imperialist do, when two Syrian sides reject the good advice of most or all non-Syrian powers, and of themselves? How do you get the imperialists to force them together if they don’t want to be? And let’s say they do. And so there is some agreement hammered together by the various imperialists and leaders of both sides in Syria. OK, and then what happens when one or both sides in Syria violate the agreement? Do you get the US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France etc to act as an occupation force to forcibly prevent either side from violating the fruits of these negotiations?
It is up to the Syrian people, not global and regional powers and “anti-imperialists”. Here are some other important statements:
The Local Coordination Committees of Syria (LCCSy, the nationwide network of the ongoing civil uprising) “calls upon all revolutionary forces and factions to unite by any means and respond to the Russian aggression. Long live our Revolution for a free and democratic Syria” https://www.facebook.com/LCCSy/posts/1238711152822685?fref=nf
Al-Sham Front, consisting of 12 rebel brigades in Hama, where Russia is hitting hard, “condemns and deplores the Russian direct military aggression on Syrian territory, and we consider it a declaration of war against the Syrian people” http://en.eldorar.com/node/205
Homs Liberation Movement – some 100 FSA officers in Homs declare “that we have put all our strengths, means and expertise at the disposal of a unified operations room to confront the Russian and Iranian occupation and to clean Syria up from the abomination of criminal Bashar and his cronies” http://homs-l-m.com
FSA founder colonel Riad Al-As’ad called for “the unification of ranks in order to face Iranian and Russian invasions of our country” and for “the general full mobilization for the opening of all the fronts, north and south, east and west, in in order not to allow the invaders and Assad gangs to rest, ever.”
Syrian Coalition statement September 27: “We Revolted For Freedom and Dignity, and We Will Still Say “No” To Assad and His Gang”. Regarding western attempts to bludgeon them into accepting a “transitional” Assad, the statement continues “it is greatly astonishing how aggression and tyranny are regarded as pillars for this solution, and we condemn the ongoing attempts to re-market the murderous Assad regime and its head” http://en.etilaf.org/press/we-revolted-for-freedom-and-dignity-and-we-will-still-say-no-to-assad-and-his-gang.html
On Friday, 70 rebel factions and the Syrian National Coalition, in an emergency meeting following the start of Russian airstrikes, decided to end cooperation with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura’s initiative for “work groups” to study a resolution of the 4 1/2-year conflict.
The full statement:
________________________________________
Political offices of the undersigned rebel factions and the Syrian Coalition’s Political Committee held a meeting and thoroughly studied the proposals put forward by the UN envoy Staffan de Mistura, namely the “work groups” initiative. After in-depth reviewing of the regional and international reality engulfing the Syrian arena as well as recent sensitive developments with profound field and political influence — and out of our concern for the possibility of launching a new failed political process costing Syrians even more thousands of lives and more destruction to the remnants of the country’s infrastructure — we affirm the following points:
First: Participants in the meeting emphasize their commitment to reaching a political solution to achieve the goals of the revolution, preserve the identity of the Syrian people and end their suffering. This political process however must ensure that the current regime is not reproduced or that its head and pillars, whose hands are stained with the blood of Syrians, are given any role in the transitional political process or in Syria’s future.
Second: While forces of the revolution and the opposition have always dealt fully positively with the UN envoy despite the absence of any practical results on the ground, they emphasize they will continue to positively deal with the United Nations in order to achieve the interests of the Syrian people.
Third: The Syrian people have completely lost confidence in the ability of the international community to support their cause after five years of regime crimes committed against them with Iranian military support, Russian political coverage, and a legitimacy that the international community still insists on providing to the murderous regime. The current popular outrage must be taken into account in any political process which must be preceded by real steps to win the confidence of the Syrian people. The most important of these steps is to explicitly declare that the head of the regime and its pillars cannot be given any role to play in the political process.
Fourth: Bashar al-Assad has no place in any political process depending on the following legal and practical reasons:
*Bashar al-Assad inherited power in an entirely illegal way.
*Bashar al-Assad became a war criminal the moment he began killing Syrians who peacefully demanded their rights. He used illegal chemical weapons against innocent civilians. These crimes have been documented by neutral international organizations to prevent any doubt in the matter.
*Bashar al-Assad and his regime have shown utmost reluctance to engage in any political process, have not abided by any declared truces, and have shown non-cooperation with the international community purely with humanitarian issues. All of this has left him with no credibility or confidence.
*While Bashar al-Assad and his regime have failed in their alleged war against ISIS [the Islamic State] or to achieve any intellectual or field victory against this extremist organization, there is compelling evidence on full coordination between the two sides and the role Assad’s regime plays in the emergence of ISIS.
*Bashar al-Assad has opened the doors of Syria to foreign militias who commit the worst sectarian massacres at the same time as fueling sectarian rhetoric, which deprives him of any eligibility to participate in any political process that aims to unite the country.
*Finally, Bashar al-Assad has handed over Syria to Iranian and Russian invaders, thus committing an unforgivable act of betrayal to the country’s history, its future and dignity.
Fifth: We consider that dissolving the security agencies and the restructuring of the military institution directly responsible for killing Syrians an essential item for any political solution. This beleaguered and crumbling military institution has turned into sectarian militias led by Iran. It cannot therefore form the nucleus of a national army, nor can it be trusted by the Syrian people to restore security and stability to the country.
Sixth: The formation of a transitional governing body is a process of full transfer of power in which Bashar al-Assad and pillars of his regime have no place. We emphasize the need to preserve state institutions and prevent their disintegration as they belong to the Syrian people, and to prevent the country from sliding into more chaos.
*Seventh: We consider that proposing the “work groups” initiative ignores the majority of the relevant United Nations resolutions on Syria, particularly resolutions 2118, 2165 and 2139. This initiative is in fact a complicated political process that requires confidence-building between the Syrian people on the one hand and the party that will sponsor the political process, namely the United Nations. Confidence-building can only be achieved through the implementation of the above-mentioned UN resolutions that the Syrian regime has so far disabled them.
*Eighth: We consider that the “work groups” initiative in its current form and its unclear mechanisms provides the perfect environment to reproduce the regime. These “work groups” must instead be based on clear principles regarding standards for selecting the participants in these groups and the final vision for the solution.
Ninth: We condemn Russia’s direct military escalation in Syria and consider the Syrian regime fully responsible as it has turned Syria into a hotbed for foreign intervention. The silence of the international community also bears responsibility for this escalation and represents a point of no return in the relationship between the Syrian people and Russia. This escalation clearly shows that Russia is not serious or sincere in its commitment to the political process, and that it has never been a honest mediator but a party to the conflict and a key ally of the criminal regime.
Tenth: While forces of the revolution and its institutions reaffirm commitment to our people, we vow to exert the utmost efforts to close ranks and correct previous mistakes. We also vow that the revolution will remain faithful to its principles and the blood of its fallen heroes, and that we will strike a balance between achieving our objectives and safeguarding our fundamental principles. We also pledge to alleviate the suffering of our people, expedite victory and to dedicate our political and military capabilities for this purpose.
Accordingly, the “work groups” initiative in its current form is unacceptable neither practically nor legally process unless the above-mentioned points are taken into consideration and the ambiguities shaping the mechanisms of this initiative are resolved.
Their Anti-imperialism and Ours 
