This very well researched report linked to below, by the Arab Reform Initiative, provides quite a thorough study on the explicitly secular part of the Syrian resistance. This itself belies claims that “there are no secular armed rebels groups” in Syria, that all are explicitly “Islamist” etc, a claim made by the New York Times some months ago in order to justify US imperialist policy of refusing to send even a few light arms to the rebels (indeed, of actively blocking their receipt of portable anti-aircraft guns). This clearly false assertion was repeated by a great many leftists, as usual not noticing that they were saying the same thing as those they thought they were criticising.

This also chimes in well with a recent report from Jane’s defense consultants which gave a break-down of the armed opposition, claiming some 30% were explicitly “secular” and/or “nationalist” (ie, generally called Free Syrian Army – FSA, and officially under the Supreme Military Council – SMC), and another 30% were “moderates belonging to groups that have an Islamic character”, ie the FSA-aligned soft Islamists grouped together as the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SILF). As opposed to another 30,000 in the hard-line Salafist, but Syrian nationalist, Syrian Islamic Front (SIF) and 10% in the two Al-Qaida groups who have a global agenda.

I write about this article and the meaning of this break-down at https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/report-on-relative-strength-of-armed-rebels-in-syria/

This report also notes that the moderate Islamist forces aligned with the FSA (ie, broadly meaning the SILF) could have been included in the report into “democratic” resistance groups, and warns not to confuse them with hard-line jihadists:

“It would have been justified to include other groups described as moderate or mainstream Islamists, who should be clearly distinguished from the extremist and Jihadi groups. They reflect the moderate Islam, which Syrians like to call social Islam traditionally prevalent among the Sunni community in Syria and therefore are part of the social fabric of the country. Some are known to be close to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to a democratic and pluralistic agenda for post-Assad Syria. This is clearly stated in the political platform of the Muslim Brotherhood published in 2004 and re-confirmed in a document published in 2012. Several conservative religious leaders have also indicated their commitment to a political system that protects the rights of all minorities. Syrians from all communities and ideological backgrounds do not question the right of these figures to be part of the political transition and to play a role in the future political system.”

It is important to understand this, so as not to crudely divide everyone in the Syrian resistance into “secular” folk that us western leftists like, and everyone else that is in some form an “Islamist”. That is liberal imperialist thinking. We need to get away from those kinds of obsessions. Especially given the nature of the revolution as arising from the marginalised rural peasantry hit by Assad’s neoliberal reforms and the masses of urban poor, often first generation from the countryside, sectors more likely to be religious to some degree than the Syrian bourgeoisie and upper middle classes, the base of the “secular” bourgeois Baath regime.

The report clearly distinguishes the mainstream FSA-aligned “Islamist” groups from the hard-line jihadists, including Al Qaida:

“Extremist Jihadi groups pose a problem of a different kind. Most Syrians see them as alien to the social and political fabric of the country. They run wild and shut down civilian life, calling for establishing an Islamic theocracy more often than they mention the fall of Assad.”

Indeed, the soft-Islamist groups – notably Al-Farouq, Liwa al-Tawheed, Liwa al-Islam and Ahfad al Rasul – have been alongside the FSA in clashes with Al Qaida all over Syria in recent months (as has been widely reported).

However, the purpose of this report is explicitly to describe in detail the explicitly secular resistance, to counter the lazy description of the whole resistance as “Islamist”. This is thus a very valuable contribution for this reason.

Clip from report:

Recent developments, have encouraged a change of attitude among liberals and among non-politicized armed groups which are generally averse to the Islamists’ political agenda. In liberated areas such as al-Raqqa, al-Tabqa, Douma, the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib province, there has been a steadily growing trend over the last year of increasing resentment among those who want a liberal democratic Syria. In the name of protecting a sacred unity in face of the regime, liberal democratic armed groups have remained discreet about their resentment and largely powerless lacking the basic means to challenge the radical groups. Many of their leaders believed that the showdown with the extremists was inevitable but considered that the time had not come for opening this second front. They thought that this could only benefit Assad and that it should be postponed until after the fall of the regime. Instead, they sought dialogue and sought a modus vivendi with Islamist groups.

The change of attitude has been induced by several factors. First, the extremists of Jabhat al-Nosra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (both offshoots of al-Qaeda) began to impose strict rules and provocative measures which alienated large segments of the Syrian population thus showing what many saw as their “true (ugly) face”. Second, the earlier successes of the Jihadis have not been consolidated and have failed to tip the balance in favor of the anti-Assad resistance. Third, the opposition, both political and military, has come to believe that the motto of unity has become counterproductive, that it has been used by the Islamist forces and their patrons as a cover to dominate the political opposition and the resistance, and that it has frightened a large portion of the hesitant Syrians sitting on the fence, thus damaging the image of the revolution altogether. Lastly, the debates in the United States Congress, the British Parliament and the European Union on the dangers related to the delivery of sophisticated weapons to the opposition for fear that the arms might end in the hands of extremists has undoubtedly emboldened some groups to come out and state clearly where they want to belong. But their message is invariably the same: if the means are made available, we will be in a position to reverse the trend on the ground.

Liberated areas offer stark examples of the unwillingness of resistance groups and of the civilian population to provide cover for the abuses of the extremists. Section IV below provides examples from the field of the clashes that are multiplying between mainstream resistance groups and radical Jihadis. These cannot be equated with infighting within an already fractious armed opposition. Rather, they are attempts to rid the resistance of alien elements who worked their way into Syria and stand as an obstacle to unifying the ranks of the FSA. These efforts contribute to the goal of re-syrianizing the movement. FSA leaders (and hopefully their foreign patrons) now understand the damage caused by the willingness of some FSA units to work with Jabhat al-Nosra and realize that this cooperation made the West reluctant to provide military aid and gave Mr. Assad an opportunity to depict the entire opposition as driven by foreign-backed extremists…..

……… The consensus among groups had so far been to protect the unity of arms, and numerous examples exist of tensions resolved through peaceful means. However, the level of resentment against Jihadi groups by the civilian population and part of the FSA has grown to the point where it became clear to many that radical Jihadis had become a serious threat to the revolution. The Sacred Union that had prevented infighting within the armed opposition is not upheld at any price anymore. It should not be seen as further division within the uprising but rather as an attempt at re-gaining control of the resistance and its original objectives. Yet it does imply a painful recognition that the conflict has become a triangular struggle involving the regime, radical Jihadis and the democratic opposition…..

Download full document here http://www.arab-reform.net/sites/default/files/Protecting%20the%20Syrian%20Resistance.pdf

By Michael Karadjis

For two and a half years, the Assad regime has waged a barbaric war against the Syrian populace, using long-range missiles, fighter aircraft, helicopter gunships, tanks, artillery, cluster bombs and almost certainly chemical weapons, not to forget the everyday machine gunning and torture, in a bid to crush the heroic uprising of Syria’s “wretched of the earth,” the peasants and urban poor, against his gangster-capitalist regime.

Some 110,000 have been killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and 7 million people, a third of the population, turned into refugees, including over 2 million who are overwhelming neighbouring countries, a refugee population resembling the Palestinian refugee population uprooted by the creation of the Zionist regime in Palestine. Half the country has been turned into moonscapes; indeed, if the US did attack, it may find it difficult to find any targets left. The medical system has been smashed to bits with the regime systematically targeting hospitals, ambulances and health infrastructure; thousands are probably on the road to death right now due to lack of medical equipment, water or electricity (see this report for example: https://www.facebook.com/JasminePagesForRevolution/posts/508219659270122).

The war waged by the regime has no other aim than to keep in power a narrow ruling clique that has ruled for 50 years. Despite some “left” fantasies, it has no progressive content whatsoever; the fact that some “leftists” could possibly even imagine this kind of war could have a “progressive aim”, despite such means, says a lot more about these leftists than about the war itself.

Terrified of popular revolution, throughout these 2.5 years, the US and especially Israel have happily watched the slaughter, and despite hypocritical whining about the regime, the US has made sure to not send a single gun or bullet to the armed opposition up till now.[1]

As Chomsky explains:

There are growing claims that the West intends to supply the opposition with arms. I believe this is quite misleading. The fact of the matter is, that were the United States and Israel interested in bringing down the Syrian regime there is a whole package of measures they could take before they came to the arms-supply option. All these other options remain available, including, for example, America encouraging Israel to mobilize its forces along the northern border, a move that would not produce any objections from the international community and which would compel the regime to withdraw its forces from a number of frontline positions and relieve the pressure on the opposition. But this has not happened, nor will it, so long as America and Israel remain unwilling to bring down Assad regime. They may not like the regime, but it is nevertheless a regime that is well practised in accommodating their demands and any unknown alternative might prove worse in this respect. Much better, then, to watch the Syrians fight and destroy each other (http://lb.boell.org/web/113-1317.html).

Nevertheless, as Assad’s regime is clearly a liability – its ultra-brutal repression is only creating more, and more radical, opposition, yet is unable to crush it and thus restore stability – the US has for some time now aimed for a ‘Yemeni solution’, whereby Assad himself and a few top henchmen are stripped of power but the core of the regime and the military-security state remains.

Throughout this time, the Syrian opposition – armed and unarmed – has been divided on the question of supporting an imaginary western intervention to get rid of the regime. However, evidence from the ground, from the less “political” if you like, tends to show that many average Syrians would gladly see a US attack if the US destroyed the “conventional” weapons of mass destruction that Assad has used against them for the last 2.5 years. Average people ducking ballistic missiles smashing into their apartment blocks and hospitals do not tend to spend a lot of time with geopolitics or political philosophy, as people in the west have the luxury of, but with how they can prevent their families getting massacred.

Naturally, the idea that the US, even if it did intervene, would surgically remove Assad’s advanced weapons just to help the revolution is a complete illusion, but that’s another matter.

In fact, the idea that the US has ever wanted to intervene at all, including in this current crisis, is, in my opinion, also largely a grand delusion of western left thinking.

Throughout these years, a significant part of the left has played a disgraceful role, only comparable to the same role many played over the Serbian genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s. In both cases, it has been something of a “Waterloo” for the left. In both cases, however, many principled leftists have opposed this so-called “anti-imperialist” party line, according to which we no longer have to be socialists, we no longer have to care about human solidarity, we no longer have to support the struggle of working people against murderous capitalist cliques elsewhere in the world, it only suffices to be “anti-imperialist” in the narrowest sense, even if it means supporting precisely these murderous capitalist cliques against their people.

Regarding the principled leftists who have opposed this line, this contribution has no argument with them. Thus just a disclaimer: if during this contribution I often refer in shorthand to “the left”, it is only meant to refer to “the part of the left who have become apologists for Assad, and/or those who see a plague on all your houses” – a formulation a little long to continually repeat.

Yet even for the principled left that support the Syrian uprising and have nothing but contempt for the regime, I believe there is still often confusion regarding both the actions and the motivations of imperialism in this war.

In early May, the US announced it had evidence that Assad had used chemical weapons. Several days of tough-sounding chatter followed, when ideas of how the US might intervene were discussed. The idea that the US might just start to think about having a discussion on whether or not it might be a good idea to think about sending some light weapons to some highly “vetted” groups of rebels, faced with this massive onslaught of heavy weaponry, was discussed.

The left went into a tailspin to denounce what they believed was the obviously immanent war. They denounced not just the fantasy suggestions of direct intervention; even the vague suggestion that the US may think about sending a few guns was denounced as a terrible escalation. The left asserted that both sides in Syria were bad, believing this kind of bland meaningless and classless talk to be very profound, just happening to not notice that this was also the opinion of all imperialist leaders, indeed the main reason they refused to send a gun to the rebels. The left indignantly asserted that if the US sent some arms to “moderate” rebels, they might get into the hands of Al-Qaida, again not noticing that the main argument continually put forward by US and other western leaders for not arming any “moderate” rebels was that these arms might reach Al Qaida.

These very moral leftists also often reminded the US ruling class that if any arms got to Al Qaida, that the latter might later turn them against the US. They warned against “blowback,” that wonderful masterpiece of outright imperialist liberalism, which managed to masquerade itself as leftist or even far leftist talk. Curious. In some cases, they would then quote an imperialist leader saying the same as they were, refuse to notice that he/she was saying the same as what they had been saying for 2 years, and rejoice that now “even” some ruling class figures are “beginning to understand” how bad the Islamic terrorists are. Even more curious.

They must have been (silently) horrified to find that within the very same week that began with this US semi-saber-rattling, US leaders announced they were meeting with Russian leaders to get the Geneva peace process started, as there was no possible solution to the Syrian conflict other than a negotiated, political solution. The left probably silently thought, “we could have told you that,” but instead preferred to insist that this was just a time-saver, and a cover, for Obama, that the US ruling class, despite all the evidence, “really” still wanted to attack Syria, for some reason best known to those making the claim.

Naturally, nothing at all came of all the talk of maybe thinking about perhaps considering sending a few arms to some vetted rebels if they were really good.

Then in early July came apparent confirmation that Assad had used chemical weapons. So then it all began again, the entire cycle, the entire circus. The only difference this time was that instead of a hundred “maybe think about its”, Obama declared that the USwould begin to send some arms to vetted groups of rebels. That really made the left mad. Even worse (for them) was that Britain and France engineered the collapse of the EU’s arms embargo against the Syrian rebels.

Once again lots of furious left rhetoric which, like last time, was in fundamental agreement with most imperialist assertions even while imagining them to be different; once again, within the same week of Obama’s announcement was his meeting with Putin at the G8 to launch the Geneva process and again all the declarations about diplomatic solution etc, including the joint G8 declaration, which also stressed that this political, diplomatic solution must preserve “the core” of the Baathist military-security state, and that both regime and rebels ought to turn their guns against Al Qaida, while no mention was made of Assad.

And then “the left” thought it was really bad that the main political and military leaderships of the Syrian opposition rejected this call for surrender.

And once again, despite this time Obama saying he would send arms, not a gun was ever sent to the rebels. And the day after the EU arms embargo was lifted, Britain announced it had only been kidding (ie, that they would make sure not to send any arms), and France announced that it would only send arms to vetted rebels if these good folk promised to use them to attack Al Qaida. Indeed, every statement from US leaders tended to suggest how unlikely any sending of arms, or any kind of intervention, would be, despite Obama’s initial statement. Once again, the left, again feeling cheated of their war, declared all this to be a ruse, while the US was allegedly forever still planning for war.

The “anti-war” (pro-peace? anti-imperialist? left-wing?) rhetoric of the US ruling class reached a crescendo in the very week before Assad’s massive chemical attack on August 21.

On August 13, CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said that the potential overthrow of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria is the largest threat to United States national security and may help al-Qaeda acquire chemical weapons (https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-sees-syria-as-top-threat-1375837710). According to Morell, the Syrian government’s weapons “are going to be up for grabs and up for sale” if Assad is ousted. Unless the US has a plan of attack ready for that moment, munitions and warheads currently controlled by Assad could end up in the hands of just about anyone.

Syria is “probably the most important issue in the world today because of where it is currently heading,” Morell said, putting it ahead of Iran, core al-Qaeda, and North Korea in terms of US national security.

One would think that was clear enough: the overthrow of Assad is the problem (the worst in the world for the US), not the Assad regime; that the US saw a huge danger to imperialist interests in any new regime involving Sunni jihadists (though I believe that, while the US is honest about this, it is also using the bogey of Al Qaida to conceal its opposition to the victory of any and every stripe of the Syrian revolution, not only the reactionary jihadist minority).

Yet “the left” went out of their way to publish articles about Morell’s declaration, claiming it proved that “even” figures in the US ruling class are beginning to understand what the muddle-headed left “already knew” about the danger of Al-Qaida etc. They continued to insult everyone’s intelligence by declaring that “the US was on the same side as Al-Qaida” in Syria and other such bilge.

Then on August 19, just two days before the chemical attacks, 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 favor. Today, they are not.”

Dempsey wrote that while the US could destroy the Syrian regime’s air force, and change the military balance, “it cannot resolve the underlying and historic ethnic, religious and tribal issues that are fueling this conflict.”

So, according to Dempsey, all sides are bad, none represent US interests, it is not a matter of a revolution versus a tyrannical regime, but “ethnic, religious and tribal” conflict etc. From the point of view of the kind of leftists I have been describing in this article, Dempsey must have become a full-blown left radical. They should have tried to recruit him to Information Clearing House, or Global Research, or Ramsey Clarke’s mob, whatever they’re currently called.

In fact, Dempsey was simply describing US imperialist interests, like Morrell, and like US leaders have continually described them for two years, for anyone that wanted to listen.

It isn’t that the US ruling class is not listening to these leftists, it is that these leftists refuse to notice that they are saying the same thing.

Australia’s Tory prime minister elect, Tony Abbott, normally a US-stooge if ever there was one, recently came out with doubts about US action in Syria because Syria is not a matter of “goodies v baddies,” but of “baddies v baddies.” The left should have been thrilled that Abbott had adopted their very left-wing view that both a capitalist state with massive quantities of conventional weapons of mass destruction that it uses on an enormous scale, and a terrorized population, a population fighting to end a dictatorship and being slaughtered like sheep, are all equally bad due to the relatively small number of crimes that sections of the rebels (mainly, though not exclusively, the Al Qaida reactionaries) also commit within this hellish conflict.

This is a left, presumably, that has never read Lenin on Ireland in 1916, nor ever read any accounts of the Algerian war of independence.

A “left-wing” view, did I say? On the contrary, Abbott was being entirely consistent and loyal to his class, unlike the left.

So then came the horrific chemical attacks on August 21, on East Ghoutta, part of the vast swathe of working class outer Damascus fiercely loyal to the revolution, a region where Assad had not been able to crush the uprising despite massive use of his “conventional” missiles, aircraft, helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery. And an area that he continued to attack with all these means for 5 days after the chemical attacks, while holding up a UN team wanting to get in and investigate.

And much of the left wants to believe it may have been a bunch of FSA people, who were unknowingly transferring some containers of sarin from Saudi Arabian contacts in Jordan to Al Qaida, not knowing what it was, who then had an “accident” in a tunnel, tripped over and spilt the sarin. And apparently this not only killed everyone in the tunnel (except some who apparently survived to tell the tale), but also people scattered over 12 villages in the region (though separated by some areas that somehow weren’t affected). When that Japanese fruitcake released sarin in a subway in Japan years ago, 13 people were killed, all in the subway. This time, the left wants to believe the sarin wickedly spread out of the tunnel and killed hundreds of people over an area far and wide.

Of course while the story sounds stupid enough already, for anyone who actually knows anything, the idea of Saudi Arabia providing chemical weapons to Al-Qaida, their arch enemy whose reason for existence is the overthrow of those they consider the Saudi apostates, is completely stupid; the creators of conspiracist tales ought to do their homework better.

And in the meantime, since I began writing this, the whole stupid story has been exposed as a fraud (see among others this apology to its readers even from the red-brown, conspiracist antiwar.com http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/09/20/retraction-and-apology-to-our-readers-for-mint-press-article-on-syria-gas-attack/, and further this interesting stuff: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2013/september/yahya-ababneh-exposed.htm#sthash.nFcwkPNT.dpbs).

But I digress. So, since Obama had declared a year earlier that the use of chemical weapons by the regime would be a “red-line” for the US, and several smaller instances had been ignored, the perpetration of such a massive attack could not be ignored. Obama, Cameron and Hollande drew up plans for a military strike on Syria, as imperialist “credibility” is at stake. Assad kill 100,000 people with “conventional” weapons, flatten whole cities, turn the country into a moonscape, create 7 million refugees? Fine. But cross an imperialist-declared red-line and kill 400-1400 people? Not fine.

Imperialist “credibility” is the issue, not any fundamental problem with the regime or even its repression.

Besides, unlike all the “conventional” weapons of mass destruction, non-conventional ones (nuclear, chemical, biological etc) should only be in the hands of the imperialist powers themselves (including little ones like Israel), that’s where a “red-line” is necessary, to show who is ultimately boss.

In other words, Obama and co don’t really give a fig about Syrian people getting killed by Syrian chemical weapons, but they do care that, in the case of some future confrontation between a non-imperialist state (such as Syria after a revolution ousts Assad) and imperialism, the small state is able to equalize the amount of terror that the imperialist state possesses.

That it is more of a concern about who might get these chemicals if Assad falls, rather than about Assad having them, was made abundantly clear in the Morrell quote above (and again, for “Al-Qaida”, read “any Syrian revolutionaries”). It is also abundantly clear from almost every statement coming from US, and especially Israeli, leaders over the last two years:

Israel’s overall stance was explained by Yuval Steinitz, Israeli Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs, who stressed the “only scenario” for Israeli military action in Syria would be to “prevent the delivering of arms, chemical weapons and other kinds of weapons into the hands of terrorists” (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57582025/syrian-rebels-to-get-1st-direct-u.s-support-as-$8m-in-medical-supplies-rations-set-for-delivery/). As Netanyahu explained, he considered the Syrian rebel groups among “the worst Islamist radicals in the world (http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-wary-quiet-on-syrian-front-may-soon-end).

As Defense Ministry strategist Amos Gilad explained following Israel’s May attack on rockets in Damascus bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon, while “Israel has long made clear it is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels,” it was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the
Syrian government)” (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/04/us-syria-crisis-chemical-israel-idUSBRE94309720130504).

At least, they were firmly under Syrian regime control at the time. But as every US and Israeli leader and strategist explains, like Morrell, if Assad falls, then there is danger. And it is possible that Israel’s relatively hawkish-sounding view during the latest crisis, compared to the previous two years, may also be due to concerns that it may not necessarily have been the regime itself that decided on the chemical attack, but perhaps a rogue military faction within the regime, indicating the possible loosening of the regime’s control (see http://solidarity-us.org/current/node/4000#comment-3578 for this suggestion), though this is only speculation.

So, therefore, we can say that, yes, Obama and other imperialist leaders do have real reasons, of imperialist “credibility,” and of preventing either a revolutionary or and Islamist Syria from inheriting these weapons, to want to go to war.

But that’s why, from the start, Obama insisted the action would be “limited” in nature, would have as its aim the punishment of the regime so that it knows not to do it again, and would definitely not aim at changing the regime or even changing the relative strength of regime and opposition on the ground; it would in no way signify any intervention into the war. At least that’s what Obama said in every statement, regardless of what the left think they heard him say.

However, these very conditions listed by Obama also indicate that the US ruling class has real reasons for not wanting to go to war in Syria at all.

Therefore, it was no surprise that Obama took the historic decision to take a pending war to Congress before beginning hostilities, rather than later while already in the thick of a war (when Congress is more likely to give approval to “support our troops”). US presidents have enormous war-making powers, and don’t need to go to Congress first; unless I’ve got it wrong, the last time a US president took it to Congress first was in … 1941.

And it soon became obvious that there was no way the bulk of US imperialist representatives seated in Congress were going to vote for war; if Obama took it to Congress, he would face a huge defeat, from both Republicans and Democrats.

Obama didn’t want the embarrassment of defeat in the imperialist Congress; however, neither did he really want his stupid “punishment” strikes for US credibility, because he was as aware as any of us are that not only would they achieve nothing, but they would risk even further escalating the situation, to no good effect for anyone.

Just then, Russia came to his rescue. How about we ensure that Assad hands over his chemical weapons? We (US and Russia) can collaborate on this via the UN. Then the Assad regime agreed. Then the US agreed. A few days of negotiating guidelines with a little tough talk, and finally a formal US-Russia deal. Just like the US-Russia meetings that ended the left’s war party in early May, and again in early July, except that this time the stakes were much higher and the end result much more significant.

A gain to all involved; Russia, which has been arming Assad to the teeth for two years, can say its “diplomatic” approach averted a disastrous US attack (and the left can tail along and call arming a near-genocidal 2-year war and slaughter a “diplomatic means”); the US can claim it was its ‘credible threat of force” which forced Russia’s hand and gives the resolution teeth; and Assad can go on using his massive arsenal of “conventional” weapons of mass destruction to crush the populace, knowing now where the red line really is.

Having the war now stolen from them yet again, when this time they were so sure it was happening, so we could do some “anti-war” work and ignore the fact that most of Syria is already a moonscape after 2 years of war, the left now has to warn that for the US, this is all just time-saving, just a ruse, that imperialism still “really” still wants a war, really wants to intervene in Syria, is still preparing for it etc. Sounds familiar.

And even more, the left want to believe that Obama’s “back-down” from war was due to pressure from … the anti-war movement!

Apparently, the largest anti-war movement in history, right across the globe, could not prevent the US invasion of Iraq, but when a few hundred pro-war, oops, I mean “anti-war”, demonstrators show up to a rally carrying photos of the guy who has waged war on Syria for 30 months, well that really stopped Obama in his tracks.

Much as I don’t want to criticise the principled leftists who condemn Assad but opposed the US war threat out of principle (I was one of them; I spoke at such a rally, making sure to declare my “resolute” support for the Syrian revolution while doing so), nevertheless I can’t help thinking that many of us also sound deluded when we repeat these sound-good mantras.

Is it just possible that, forced into a “credibility-saving” war threat that was clearly at odds with what it was saying loud and clear just the day before (no even small intervention because no-one represents our interests), that the historic act of referring a war to Congress where defeat was certain, that the immediate grabbing the bull by its horns when the Russian offer was made, that these acts demonstrate the fact that, as in the preceding 30 months, the US did not want a war on Syria, did not want to intervene in any way?

The US, no matter how much of a war mongering state it is, does not intervene everywhere in the world where there is conflict. To believe, against all the evidence, that the US “really” wants to intervene but just, one would have to explain why.

There are of course some possible reasons, as alluded to above. As explained, nothing whatever to do with Assad being a “progressive” or even a “thorn in the side” of the US. This is all complete nonsense. But rather, to put an end to the incessant instability (no matter how much the US and Israel benefit from people they don’t like all killing each other for a while, it is hardly the end game); to ensure they have an influence on the outcome; to steer that outcome against either genuine democratic revolution or jihadi take-over; and above all to ensure that Assad’s weapons of mass destruction are not captured either by pro-Assad Hezbollah or anti-Assad Sunni jihadists as the regime collapses.

Against such imperatives however are more fundamental facts: Dempsey wasn’t kidding when he said no-one in Syria represented US interests; he was simply voicing the obvious class interests of the US ruling class. And any form of intervention, from rapid, small-scale “punishment strikes” to full-scale regime change, immediately poses the question of what happens next and who takes power.

Of course, the first option does not necessarily pose it; a chastened Assad remains in power. But the danger of even a small scale attack leading to uncontrollable repercussions, of things spinning out of control, is something much more obvious to the US ruling class than it is to the leftists who made a point of warning the US government about it.

The second option (the so-called “Libyan solution”), of course, has never been on the cards, even remotely; however, if things did spin out of control, as a result of the first option, it could become inevitable. And of course then there is the problem that there is no-one to put into power that the US likes. Of course, there are some ex-Baathist officers being assembled by the US and the Saudis in Jordan that they could try to ferry to power; but, firstly, a small bunch of people cannot control a country just because the US puts them there; they would need a base among the real FSA on the ground. And as every single report has shown, the exile political and military leaderships simply have no authority on the ground – they do not control the armed revolutionary populace.

Such regime change, therefore, would be reactionary on many levels; being brought to power that way would be the surest way to fully hijack such a bunch of exile leaders, strip them of whatever revolutionary authority they may have claimed; yet while that may sound good to the US, their lack of control would mean it was useless without the full-scale power of the US military remaining behind to back it up.

Meanwhile, it would also be reactionary in relation to the section of the Damascus and Aleppo urban populations that still block with the regime, as well as the Alawite minority. While these urban sectors are very much the middle and upper classes (Syria is fundamentally a class war), not all these comfortable middle class sectors should be seen as the enemy, but rather as people unconvinced due to many of the well-known political short-falls, to put it mildly, of sections of the opposition leaderships, and more so with the rise of the jihadist fringe. As such, the task remains ultimately political, and forcible overthrow by a foreign power is not a good way to convince people politically.

But leftists needn’t worry: it remains the strategy that has been the furthest from imperialist thinking all along.

Those leftists and liberals prepared to give critical support to a US intervention tend to imagine a scenario intermediate between small punishment strikes and full-scale regime change. The US either will, they think, or else “should”, launch clinical strikes that will meticulously knock out Assad’s massive air power and other command and control facilities which give his regime such overwhelming superiority over the armed opposition, destroy the chemical weapons, and make sure to avoid bombing civilians or civilian infrastructure. Therefore, evening up the battlefield will allow the opposition to fight on a level playing field without fear of Assad’s aerial slaughter and give them a chance of either winning outright, or at least forcing Assad to the negotiating table with the opposition having stronger bargaining power.

What the pro-war left would need to figure with would be why they think the US would act so completely against its own class interests, especially when it has never been known to have done so before.

And what the anti-war left needs to figure with is that, given that reality, why do they imagine the US is hell-bent on making war and intervening, no matter how much it conflicts with available evidence?

The US is not a peaceful power. For some 5 years now, the US has been engaged in a terrible war all over the Middle East, launching murderous drone attacks on civilians over a wide arc from Pakistan, through Yemen, to Somalia, killing many thousands of people, including hundreds of children. There has been no declaration of war, not once has anyone suggested taking it to Congress. Why does the left imagine the attitude to Syria has been so different (with the exception that the US may be considering drone attacks against Al Qaida in Syria as well)?

All that said, what attitude should leftists take to the US-Russia deal to disarm Syria of chemical weapons?

On the one hand, if it prevents a catastrophic US attack, it is welcome. And if it helps disarm a regime that has massacred 100,000 people and destroyed its country of an extremely lethal weapon, the so much the better. And, while little sympathy should be felt for the Russian government that has poured heavy weapons into Assad’s murder machine for 30 months, if the deal suggests that to Russia, its “place in the world” is ultimately more important than its relations with some tyrant, then in the circumstances that’s not such a bad thing either (same goes for the new Iranian government’s overtures).

On the other hand, for those opposed to the proposed US attack because we oppose imperialist intervention in general, how much less of an intervention is it now that significant numbers (hundreds? more?) UN troops will be all over Syria “ensuring compliance”? Instead of US cruise missiles, will it mean US and Russian troops, along with others, crawling over the country? Hard to know before details appear. Will it turn into the Iraqi situation of the 1990s?

Will a Syria disarmed of chemicals – something I see no problem with as such – then stand more naked before a chemical and nuclear armed Israel? Or, alternatively will Syrian compliance with destruction of its chemical weapons now put renewed global pressure on Israel to do the same?

Above all, for Syrian people, is this simply Assad gaining a mini-victory: his gamble with the red-line has at least clarified how far he can go; clarifying that all the conventional weapons of mass destruction he has been using for 30 months are no problem to the world, so now that’s clear, under cover of being “good” and complying, which will take a long time, he can get on with the job of waging his near-genocidal war against the Syrian people, just without chemicals.

None of this can be answered with any certainty. The left should be able to simply understand that, from where we stand, this outcome is better than a US strike, while still recognizing that it has its own serious problems.

The revolutionary forces in Syria simply had no say, and have no say; they can hardly be blamed for not welcoming it with open arms. If in the best case scenario, this leads to some kind of ceasefire, the revolutionary forces would need to use such a situation to rebuild the mass movement that has been battered down by Assad’s war; this is something necessary in any case, given the impossibility of outright military victory, the need to convince other sectors of the population, and the need for some recovery for the Syrian people from such a terrible catastrophe.

However, despite some “left” equalizing of the oppressor and oppressed, it has never been up to the poorly armed resistance, which originally took up arms following 8 months of Assad’s slaughter of their peaceful protest, to guarantee a ceasefire; it is not their fault that there is not one. It is scandalous that some of the left blame them for receiving a trickle of arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, or even for receiving some US arms in the future, perhaps – this, they think, is ‘escalation”, and can be blamed for continuing the war.

To again quote Chomsky, regarding the initial arming of the revolution:

“I don’t think the Syrians made a choice. It happened in the wake of the Assad regime’s repressive response. Syrians could either have surrendered or taken up arms. To blame them is akin to saying that the Vietnamese made a mistake responding by force when their US-backed government started committing massacres. Sure, the Vietnamese made a choice to arm themselves, but the alternative was accept still more massacres. It’s not a serious critique” (http://lb.boell.org/web/113-1317.html).

Let’s just clarify: a ceasefire would be an excellent thing; it is the massively armed regime which pulverizes its whole country that is the block to one; getting a few small arms for self-defense does not hold off a ceasefire, unless those leftists pushing this view mean total surrender, the “peace of the grave”; and indeed, it may precisely be via getting better weapons that the resistance may be in some position to force Assad to the negotiating table, whereas with absolute military superiority, he has little incentive.

So, therefore, if the US-Russia chemical deal does not lead to a ceasefire, and Assad just continues the killing, it is simply back to square one; no-ne should have had any illusions the US was about to help the revolution.

Palace coup?

There is one “solution” the US has long planned for Syria. Given the mess Assad has made, the impossibility of him crushing either the revolution or the jihadists, the US has long preferred the “Yemeni solution”, that of a palace coup from within the regime, or an agreed cosmetic change within the regime that removes Assad and his closest henchmen but retains the core of the regime, and especially the military-security apparatus, to maintain Assad’s Syrian ruling class in power to be able to deal with threats to class power. That represents US ruling class interests.

Is there something in the offing now, a further plan being hatched up behind closed doors by the US and Russia, which, despite outward appearances, have ultimately had a fundamentally similar position on Syria?

As al-Monitor reports (http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/syria-general-defects-russian-solution-plan.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8), speculation abounds about the escape, or trip abroad, of high-ranking Syrian Alawite officer, Gen. Ali
Habib, following the chemical attacks, which perhaps have provided the opportunity, as the aftermath forced Assad to turn even more completely to Moscow. According to the report, rumours have it that his departure was made in agreement with Moscow.

On Habib himself, the Monitor reports:
“He served as chief of staff from 2004 to 2009, and then assumed the position of defense minister until his retirement on Aug. 8, 2011 following the eruption of the Syrian crisis. If the news is confirmed, Habib will be the most prominent officer to leave the country. This is especially significant given that he is an Alawite from the town of al-Mandara, in
Safita, on the Syrian coast. The Americans and Saudis know Habib very well, since he led the Syrian military units that participated alongside NATO in the war of liberation of Kuwait, after former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990. A commander of Saudi forces in that war, Khaled bin Sultan, highly praises Habib in his memoir Desert Warrior.”

In many respects, the perfect candidate.

Would that require a US war? Perhaps not. Perhaps even limited strikes would put that in jeopardy. But does the current crisis situation, and its apparent resolution via high-level mediation between the US and Russia, facilitate the atmosphere for such a solution? Undoubtedly, yes.

Would that at least bring about a ceasefire, that the revolutionary forces could exploit? Perhaps. Hopefully. Quite possibly not. No guarantee at all. Just Assadism with Assad? Probably. But a temporary respite, perhaps.

Would it solve the problems that led to the revolt of the Syrian sansculottes, for which they have paid in rivers of blood? No. The revolution, in one form or another, will most certainly continue, the people having sacrificed too much, freed themselves from fear, and with too much at stake, for the revolution to go away.

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[1] As I write, there are indications that the first few guns may have arrived; but the numbers and kind so insignificant, and the wait till now so long, that it changes nothing in this contribution.

By Michael Karadjis

Report on relative strength of armed rebels in Syria

September 24, 2013 (partially updated January 25, 2014)

The September 15 Telegraph had an article summarising a very interesting report from IHS-Janes on the relative strengths of different parts of the Syrian armed opposition (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10311007/Syria-nearly-half-rebel-fighters-are-jihadists-or-hardline-Islamists-says-IHS-Janes-report.html). As a report from the defense consultancy IHS Jane’s, it is probably reasonably accurate, but as expected, the Telegraph translation of it was less so.
Of course, the purpose for the Telegraph was to show how terrible the Syrian opposition is, because so many of them are dreaded “Islamists” of some stripe or another. As the article says, this report allegedly confirms what US and other western leaders have been saying about Syria forever, ie, that they hate the Syrian opposition, because so many of them are people the US doesn’t like, and this is the reason used forever for never sending them a single rifle.

The amusing thing, of course, is that much of the left used the report in the exact same way, to show how bad the opposition is, as there are so many “Islamists.” Amusingly, however, the left will claim that this is a different view to that of western leaders who agree with them.

Many will even more amusingly claim the Telegraph is finally admitting “the truth” that only the Islamophobic “left” knew along, perhaps that imperialists are finally seeing the light, and will mumble liberal stuff about “blowback” etc.

But let’s look at the Jane’s report at face value. Basically it says that the most hardened, outright counterrevolutionary section of the armed revolt – the Al-Qaida linked groups – account for about 10,000 troops, or 10% of the armed opposition. Then there are some 15,000-20,000 other “hard-line” Salafist groups (the Telegraph erroneously put the figure at 30,000), another 30,000-39,000 “moderates belonging to groups that have an Islamic character”, leaving therefore some 30,000-35,000 in outright democratic-secular formations, if the total figure for armed resistance fighters is correct at around 100,000.
The Telegraph puts its own special spin on the final figure, claiming it means “only a small minority of the rebels are linked to secular or purely nationalist groups”, a “stark assessment.”

So, 30-35,000 secular rebels, out of 100,000 are “only a small minority,” not a rather large one? And when we add a similar number of “moderates belonging to groups with an Islamic character”, meaning two thirds to three quarters of the armed rebels are not “hard-line” Islamists, this is “stark”, is it?
Perhaps from the point of view of imperialism, for whom all of those vaguely Islamist moderates would still be considered enemies of imperialist interests (would even “moderate Islamists” be as dedicated to protecting the Israeli annexation of the Golan as Assad has been? Would they likely make war on the Palestinians as often as Assad did?); but also, since for the US “moderate” doesn’t just mean secular, but rather pro-imperialist, the fact of 30% secular fighters also gives no clue one way or another whether they are prepared to serve imperialist interests. Why would any of these secular rebels, steeped in Syrian and Arab nationalist traditions, and heroically fighting for freedom, feel any more likely than the Islamists to betray the Palestinians or the Golan? As chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, stated on August 19, no-one in Syria represents US interests.

While some on the left may unrealistically believe that anything less than a vast majority of secular fighters means a hopeless situation, nevertheless the finding that over 30 percent of rebels are secular and at least two thirds are not “hard-line” Salafist/jihadist, is a vast improvement on the stark New York Times article from April, that the Islamophobic left quoted so widely back then, that laughably claimed “nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&)ps).

And of course, it also depends on what is meant by the 30,000 “hard-line” Islamist rebels who share much of the ideology of Al Qaida without its global aims. While these leaderships are indeed hard-line, the evidence of many fighters slipping between groups, because some have better arms supplies (first the jihadists, due to the open Iraqi border with Al Qaida in Iraq, and oil deals with Assad, have the best arms and supplies, next other Islamists have more supplies from the Gulf than the secular rebels have), but with no real commitment to their ideology, is quite abundant. Indeed, this is also true in reverse, in a sense, of the Islamist groups in the category of “moderates belonging to groups with an Islamic character” – while this well defines the memberships and overall goals of the fighters, some of the leaderships may at times appear as “hard-line” as the groups classed that way. Below I will explain my understanding of the difference.

Indeed, we need to better understand what it means in many cases to be an “Islamist” in Syria and not judge everything by how often a fighter yells “Allah Akbar” (like how an angry western radical might yell “Jesus Christ!”). A great many “Islamists” on the ground are not necessarily “Islamists” in a political sense at all, but they adopt some of the religious phraseology of their culture in their struggle. In particular, given the fundamental class divide that characterises the Syrian revolution, the base of the revolution is the peasantry, devastated by Assad Junior’s neoliberal reforms, and the urban poor, first generation from the countryside with extensive links to country cousins; and in “secular” bourgeois nationalist Syria, like “secular” Egypt”, “secular’ Turkey, “secular” Iran in 1979, “secular” Palestine – the “secularism” only ever went as far as the bourgeois limitations of the process could take it, and remains a largely middle and upper class phenomenon. Thus it is not surprising that peasants and urban poor, when they began organising political and then military formations, often adopted religious names, to the vast horror of all kinds of crusading “left” exponents of “secular” chauvinism in the distant West.

Summary of strength of the armed components of the struggle

Below is my summary of what I understand about the relative sizes of these various parts of the secular and Islamist resistance groups, based on the Janes report but also on a variety of other sources (these were the existing formations before the formation of the Islamic Front in November 2003 out of some of these groups – while this does change some things, basically much of the outline still applies, with the new Front essentially a combination of major components of the SILF and the SIF fronts discussed here. See brief updates through this section and at the end):

1. The more or less secular armed struggle, that is the militias throughout Syria generally known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and which are theoretically loyal to the Supreme Military Command (SMC), the main exile-based military leadership body, based in Turkey and Jordan, and led by former Baathist officers who defected. Overwhelmingly, the FSA on the ground is simply the armed local people, and the soldiers who defected and refused to fire on the crowds. It is secular in as much as its goals are entirely secular and democratic, but naturally in composition it will reflect the norm of Syrian society, thus including everyone from atheists to the highly religious. Its loyalty to the SMC however is only nominal; in reality, the SMC has very little or no control over their operations. Estimates of its strength vary; IHS Janes study gives it over 30 percent of the armed opposition (or about 31,000 fighters, see good summary at http://www.businessinsider.com.au/graphic-the-most-accurate-breakdown-of-the-syrian-rebels-2013-9, and Charles Litser’s summary at http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/09/syrias_insurgency_beyond_good_guys_and_bad_guys#.Ui6lwS-cszh.twitter); another study by Ken Sofer and Juliana Shafroth of the Center for American Progress claimed 50,000 fighters, out of a total figure of 120-130,000 fighters (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2013/05/14/63221/the-structure-and-organization-of-the-syrian-opposition); Aron Lund quoted SMC chief, General Salim Idriss, claiming to command 80,000 troops, but this included 35-40,000 in the SILF (see next section), meaning about 40-45,000 for the FSA out of some 120,000 armed fighters (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/freedom-fighters-cannibals-the-truth-about-syrias-rebels-8662618.html). Based on the numbers for explicitly secular fighters provided by a rather through report by the Arab Reform Initiative (http://www.arab-reform.net/sites/default/files/Protecting%20the%20Syrian%20Resistance.pdf), a rough calculation of some 35,000 or more can be made, but this study unaccountably omitted the largest known secular fighting force in the FSA, the Syrian Martyrs Brigade, which is generally thought to have some 7-12,000 troops in Idlib (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/01/rebels_with_a_cause_but_not_much_consensus?page=full&wp_login_redirect=0), meaning a possible 45,000 FSA fighters if they are included.

However, as Nader Atassi explains, it is very difficult to definitely establish numbers of the real FSA on the ground: “Many Syrian villages and towns have civil defense militias, composed of locals from the neighbourhood, to fend off Assad forces, yet we don’t hear about them, because they are not trans-regional, we hear about Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, because they have the resources to be trans-regional, to travel around from place to place, whereas one militia, composed of 20 people from your neighbourhood, defending it, are never heard of” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxCICHpiL7A2). Therefore, even these numbers showing the secular FSA to be a significant minority may be understated.

(Shortly after the November 2013 formation of the Islamic Front (see below), the Syrian Revolutionaries Front was formed by some largely secular FSA militias in the northwest of the country (http://carnegie-mec.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=53910), including the Syrian Martyrs Brigade and sections of the formerly SILF-aligned Farouk Brigades, while 106 civil and armed secular opposition groups formed the Union of Free Syrians around the same time, http://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/for-a-civil-secular-state-100-groups-unite-in-the-union-of-free-syrians/. These are just two of the criss-crossing formations formed n the ground by secular FSA groups, mostly based in the north and west; meanwhile, in the south, from Deraa up to the Damascus suburbs, secular FSA forces generally dominate the struggle and Islamism is a minority current).

2. The Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SILF), a large group of powerful militias which, in religious terms, stand between the secular FSA and the radical Salafists. While the Muslim Brotherhood is not much on the ground (as opposed to its role in the exile leadership), nevertheless these groups (the largest being the Farouk Brigade in Homs, Liwa al-Tawhid in Aleppo, Liwa al-Islam in Damascus, and Suqor al-Sham in Idlib) fill that kind of space, ie, they believe, like the Brotherhood (or the AKP), that they can slowly bring about more religious laws, a more “Islamist” regime, via bourgeois democracy or at least via persuasion and discussion, not by force. Their minimal program promises to protect minorities. The SILF lashed out at Al-Nusra when it declared its links to Al-Qaida, declaring “The relentless pursuit of power should not be one of our goals … We don’t need imported charters or a new understanding of the nation’s religion” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-break-with-radical-group.html?_r=0). While vaguely grouped together as the SILF, they are also officially loyal to the SMC, and have representatives within it; indeed, these groups have often been lead players in FSA clashes with Al Qaida.

According to the Jane’s report, the SILF has some 39,000 fighters (though Charles Lister, from Jane’s is not sure whether one of the groups, Suquor al-Sham and its 8-9000 fighters, might be too hard-line for inclusion here, despite its formal adherence to SILF; and the leader of another group, Liwa al-Islam, Zahran Alloush, recently launched a blistering anti-Shia and anti-Alawi speech which was uncharacteristic of the group’s declarations in general, and certainly at odds with their actions). Most other reports tend to roughly agree on this size for the SILF, and the breakdown is usually given as around 14,000 (previously up to 20,000) for the Farouk Brigades, anywhere from 3500 to 10,000 for Liwa al-Tawhid, 8-9,000 for Suquor al-Sham and an unknown number of thousands for Liwa al-Islam). Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar (via its Muslim Brotherhood allies) are thought to have armed some of these groups (indeed, the paper-thin “Islamisation” of the initially secular-FSA Farouk Brigades is generally thought to have been a question of funding, Liwa al-Tawhid has apparently had some Qatari or MB funding, Liwa al-Islam has apparent Saudi connections), but there is no evidence of any specific external loyalty of these fiercely independent groups and even these funding claims are vague.

While the rhetoric of some leaders (eg Alloush) may at times compare to that of more “hard-line” groups such as the SIF below, two things stand out about these groups: first, none have been involved in any known or documented attacks on minorities (indeed, Liwa al-Tawhid explicitly protects Christians in Aleppo http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Sep-21/232025-christian-hostel-in-aleppo-has-own-view-of-jihadist-rebels.ashx#axzz2gfb4z1J2), or on secular FSA forces, with whom they cooperate closely; and secondly, unlike both the SIF groups (eg Ahrar al-Sham) and the Al-Qaida connected groups, which are dedicated jihadist cadre groups with chapters spread across the country, all these major SILF groups are clearly attached to one region, demonstrating that their “Islamism” has a rather “organic” connection to the socially-conservative sectors of the rebellion (especially peasants) in their regions, and as such are more likely to be distorted vehicles of the masses democratic aspirations compared to the dedicated cadre groups.

2A. Ahfad al Rasul is an independent nation-wide front that is also loyal to the SMC and is ideologically very close to the SILF and the “soft-Islamist” viewpoint, and has also been an important player in clashes with Al-Qaida. It has allegedly been funded by both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but does not show any obvious signs of specific loyalty to outside forces, and has a strong reputation as a genuine anti-regime fighting group, and has been a special target of the jihadist groups, especially ISIS. It is estimated to have 10-15,000 members.

2B. Commission of the Revolution’s Shields (CSR), is the semi-official militia wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, allegedly consisting of some 43 fighting units, but with altogether at most a few thousand fighters, with a very moderate Islamist program, loyal to the SMC and fighting alongside the FSA. Overwhelmingly, however, the Brotherhood is an exile-based political organisation, powerful in the Syrian National Congress wing of the Syrian Coalition, and its fighting strength on the ground is much smaller (http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/05/07/struggling-to-adapt-muslim-brotherhood-in-new-syria/g2qm#).

These three formations – the SILF, Ahfad al-Rasul and the CSR – may be considered Jane’s “moderates belonging to groups that have an Islamic character,” or are probably best referred to as mainstream Islamists.

2B. The Authenticity and Development Front (Jabhat Alassalah Wa Attanmyyah) is a smallish front (though claiming some 30 battalions or brigades, with no clear information on what this means in terms of size). It is a front of “non-political Salafists”, meaning they advocate a hard “Islamist” policy in the social field but have no claims to clerical rule in politics. This seems to fit well with the Saudi view, which maintains puitanical religious repression at home with the understanding from the Wahabbi order that the church is kept out of political rule, and thus is highly suspicious of revolutionary Islamist movements. Not surprisingly, the literature has it as a bonafide Saudi front. It seems to be a coalition the Saudis have consciously packed together, from split-offs from various SILF or SIF groups, defector officers, “quietist” Salafis and pro-Saudi tribal chiefs (http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/external_support_and_the_syrian_insurgency). Its small size is perhaps indicative of the difficulties Saudi Arabia faces in balancing these two aspects. It is politically loyal to the SMC, which is official Saudi policy.

Thus, the combined number of fighters in one way or another connected to the SMC, and covering secular and mainstream Islamist fighters, is according to differing estimates anywhere between 62,000-100,000, ie, anywhere from 60-80 percent of the armed opposition, depending again on the estimated total size of armed opposition.

3. The Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), a coalition of hard-line Salafists, or “national-jihadists,” completely dominated by the nation-wide cadre-based militia Ahrar al-Sham, who are fighting for an Islamic state, but unlike al-Qaida, their goals are entirely Syrian. They are completely outside the SMC, but tactically collaborate on the ground with FSA and SILF in operations against the regime, while also cooperating with Al-Nusra at this operational level. They actively denounce Al-Nusra’s ties to Al Qaida and global jihad, and even more ISIS’s role as an Iraqi-based front. While Salafists, they see the fight with the regime as paramount, and for the most part seem little implicated in any ‘theocratic’ repression in liberated zones; their “national” character, in a sense, tames their theocratic impulse in as much as it conflicts with Syrian society, and unlike Al-Qaida, they claim to only want to impose their reactionary vision after Assad is defeated, rather than now during the struggle. There have, however, been some unfortunate cases of such cooperation with al-Nusra or ISIS, most notoriously in Ahrar al-Sham’s mid-2013 collaboration with ISIS repression in Raqqa (where ISIS bombed Afhfad al-Rasoul and other FSA groups out of the city), which later backfired against it when ISIS began to viciously attack them more recently; and Ahrar al-Sham even took part in the ISIS and al-Nusra attack on Alawites in Latakia in August, though it denies any role in killing civilians (indeed, the HRC report into the events suggested the overwhelming majority of the gratuitous killing was carried out by ISIS and its small Chechen-led satellite militia, even al-Nusra coming off relatively lightly).

Jane’s report estimates the SIF has 15-20,000 fighters, while the other reports noted above give their strength as anywhere between 13,000 and 25,000 (the initial report on Jane’s report by the Telegraph claimed this tendency had some 30-35,000 fighters; it seems the Telegraph either made up the figure out of thin air, or added together the maximum alleged figures for the SIF with those of the two Al-Qaida groups). While some reports have claimed past Saudi support to Ahrar al-Sham (perhaps an attempt to find a “national” Salafist group as a wedge between the soft-line, Qatari backed Brotherhood on one side and the global-jihadist groups on the other), if true such a policy seems to have been dropped long ago, given Ahrar’s close coordination on the ground with Jabhat a-Nusra and its well-known support from certain anti-monarchial Kuwaiti clerics (http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/external_support_and_the_syrian_insurgency).

Update: The formation of the Islamic Front in November 2013 by seven Islamist militias (http://eaworldview.com/2013/11/syria-analysis-significant-insurgent-formation-islamic-front/) cannot be fully discussed here; see later blog articles. However, it is worth noting that the IF essentially joined together the three largest sections of the SILF (except the Farouk Brigades) with Ahrar al-Sham from the SIF, thereby dissolving these two former alliances into one. Some aspects of this suggest a radicalisation of the SILF groups while other aspects suggest a moderation of Ahrar al-Sham.

4. The two Al-Qaida linked groups, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), that is, the “Salafist/jihadis” who have a global agenda. Most foreign jihadis join these groups. Like the SIF, they are nation-wide cadre-based jihadists. They likewise aim for a theocracy, but are more hard-line in practice than the SIF, and in particular are explicitly sectarian, promising oppression to Alawites and Shiites (though Christians and Jews are allegedly to be respected, as long as they don’t expect to take part in Sunni Islamic state power). However, there is an important difference in practice; al-Nusra is largely Syrian, despite its global agenda, while ISIS is heavily Iraqi and foreign – while al-Nusra had plenty of Iraqi members and foreign recruits, nearly all went with ISIS when they split in April 2013. Al-Nusra has been overshadowed by ISIS in recent months, and most of the gruesome sectarian attacks on Alawi and Shia, which increased in the second half of 2013, are the handiwork of ISIS, which represents a counterrevolutionary mirror of the regime.

Al-Nusra has certainly also engaged in attacks on minorities, such as the massacre of 60 Shia in Halita in the east in June 2013; and while completely overshadowed by the bloodthirsty role in ISIS in the attack on the Latakia Alawites in August, al-Nusra’s role was hardly innocent either, and to even take part in such an attack demonstrates sectarian thinking even if there had been no victims. Al-Nusra’s own sectarian foray into the historic Christian town of Maaloula later in the year apparently did not result in massacres or attacks on churches (http://www.syrianobserver.com/News/News/Maaloula+Churches+Safe+Says+Nun), and while this may indicate a growing divergence with ISIS in practice, for a known jihadist group to even enter such a town further demonstrates a deeply sectarian view of the struggle (al-Nusra’s move was criticised not only by local non-Islamist FSA groups but even by Ahrar al-Sham: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24148322). In practice, it stands between ISIS and other Islamists in the degree of theocratic repression or active sectarianism it dishes out; but to generalise, in the second half of 2013, its split with ISIS, its growing Syrianisation, a number of defeats by the regular FSA on the one hand and by ISIS on the other, and even the colonisation of some al-Nusra branches by former FSA cadres (due to resource issues, particularly in Raqqa), have tended to somewhat soften its penchant for “Islamic” repression, and by and large it focuses on fighting the regime.

ISIS has gone the other way, and by late 2013 was so associated with theocratic repression, murder and torture of FSA and mainstream Islamist fighters and civil resistance cadres, and gratuitous murder of minorities – while barely fighting the regime and vice versa – that it had alienated the entire spectrum of anti-Assad opposition, including al-Nusra. This was the background to the combined offensive of all other rebel groups to try to defeat ISIS in early 2014. ISIS should not be regarded as part of the movement in any form, but rather as the alternative pole of counterrevolution, and much evidence suggests a great deal more coordination between the regime and ISIS than meets the eye.

The estimates of their combined strength range from around 5000 to some 12,000 fighters (the higher figure according to Lister from Jane’s). Claims of Saudi support to such organisations by many western leftists, despite what may seem logical due to their shared “Wahabbi” philosophy, are in fact absurd and not supported by a shred of evidence; Al-Qaida sees the House of Saud as arch-apostates and its original raison-de’tre was precisely its overthrow. By all accounts, the Saudis measure their hostility to parts of the Syrian rebellion on the basis of closeness or distance from the Al-Qaida groups just as much as does the US.

To sum up, the following are the range of estimates of the size of various parts of the armed resistance:
a. FSA (ie, secular, directly loyal to SMC): 30-50,000
b. SILF (moderate-Islamist, indirectly loyal to SMC): 37-40,000
c. Ahfad al Rasul (moderate-Islamist, loyal to SMC): 10-15,000
d. CSR (moderate-Islamist, loyal to SMC, Muslim Brotherhood-linked): perhaps a few thousand
e. Authenticity and Development Front (“non-political” Salafist, loyal to SMC and to Saudis): perhaps a few thousand
f. SIF (hard-line “national” Salafist, not loyal to SMC): 13,000-25,000
f. Al-Qaida-connected (global-jihadist, hostile to SMC): 5000-12,000.

Total: 95,000 – 145,000

Comment on ‘secular’ and “Islamist’ division

Thus whether we take the lowest or highest estimates, the secular fighters account for about a third of the total fighting force, and the hard-line national and global Salafists for somewhere between one fifth and one quarter. Thus claims of “no secular fighters”, or of all the resistance between “jihadis”, are entirely fictional. However, the meaning of the large middle bloc of “mainstream-Islamists,” the nature and causes of religious naming in Syria, and the flexibility of membership between various groups, all need to be discussed, from a materialist point of view, but require a separate article.

As leftists, we do not support Islamism, even its moderate varieties, politically; we are opposed to an “Islamic state.” “Islamic fundamentalism” is a non-working class ideology. While this “Islamism” reflects the traditionalism of the peasantry and urban poor, excluded from the “secular” project Baath bourgeois-nationalist project, it also reflects that these layers lack their own leadership after decades of viciously repressive rule, and are led by the urban and rural petty-bourgeoisie and smaller bourgeois layers also excluded by the Baathist mega—capitalist elite. While fighting together against the regime, it would of course be wise for the FSA and other secular and democratic fighters and activists to watch their backs.

However, while it is important to know that some 60 percent of the rebels are either secular or “moderates in groups with an Islamic character,” and thus the whole rebellion has not become a giant jihadist plot, at the same time, leftists in the West need to get off the “secular” bandwagon of insisting that peasants and urban poor over in Syria trying to overthrow a monstrously brutal dictatorship have to first get a western-left, or western-liberal, or western-right, star of approval for their “secularism.” The momentum of the struggle against a regime that jails and tortures tens of thousands while dropping barrel bombs on cities, firing ballistic missiles at apartment blocks, strafing the country with MiG warplanes and helicopter gunships and besieging and starving countless population centres, is a democratic momentum and it is the original aims of the revolution which most are fighting for, including most within the Islamist formations, other than the most extreme. Leftists in the West should be concerned, but we cannot define their struggle, and dictate their necessary alliances, based on our conceptions and prejudices; and emphasising this grand ‘secularism” too much, at this stage of the struggle, would essentially exclude large sections of the urban and ruling poor.

By the same token, however, in a country where there are large non-Sunni minority populations (Alawi, Shia, Christians, Druze), if this “Islamism” is too Sunni-specific and sectarian, it will inevitably exclude these minorities from the struggle. And to the extent that Sunni extremist forces are involved, particularly the al-Qaida-linked groups, it encourage these minorities to stick with the regime as their best defense. A complete domination of the struggle by extreme Sunni sectarians would abolish the revolution and leave two anti-democratic formations facing each other. The revolutionary offensive against ISIS rule in January 2014 (see below) makes this outcome much less likely.

Nonetheless, much of the damage may have been done, and supporters of the revolution, while not at all neutral in the military struggle, may have to recognise that there is no ultimate military “solution” in these circumstances (any more than there is a diplomatic “solution” of the type they are attempting to stitch up at Geneva II); there is only a revolutionary solution, and military struggle is only one tactic within an ongoing revolutionary process, and ultimately subject to politics, including this major political weakness. Therefore I agree with the view of Darth Nader that the revolutionary forces should take advantage of any ceasefire, in the case it were possible to force the regime to agree to one, to re-ignite the mass civil struggle, even if this were the result of the corrupt and regime-saving process of Geneva II (http://darthnader.net/2014/01/22/how-geneva-2-can-help-syrians).

Update: The uprising against ISIS in January 2014: How this impacts on our analysis

While this piece was originally written in September 2013 and many changes have taken place, the fundamentals here remain the same as far as can see. On the one hand, there has undoubtedly been a further drift towards “Islamisation”, a further strengthening of Islamist elements versus secular elements, at least on paper. While this has tended to go towards the “centre (ie, the new Islamic Front) rather than the jihadist extremes, the program of the Islamic Front itself is arguably more radical than that of its largely former SILF components. It explicitly calls for an Islamic state, namely “establishing the state in which justice and development will prevail under Islam’s umbrella and Sharia’s dominion,” but on the other hand it stresses that “it does not consider itself as the national alternative” but rather a fighting force, in collaboration with others, to bring down the regime, and while it officially contrasts “democracy” with the rule of “God,” it immediately stresses that “this does not mean we want arbitrary and authoritarian regime, but national matters cannot be rectified except by consultation in principle and application” (http://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/full-english-text-of-the-islamic-fronts-founding-declaration). What this highly contradictory formulations mean kin practice will be determined more by the momentum of the struggle than by the formulations themselves.
And this is where there is some hope, because on the other hand, the offensive launched in early 2014 against ISIS’s increasing imposition of a vicious theocratic dictatorship over large parts of Syria – an offensive launched jointly by the FSA, the Islamic Front, a new moderate Islamist formation called the Army of Mujahideen (less radical than IF) and by Jabhat al-Nusra – is a new upsurge of the revolution. Despite the role of the IF and even al-Nusra in this operation, it is false to see this as just a turf war between rival Islamists in which some just happen to be less vicious than others. Rather, this offensive was a response to a grass-roots upsurge against ISIS rule at the beginning of 2014, and this mobilisation against theocratic repression will make it much harder for any of the Islamist groups currently siding with the people to turn around an impose similar repression.

A very good specific example of this was the fact that in the northeastern city of Raqqa, a region where jihadist-leaning forces are more dominant than elsewhere (given its proximity to Iraq’s Anbar province), it was Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, rather than secular FSA, that liberated two churches from ISIS and removed the black flags that ISIS had flown from their spires. As Robin Yassin-Kassab explains, “this was because al-Nusra in Raqqa is manned by ex-Free Syrian Army fighters” (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/rise-fall-isil-syria-201411572925799732.html). Yes, precisely: and this is the point.

Yet at the time that the FSA’s 11th Division in Raqqa “defected” to al-Nusra last September, it was generally interpreted as further evidence of this growing “Islamisation” of the struggle and the gradual collapse of the FSA. What this latest incident reveals is that this defection may be just as easily interpreted as an FSA “colonisation” of al-Nusra. The numbers further suggest that – according to an FSA commander in Raqqa at the time, the FSA had over 1000 fighters and al-Nusra only a few hundred, and were confronted by a murderous ISIS force of 400. ISIS was far more powerful due its money and arms, of course; as the FSA commander noted, “we have not received any support since the beginning of the revolution. Obama and Cameron are liars. If they had arms this never would have happened” (http://beta.syriadeeply.org/2013/09/raqqas-fsa-brigades-join-jabhat-al-nusra). Yet even then, if both confronted by ISIS, why did the more powerful-in-numbers FSA dissolve into the smaller al-Nusra rather than vice-versa? And it seems the answer would be the same as for the reason ISIS was more powerful than both: massively more Gulf money and arms will flow to something labelled “al-Nusra” than to something labelled FSA.

If an FSA-colonised “al-Nusra” can liberate Christian churches from ISIS, this needs to be borne in mind when assessing the role of the Islamic Front, which appease a paragion of moderation compared to a-Nusra generally

Published in Alford, J & Wilson, A (2016) Khiyana: Daesh, The Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution, Unkant Publishers, London.

Countless articles have described the social background to the Syrian revolution, and a good bibliography would be a useful tool to be put together at some stage. Below this brief introduction is a fairly straightforward one, but the fundamental facts are well-known. The early Baath Party governments of the 1960s built a base among the peasantry via land reforms and rural subsidy programs, and many Baath political and military leaders had their origins in rural areas, eclipsing the traditional urban-based bourgeoisie. At that stage the main Muslim Brotherhood opposition tended to represent the opposition of the Sunni urban bourgeoisie. However, as a new more powerful capitalist class consolidated itself through the state apparatus – the typical process of Nasserite/Baathist/Kemalist development – the rural dwellers again got left behind.

But it was not until this new elite, under Bashar Assad after 2000, launched neo-liberal “reforms” that the new divide widened into an abyss. These reforms transformed the countryside, leaving it prey to a new class of big capitalist landowners, connected to the regime, driving large numbers of peasants into landlessness, while the abolition of subsidies and freeing of prices and similar measures further hammered the peasantry and also the growing urban poor – themselves first and second generations from the impoverished countryside, with family and other links to rural Syria – who formed great new shanty-suburban rings around Damascus and Aleppo.

While, as elsewhere in the Arab Spring, the first sparks of revolt in early 2011 occurred in urban areas, in Syria these tended to be the smaller towns and cities located in impoverished regional areas, large rural towns essentially, from Daraa in the south to Idlib in the north; the movement in Damascus and Aleppo at this early stage did not look as magnificent as in Cairo and Tunis. From these rural towns the revolt spread like wildfire to the now vigorously anti-Baath countryside. Eventually, the revolution did come to the two big cities, by mid-2012, and the divide between regime-control and opposition-control in both cities is virtually a lesson in sociology: the suburbs dominated by the urban poor are controlled by the revolution, the more established middle and upper class suburbs are under the regime.

Indeed, as virtually all analyses tell you, innocently enough, one of the sections of the population that has remained tied to the regime, apart from much of the Alawite and Christian minority population, is the Sunni “business classes” in Damascus and Aleppo. Unlike in Egypt, Tunisia, and in its different way, Libya, the Syrian capitalist class, a creature of the Baath, has remained tied solidly to the regime (indeed, this has to be understood as part of imperialism’s problem all along – where is the section of the ruling class to replace a discredited Assad with?).

Of course it is not only the capitalist class – much of the secular, comfortable, established Sunni and Christian middle classes in these two cities remain tied to regime, if often grudgingly, or at least neutral, due to the clear political limitations of much of the opposition leadership: a movement based among the overwhelmingly Sunni peasantry and urban poor, which has taken up arms, and which is overall more traditional and religious in outlook than the older established elites, may indeed look frightening to many. Of course, this “religiosity” is also what many in the western left are obsessed with, often in a way indistinguishable from the Islamophobic right; yet while there clearly are seriously reactionary jihadist formations in Syria, overall, the moderate Islamist rebel groups (or indeed even the adoption of religious names by some politically-secular FSA brigades), simply reflect the greater religiosity of the urban and rural poor, ie, those sectors left out of the bourgeois “secular” Baath project, especially after 2000.

Thus, a revolution that for many is nothing but a “sectarian” clash is in reality the sharpest class against class clash in the Arab Spring, thus its extraordinary tenacity and ferocity; its sectarian element is, at base, an overlay of this. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t gone further than this, and cannot go even further and become purely and simply a sectarian war (which is manifestly not the case yet); but even if that did eventuate, it wouldn’t cancel out the social origins of this phenomenon.

Interestingly, the Syrian revolution can be seen as the mirror image, in class/sectarian terms, of the Bahrain uprising, while understanding obviously how different the two societies are: there the state is controlled by a royal elite from the Sunni minority, which rules over an impoverished Shiite majority, the urban and rural poor, whose uprising was partially led by Shia clerics and was overwhelmingly more religious in outlook than the regime and the established classes which stood behind it; the regime and its Saudi and Gulf backers were able to slander the uprising as an Iranian 5th column. Whereas in Syria, the state in dominated by a political and military elite from the Alawite minority (even if it rules for a mixed Alawite-Sunni capitalist class), which rules over a vast Sunni majority of the rural and urban poor, whose revolt is slandered by the regime as a Saudi/Gulf 5th column. But enough from me.  Here first is a brief clip from the article that underlines the point I am making here, and below it the article itself:

(clip) The revolution in Syria, in contrast to the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, was at its base a peasants’ revolt, a protest by the Sunni periphery against what was perceived as the Baath regime’s turning its back on the country’s rural population … … And so, from the time the revolution broke out in March 2011 in the city of Dar’a,
the rebellion spread like wildfire to all the rural areas and the periphery, including the northern part of the state, the Jazira region, and later, the agricultural towns of Homs and Hama … … Another source of regime strength lies in the fact that while turmoil has come to the suburbs and the slums of Aleppo and Damascus, the revolution has not ignited among urban Syrians, including the Sunni bourgeoisie of the big cities … … Part of the reluctance stems from the economic benefits the urban bourgeoisie enjoy, especially during recent years thanks to the regime’s economic policies. Some have to do with the bourgeoisie’s age-old resentments, reservations, and aversion toward the
periphery and the rural regions and their inhabitants … … Since most opposition activists come from rural areas, most incursions into the big cities, including Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs, have been carried out by insurgents from nearby rural regions. They penetrate the big cities mostly through the slum neighborhoods and suburbs, which are often inhabited by recent migrants from the periphery and rural areas. These migrants generally maintain connections with relatives back home, and it is from there that the armed bands come. But because the bourgeoisie of Damascus and Aleppo have refrained from joining the insurgents,[14] the Syrian opposition has been denied victory photos such as those from Cairo’s Tahrir Square …

Can Assads Syria Survive Revolution?
by Eyal Zisser
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2013, pp. 65-71 (view PDF)

http://www.meforum.org/3529/assad-syria-revolution

The outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 surprised many people. Until that time, it seemed that the 40-year reign of the Assad dynasty, at first under its founder, Hafiz, and then under his son and heir, Bashar, had succeeded in turning Syria into a strong and stable state with governmental institutions, military, and security forces.
Even social and economic systems appeared quite sturdy and effective.

Yet a year and a half of bloody fighting between the regime and the rebels has undermined most of the achievements of the Assad dynasty and turned Syria into a failing state on the verge of disintegration. Most state institutions have ceased to function. The bonds that united the various religious and ethnic communities, tribes, and regions-that took many long years of hard work to forge-are rapidly unraveling. In
addition, Syria has become a kind of punching bag with foreign actors, both regional and international, intervening freely in the country’s internal affairs.

How did the revolt spread so quickly to all parts of Syria, striking such deep roots among wide segments of the Syrian society? How has the Assad regime managed, for the time being and in contrast to other Arab regimes rocked by the recent upheavals, to survive the lethal challenges facing it? And how has it been able to maintain its cohesion and
strength to the point where many observers do not preclude the possibility of its ultimate survival?

The Outbreak of the Syrian Revolution

The revolution in Syria, in contrast to the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, was at its base a peasants’ revolt, a protest by the Sunni periphery against what was perceived as the Baath regime’s turning its back on the country’s rural population. Only later did the rebellion take on additional dimensions with jihadists joining the struggle
because of the regime’s “heretical” Alawite nature and because of its alliance with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. In the name of jihad, thousands of volunteers have streamed into Syria from all over the Arab and Muslim world[1] though jihadist slogans probably did little to arouse Syrians to join the ranks of the revolution.

Revenge was another dimension that developed with time, stemming from the regime’s increasingly violent efforts to suppress the waves of protest. It is clear that the regime’s brutality served to expand the circle of participants in the revolution. Many who joined were motivated specifically by the desire to take revenge for the spilled blood of their family members and relatives or for the destruction of their home villages and towns by the regime’s forces.[2]

Bombed-out buildings in Aleppo, October 3, 2012, show the devastation perpetrated on civilians. The Assad regime’s brutal response to the revolt has only widened the circle of rebellion. Many who have joined the fighting are motivated by the desire to take revenge for the spilled blood of their relatives or the destruction of their homes and communities.

Paradoxically, in the past, the Sunni rural population had been one of the regime’s foremost mainstays. It was one of the main partners in Syria’s ruling coalition of minorities and the periphery, led by members of the Alawite community, who were in turn headed by the Assad dynasty. This coalition served as the basis for the Baath revolution of March 1963, and later as the basis of support for the “Corrective Movement” and for Hafiz al-Assad’s seizure of power in November 1970.

With the passage of time and especially from the beginning of the 2000s, it seemed as if the Syrian regime had ceased reflecting Syrian society. The regime even seemed to have turned its back on the rural areas and the periphery. Beginning in 2006, Syria experienced one of the worst droughts the state had ever known with the damage felt most intensely in the Jazira region of northeastern Syria and in the south, especially in the Hawran region and its central city of Dar’a.

These regions were also adversely affected by the government’s new economic policies, which aimed at changing the character of the Syrian economy from a socialist orientation into a “social market economy.” The aim of these policies, led by Vice Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari, was to open Syria to the world economy, encourage foreign investment, and promote activity in the domestic private sector so as to ensure economic
growth and enable the regime to cope with its domestic and economic challenges: rapid growth of the population, backward infrastructure and lack of advanced industry, over-reliance on agriculture, etc. The new policy was backed by Bashar al-Assad, who seemed to have underestimated the importance of the Baath party’s socialist ideology as well as its institutions and networking, mainly in the periphery. One conclusion to be drawn from the negative reactions to this policy in the periphery was that while the Syrian regime did indeed manage to preserve its image of strength and solidity during the first decade of the 2000s, its support base was considerably narrowed. It lost the broad popular support that it had enjoyed among the Sunni population in the rural areas and the periphery after it turned its back on them.[3]

And so, from the time the revolution broke out in March 2011 in the city of Dar’a, the rebellion spread like wildfire to all the rural areas and the periphery, including the northern part of the state, the Jazira region, and later, the agricultural towns of Homs and Hama. The revolution reached the large cities, Damascus and Aleppo, only at a much later stage.

The Tlas Family and the Town of Rastan

An illustration of this turmoil can be found in the story of the Tlas family from the small town of Rastan. Headed by Mustafa Tlas, the family was one of the pillars of the Baath regime, a living example of the close alliance between the regime and the Sunni periphery on the one hand, and between the Sunni and the Alawite officers led by the Assad dynasty on the other.

Rastan itself is the third largest town in the Homs district and numbers about 40,000 inhabitants according to a 2004 census. It is located on the main road between Aleppo and Damascus, on the segment between the towns of Homs and Hama, about 20 kilometers from Homs and 22 kilometers from Hama. Rastan’s residents earn their livings from agriculture and light industry, notably the rock quarries for which the town is known.[4]

The town has two main clans, the Hamdan, the larger and stronger of the two, and the Firzat. The Tlas family belongs to the Hamdan clan. One of the family’s members, Abdel Qadr Tlas, served as the mukhtar (administrative head) of Rastan from the end of the Ottoman period into the French Mandate period. As a young man, Mustafa Tlas, Abdel Qadr’s son, became the ally and right hand man of Hafiz al-Assad. The two met at the Homs Military Academy, during the officers’ course in which they were enrolled after joining the Syrian army in November 1952. They were roommates during the course, and their paths never parted thereafter. They advanced in rank together and, in November 1970, seized power in Damascus with Hafiz leading and Mustafa helping him. At that time, Tlas was serving as commander in chief of the army and was quickly appointed minister of defense, a post he held until his retirement in 2004.

Tlas was in office during the brutal suppression of the Islamist revolt against the Baath regime in 1976-82, which peaked with the massacre of the citizens of Hama in February 1982. His last task was, in essence, to help Assad’s son Bashar grow into his father’s big shoes.[5]

Tlas also established an economic empire. One of its showcases was a publishing house. He used this firm as a vehicle for publishing, in addition to works of other authors, his own “scholarly” writings, memoirs, and even poetry. Tlas married Lamya Jabiri, a member of the Aleppine aristocracy, and the couple had four children: two daughters-Nahid, who married a Saudi businessman and moved with him to Paris, and Sarya-and two sons-Firas, who became a successful businessman in Damascus, and Manaf, who chose a military career. Manaf was known as a close friend of Bashar al-Assad and served as a brigade commander in the Republican Guard Division, an elite unit formed to protect the regime.[6]

Rastan and the Start of the Revolt

In addition to being home to the Tlas family, Rastan also serves as a faithful reflection of the Sunni periphery. It is not surprising that when the Syrian revolution broke out, the town became one of the revolt’s focal points. As early as the beginning of April 2011, the town square statue of Hafiz al-Assad was reportedly smashed to pieces as demonstrators shouted with joy.[7] This was a symbolic act clearly expressing the town’s disengagement from the Baath regime and from the Assad dynasty. However, Rastan is too strategically located to be given up. Since it is on a main road linking northern and southern Syria and close to the towns of Homs and Hama, it became a major scene of bloody battles between the regime’s army and the insurgents, in which scores of the town’s residents were killed.

The protest movement in Rastan did not bypass the Tlas family. The members of the family who were officers and soldiers, like many of their friends and colleagues, could not ignore the pressure of the unfolding events or the fate suffered by their relatives, neighbors, and home town.

The first Tlas family member to join the revolt was Abd al-Razzaq Tlas, who announced his desertion from the regular Syrian army as early as June 2011. He has subsequently served as commander of the Faruq battalion associated with the Free Syrian Army, which operates in the region of Homs. As time passed, Abd al-Razzaq has become one of the closely watched symbols of the revolution. Thus, for example, innumerable interpretations were given to the fact that he has begun to grow a beard though this action did not necessarily stem from religious motives. His image was not damaged even after rumors were spread about his involvement in a sex scandal though he was apparently removed from his position as battalion commander.[8] Additional members of the Tlas family followed him into the revolution until finally, in the summer of 2012, the reverberations reached the home of Mustafa Tlas. This was quite late in the game and only after it began to seem as if the days of the Assad regime were numbered.

During the first months of 2012, Mustafa Tlas, suffering from health problems, moved to Paris to be near his daughter Nihad. His son Firas soon followed and established contacts with opposition figures and began participating in resistance events abroad.[9] At the beginning of July 2012, Manaf announced his defection from the ranks of the regime. In an interview with al-Arabiya news network, he explained, “I do not see myself as a senior figure in the ranks of the regime but rather as one of the sons of the Syrian Arab army who opposes barbarism and murder of innocents and the corrupt government … I hope for the establishment of a united Syria and for its rebuilding as a state that does not believe in or promote revenge, discrimination, or selfishness.”[10] Immediately after Manaf’s defection, several opposition figures began to mention him as a possible leader of Syria after Bashar’s hoped-for fall. Other opposition figures, however, came out firmly against the idea.[11]

The steps taken by those members of the Tlas family serve as a graphic example of what was happening all over Syria during the past year and a half. They are good indicators of how people who had been strong supporters of the Assad regime turned their backs on it when they felt that it had betrayed them or no longer served their interests.

The Survival of the Regime

Every coin and almost every story has two sides, and so it is with the story of Syria. One side of the story has to do with the fact that the insurgents’ uprising spread quickly and struck deep roots. The other side of the story has to do with the regime and the undeniable fact that it has so far been able to survive. One explanation for this focuses on
the built-in weaknesses of the opposition,[12] which is a faithful reflection of the Syrian society: Both opposition and society suffer from divisions and fragmentation based upon ethnic, religious, regional, socioeconomic, and other differences. Another explanation focuses on the international community’s lack of will or ability to intervene in Syria. A third explanation highlights the sources of the regime’s strengths, calling attention to the fact that the regime survives, not only because of its opponents’ weaknesses, but also because of the reserves of power at its disposal.

One source of the regime’s strength lies in the support it receives from the members of the minority communities, who serve as its social bases. These include the Alawites (12 percent of the population), the Druze (5 percent), and most of the Christians (13 percent). The Kurds (10 percent), including those who live in the regions bordering Turkey and Iraq, have for the most part, not turned against the government either. Many Kurds have exploited the revolution to throw off government control and advance the cause of partial Kurdish independence. Nevertheless, the Syrian Kurds as a whole have refrained from joining the ranks of the opposition or coming out openly against the Assad regime.

Another source of regime strength lies in the fact that while turmoil has come to the suburbs and the slums of Aleppo and Damascus, the revolution has not ignited among urban Syrians, including the Sunni bourgeoisie of the big cities. Most big city residents have chosen to remain on the sidelines and not support the protests, fearing that this
leap would result in political instability, as happened in Iraq or Lebanon, at immense costs.

Part of the reluctance stems from the economic benefits the urban bourgeoisie enjoy, especially during recent years thanks to the regime’s economic policies. Some have to do with the bourgeoisie’s age-old resentments, reservations, and aversion toward the periphery and the rural regions and their inhabitants. The numbers of urban dwellers are considerable. Some 55.7 percent of Syrians live in cities. Around 8 million (out of the total population of 23 million) live in the country’s three large cities: Aleppo-2.98 million; Damascus-2.52 million; and Homs-1.27 million. Most of the Christians live in these three cities.[13]

Since most opposition activists come from rural areas, most incursions into the big cities, including Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs, have been carried out by insurgents from nearby rural regions. They penetrate the big cities mostly through the slum neighborhoods and suburbs, which are often inhabited by recent migrants from the periphery and rural areas. These migrants generally maintain connections with relatives back home, and it is from there that the armed bands come. But because the bourgeoisie of Damascus and Aleppo have refrained from joining the insurgents,[14] the Syrian opposition has been denied victory photos such as those from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which made it clear that the die had been cast in Egypt and that the youth were on the revolution’s side. In Syria, for the time being, the youth in the big cities prefer to remain shut up in their homes.

Another source of the regime’s strength lies in the loyalty of its institutions, in particular, the army, the security apparatuses, the state bureaucracy, and the Baath party apparatuses. Indeed, in many cases, using the party’s networks, the regime was able to recruit and mobilize local families in various areas, including Sunni neighborhoods, which have become local militias fighting for the regime. These include members of the Sunni community in particular with the emphasis on the Sunni periphery.

Loyalists in Rastan

Returning to Rastan, it is clearly not a big city but of the rebel periphery. But it is also undisputable that many of its residents remain loyal to the regime. In the Tlas family, some have joined the ranks of the rebels, but others maintain neutrality, and still others continue to work for the government. Thus, Talal Tlas serves as Syria’s deputy minister of defense and Ahmad Tlas serves as the commander of the First Corps, the most important military unit in southern Syria.[15] And the various branches of the Tlas family continue to live together in Rastan; battles in the town take place between rebels and army forces that come from outside in order to attack.[16]

Beside these two senior Tlas members, there are others still serving loyally as army officers, perhaps because they consider this to be in their best personal interest and a good way to advance their careers. Their position is quite different from that of the younger officers, like Abd al-Razzaq Tlas, who has his whole future before him. Joining
the ranks of the revolution promises him a brilliant future should it succeed. In any case, as a young officer, he did not have nearly as many vested interests to leave behind and potentially lose. The situation of the senior and middle level officers is much different. They could lose everything, all their achievements, their ranks, pensions, possibilities
for further advancement, and other benefits and privileges. Joining the revolution means sacrifice for a vague future full of unknowns. The revolutionary future holds out the promise of great rewards for the youth, but not necessarily for the symbols of the old regime.

It is clear that as long as the members of the Tlas family and people like them give the regime their support, it will be able to survive. Only about 10 percent of the army’s manpower has defected. The other 90 percent, both soldiers and officers, the great majority of whom come from the Sunni periphery, continues to stand united around the regime, giving it the breathing space it so desperately needs.

Conclusions

The story of the Tlas family and their town, Rastan, attests to the complexity of the Syrian picture. The regime is losing blood daily; little by little support for it diminishes. Since the eruption of the revolution, the trend has clearly been in one direction only.
Nevertheless, the regime retains reserves of support that enable it to survive. A dramatic shift in the situation, such as Bashar’s assassination or an unexpected intervention by the international community, could give the insurgents the push they need and bring about
a major change in the course of the conflict. But the example of the Tlas family and Rastan suggests that the struggle for Syria will still take a long time to unfold.

Eyal Zisser is dean of the faculty of humanities and the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair of Contemporary Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University.

[1] The New York Times, Oct. 14, 2012; Al-Monitor, online news, Oct. 18, 2012.
[2] Fouad Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion (Stanford: Stanford University, 2012), pp. 69-156.
[3] Eyal Zisser, “The Renewal of the ‘Struggle for Syria’: The Rise and Fall of the Ba’th Party,” Sharqiya, Fall 2011, pp. 21-9; Hanna Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry: The Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables and Their Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 131-75. For economic data, “Syria-Country Report,” Economist Intelligence Unit, Apr. 2011.
[4] The Annual Report for 2004, Central Bureau of Statistics, Prime Minister’s Office, Syrian Arab Republic, Damascus; “Syria: Mining,” Encyclopedia of the Nations, accessed Dec. 7, 2012.
[5] Mustafa Tlas, Mira’t Hayati (Damascus: Dar Tlas lil-Nashr, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 240-310; Sami Moubayed, Steel and Silk, Men and Women Who Shaped Syria, 1900-2000 Seattle: Cune Press, 2006), pp. 89, 255.
[6] Al-Hayat (London), July 12, 2012; al-Jazeera TV (Doha), July 14, 2012.
[7] Asharq al-Awsat (London), Apr. 7, 2011; al-Arabiya TV (Dubai), Apr. 6, 7, 2011.
[8] Reuters, June 6, 7, 2011; al-Jazeera TV, June 6, 2011; BBC Radio in Arabic, Feb. 12, 2012; Aron Lund, “Holy Warriors: A Field Guide to Syria’s Jihadi Groups,” Foreign Policy, Oct. 15, 2012.
[9] Al-Quds al-Arabi (London), June 28, 2012; al-Jazeera TV, July 1, 2012.
[10] Reuters, July 14, 2012; al-Arabiya TV, July 24, 2012.
[11] Al-Hayat, July 19, 24, 2012.
[12] See, for example, BBC News, Nov. 12, 2012; Itamar Rabinovich, “The Anarchy Factor in Syria,” The Straits Times (Singapore), May 3, 2012.
[13] “General Census,” Central Bureau of Statistics, Prime Minister’s Office, Syrian Arab Republic, Damascus, accessed Dec. 21, 2012.
[14] Reuters, July 18, 19, 2012; al-Hayat, Aug. 23, 2012.
[15] Syrian TV-24, Aug. 1, 2012.
[16] “Al-Markaz al-I’lami fi Rastan,” YouTube.com, July 22, 25, 2012

This article was originally published by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) as part of its Roundtable on the Syrian Crisis in July 2013, at cpdweb.org/news/Syria-Karadjis.shtml. The other articles as part of this Roundtable can be accessed at cpdweb.org/news/Syria-intro.shtml.

The question of arming the rebels

By Michael Karadjis

The general outline of what initially occurred in Syria is largely agreed upon, even by those who subsequently turned hostile to the revolution: a peaceful mass movement for democracy began in cities and towns across Syria in early 2011 against the dictatorship of President Assad II, and the regime met these protests with ruthless state violence.

It is also largely agreed that this situation continued for some eight months, protesters baring their chests to Assad’s machine guns, tanks and heavy artillery, alongside targeted torture and killings of key activists.

When the masses could no longer bear this situation, they began taking up arms in self-defence, while rank and file soldiers and officers refused to fire on their brothers and sisters, and defected (a good description of this process can be read here. Out of these defected troops and armed citizens arose the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Once arms are taken up, however, those holding a vastly different view of what is occurring in Syria begin to raise their heads and to gain a greater influence over leftist opinion. This view states that, whatever the initial situation, the armed struggle has now degenerated into a foreign (imperialist and Gulf-state) orchestrated brutal insurgency aimed at destroying Syria, led by reactionary Islamist elements, including Al-Qaida.

They point to some of the more obviously terroristic actions, such as bombings that targeted civilians in Damascus, as evidence that it has become a war against the Syrian people, as well as a Sunni sectarian war against minorities, and a fundamentalist war against secularism, rather than a war by the Syrian people against the regime.

Even many who have always opposed the Assad regime and well-knew how phony its alleged “anti-imperialist” credentials were turned either to a tactical defence of the regime as a “shield” against something worse, or to a “plague on both your houses” view—both sides are reactionary, both commit atrocities against the people.

What it misses is the fundamental difference on the ground, regardless of geopolitical struggles among regional powers: the Syrian revolution, the democratic revolt against the dictatorship, is still the fundamental fact.

Countless reports from liberated towns about the nature of this democratic process, under attack from the dictatorship, for example in Taftanaz, Saraqeb, Qusayr, the Damascus suburb Duma and elsewhere, are examples which deal with the real world difficulties of revolutionary democratic governance from below, but nevertheless reveal some semblance of popular structures that deserve defending against the dictatorship and its tanks, Scuds and torture chambers, and which do not show evidence of imposition of sharia law or sectarian cleansing of minorities

However, armed conflict, whatever its origins, does have the potential to corrupt a movement, whether via revenge war-crimes, an over-reliance on military means, the enhancement of existing sectarian dynamics, the boost it may give to irrational ideologies (e.g. jihadism), and the avenues it gives to foreign interference.

Such negatives cannot negate a democratic revolution as such, unless we live in a dream world (see “Syria or elsewhere there are no pure revolutions just revolutions”for this point. Indeed, massive regime violence is likely to have its reflection, to some extent, among the anti-regime forces. However, if they reach a certain level and are combined, the conflict could simply become a civil war between two equally undemocratic forces.

While all these factors exist at serious levels and should not be underestimated, it would be extremely premature to make this conclusion.

The formal leaderships of the Syrian opposition, based in exile, have little or no control over the grassroots political and military opposition inside Syria. On the positive side, this means they will not be very effective tools as the US tries to hijack the movement via these leaderships; but the negative side of this is that wayward elements that commit war crimes are also difficult to control and punish. Nevertheless, it is important that the rebel leaderships have continually and vigorously condemned all such violations, for example their condemnation of the well-publicised bite at the heart of a dead regime soldier by a rebel enraged at the soldier’s videos of his rape and murder of a mother and her daughters. The code of conduct, drawn up by the main grassroots leadership, the Local Coordination Committees (LCCs), and signed by dozens of FSA battalions, shows the lengths to which revolutionary forces have gone to try to rein in such activity.

There is however clearly a minority of truly reactionary forces which do threaten an anti-democratic religious dictatorship. The recent murder of a 15-year old in Aleppo for “blasphemy” is an example of this. This murder was vigorously condemned by the opposition Syrian Coalition, which called for punishment of the killers and described it as a “crime against humanity”. While clearly growing stronger, there is no evidence that this trend has come to dominate the movement.

Throwing the whole Syrian uprising into the “jihadi” camp undermines the very forces within the revolution that confront this reactionary trend on a daily basis (see for examples of popular demonstrations, slogans, declarations etc. against these currents and their actions here, here, here, here, here and elsewhere). The recent assassination of an FSA leader by Al-Qaida in Syria, and the FSA’s declaration that this meant “war” with these forces, further highlights this situation).

In a nutshell, the situation on the side of the revolution is still fluid, there is still struggle, the reactionary forces by no means dominate. In this context, their right to access arms from abroad should hardly be in question, confronted as they are by such a powerfully armed state machine, which bombs its own towns and cities with scud missiles, fighter planes and helicopters and the whole array of state power, reducing much of Syria to moonscapes (see for example Syria Witness). Even more so considering that most arms flowing into Syria are in fact Russian and Iranian arms further bolstering the regime.

However, since the countries furnishing some arms to the rebels at present (reactionary Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and the countries likely to provide any arms in future (the US or other imperialist states), have reactionary agendas, it may be argued that they will inevitably bend the Syrian revolutionary struggle to their ends if the Syrians accept their arms.

These states’ agendas are primarily to hijack the revolution and/or divert it along a path that better serves their interests than democratic revolution. Some in the Gulf prefer pushing reactionary Sunni jihadism and sectarianism; in contrast, the US tends to see these hard Islamist elements as a worse alternative to Assad, and aims to control a section of the exile leadership and push it into a deal with elements of the Assad regime, especially its security apparatus, to create a so-called “Yemeni solution”. In fact, to get them to prove their worth, the US is pushing mainstream rebels to prematurely launch war on the jihadists.

But not many movements in the real world, confronted by massive state violence, have much choice about who to get arms from, even though they come with a price. Merely receiving arms from someone has never been the final determinant of the nature of the movement on the ground, whether it was secular Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s getting arms from Iran, Iraqi Kurds in the 1970s from the CIA and the Shah of Iran, Ho Chi Minh negotiating for US support in 1945 or the Irish uprising in 1916 getting support from Germany. What is fundamental is the actual nature of the movement on the ground and degree to which it continues to represent the legitimate aspirations of the masses for democratic change.

Ironically, it is the extreme reluctance of Western states to provide arms to the Syrian opposition that has allowed the Gulf states to provide arms to reactionary Islamist forces. Islamist fighters are better armed than mainstream secular rebels; reports show some FSA rebels crossing over to Al-Nusra for this reason. Despite much talk about arms going to Syrian rebels, most reports show them starved for arms, and those arms that do reach them are light arms, little threat to the massive heavy military equipment Assad is throwing at them.

The US uses the strength of these Islamist forces as its key argument for refusing to arm the rebels, claiming any arms it sends to “friendly” rebels may end up with radical Islamists. This is then countered by the argument that it must start sending some arms to vetted rebels precisely in order to bolster the non-Islamist rebels. Yet in reality we still see hardly any US arms getting to the rebels. Indeed, the main US intervention has been stationing CIA units in Turkey and Jordan to prevent weapons from the Gulf reaching the rebels), especially weapons that would actually be useful, such as anti-aircraft weapons. (See here and here.)

The reason for this is that the US is not only concerned with radical Islamists; it is also aware that the exile FSA leaders that it has relations with have almost no control over the revolutionary forces inside Syria.

Thus while the left worries that Western arms will allow imperialism to hijack the movement, the US has refused to arm the rebels for over two years because it believes it cannot successfully hijack it. Ironically, while Syrian revolutionaries are continually confronting the reactionary Islamists, as shown above, when the US tried to prematurely push them against these forces, the same Syrians came out into the streets to denounce US interference for trying to split the anti-Assad forces; they’ll confront the Islamists on their own terms, but won’t let the US tell them what to do.

Nonetheless, despite Syrian rebels having the right to get whatever weapons they need, there may be legitimate questions about the effectiveness of receiving extra arms. Given the sheer horror of continuing war for all, and the regime’s enormous military superiority, extra arms may make little real difference to the actual battle, but instead may merely prolong the fighting, or even escalate it, as it will in turn encourage Russia, Iran and Hezbollah to supply even more weapons and fighters to the regime.

It is true that more arms in themselves will not win the revolution. In the big cities, Damascus and Aleppo, military stalemate has long ago been reached, with significant sections of the middle class sticking to the regime against the largely rural-based insurgency which has only won over the poorer areas of the cities; while important minorities, particularly most Alawites, Assad’s own sect, and many Christians, have stuck to the regime. War crimes, undemocratic actions and the rise of the Sunni jihadist section of the movement have led these sectors to grudgingly stick with the regime or at least remain neutral. They will need to be politically won over, and the important problems with the parts of the rebel leadership and ranks currently prevent this.

It is therefore in the interests of most Syrians, and particularly of the revolution, for some kind of ceasefire to allow a breathing space for the mass civil movement to revive. Pouring in the kinds of advanced weapons that would allow the rebels to take Damascus and Aleppo whole, despite popular reluctance, would be no democratic solution (and still less would a “Libyan solution” of achieving this via imperialist bombing). However, it is important to remember that no one, least of all the imperialist powers, is proposing anything like this.

It is somewhat ironic that the receipt of limited numbers of small arms by the rebels is put forward as a cause of prolonging the war, rather than the massive use of heavy weaponry by the regime. The logical conclusion of this argument is that they should allow themselves to be crushed and achieve the “peace of the grave”. Even if the rebels got the main weapons they demand, but which the US blocks—portable anti-aircraft guns—this would only allow the rebels to defend themselves and their mass base more effectively; these are not offensive weapons that would allow them to march on Damascus.

What such weapons might allow, however, is for supporters of the revolution to gain more confidence, win back supporters pessimistic about confronting the regime, and actually put pressure on the regime to come to some kind of ceasefire; it is the regime’s overwhelming military superiority that allows it to push its military solution.

Given the enormous military superiority the regime already holds, it is difficult to see how even more Russian and Iranian arms to the regime would make that much difference, and the lack of Western arms has not held them back in any case.

Socialists have no business demanding our imperialist governments send arms or do anything in particular, as we know their agendas; but neither should we protest if they do send some arms (as opposed to more direct intervention which we must strongly resist). In fact, by demanding a complete US exit from the region, the CIA operatives currently preventing better arms from getting to the rebels would be out of a job.

It should be stressed, however, that a change in imperialist strategy is not out of the question, if Western leaders decide the situation continuing as at present is simply too destabilising. While unlikely, if the US and other imperialist powers decide to desperately throw themselves in with an array of no-fly zones, aerial bombings and so on, the current situation would become even more catastrophic, both inside Syria and regionally. While it is clearly not the Israeli strategy—Israel has continually made it clear it sees Assad, who has kept the peace on the occupied Golan border for 40 years and continually made war on the Palestinians, as the lesser evil to any of the Syrian rebel forces—Israel would likely move to take advantage of such a conflagration to carry out its own aggression against Iran, or even to forcibly expel a new wave of Palestinians.

Opposing imperialism should not mean being apologists for Assad’s butchery. But it is important to remember that opposing this butchery should in no circumstances mean losing our critical faculties and forgetting the kind of Armageddon a real imperialist war would entail.

By Michael Karadjis

July 9, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Recent weeks saw seemingly contradictory developments regarding imperialist plans for Syria. First, on June 14, the US government announced it had finally agreed to provide some small arms directly to “vetted” sections of the Syrian armed opposition, following alleged US “confirmation” that Syria’s Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Then on June 18, the G8 meeting between the US, Russia and six other major imperialist powers issued a joint declaration calling for all parties to the Syrian conflict to attend the Geneva peace summit, declaring the need for a political solution.

In reality, the combination of these two developments was almost identical to what likewise occurred in the same week in early May: lots of hard talk about the possible provision of arms to the rebels due to the possible use of chemicals by the Syrian regime of Bashir Assad, and the initial US-Russian meeting to discuss Geneva and lots of talk about how both sides agree only a political solution is possible.

It may take some time to be able to properly assess the full implications of these moves. At the outset, however, two points can be stressed.

The first is that while the direct provision of an as yet unspecified amount of US arms to the Syrian rebels allows increased US leverage with both the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime, no serious commentators are suggesting this will make a great deal of difference on the ground. The US is only pledging to provide light weapons and ammunition, which are already being supplied by countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While this may add to the volume of such weapons, or even allow the Gulf states to provide certain kinds of US weapons that until now they were not allowed to, the US explicitly rules out providing the main form of weaponry the rebels call for, namely, portable anti-aircraft weapons for self-defence against Assad’s massive and massively used air power.

The second is that the initial declaration of the G8, announcing that the participants are “committed to achieving a political solution to the crisis based on a vision for a united, inclusive and democratic Syria” and calling for peace talks to begin “as soon as possible”, made no mention of the Assad regime at all (some of the opposition were demanding agreement that Assad step down as a pre-condition), called for “a transitional governing body with full executive powers, formed by mutual consent”, calls for Syria’s public services to be “preserved or restored”, stressing, very importantly, that “this includes the military forces and security services”, expressed their deep concern with “the growing threat from terrorism and extremism in Syria” and called on both the regime and opposition forces to “destroy and expel from Syria all organisations and individuals affiliated to al Qaida and any other non state actors linked to terrorism”.

This explicit naming of Al-Qaida (meaning the Al-Nusra front, which fights the Assad regime but is not part of any of the opposition coalitions and often clashes with them as well), with no explicit mention of Hezbollah, and the call for both regime and opposition to take the war to Al-Nusra, combined with the stress on preservation of the core of the regime, including its military, really gives an idea of what this “transitional authority” will be about, and the fundamental strategy of imperialism in Syria.

UK prime minister David Cameron was not kidding when he explained several weeks ago that the US, Russia and UK “share the same aim: to find a solution to the conflict that ends the killing and prevents violent extremism taking hold, with a transitional government with full executive powers, established with the consent of both sides, that preserves the integrity of the Syrian state and its institutions (http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-05-17/cameron-and-putin-hold-syria-talks).

At this stage, the opposition Syrian National Coalition has rejected the G8’s cynical call for it to fight Al-Nusra, declaring “the Assad regime is the only source of terrorism in Syria.”

This so-called “Yemeni solution”, involving some largely cosmetic changes of the top guard, while preserving the state apparatus and the core of the regime, but adding enough vetted members of the opposition to allow stabilisation, has been the imperialist project from the time it became clear that Assad would be unable to simply crush the revolt, and that his brutality would only lead to permanent instability and the continued strengthening of reactionary anti-imperialist sections of the radical Islamist forces, such as the Al-Nusra front, which is strongly connected to Al-Qaida.

It is important to understand this at the outset: that the “Libyan model”, whereby full-scale imperialist intervention tries to militarily bring the Syrian opposition to power in Damascus, has never even come close to being the preferred imperialist strategy in the US, UK, France or elsewhere; actually it has never been an option.

Understanding this allows us to understand that the combination of “tough talk” and ending arms embargoes with peace talks are two sides of the same coin: The US knows very well that increasing the number of small arms won’t even significantly affect the battlefield, but allows a form of pressure on the Assad regime in the context of Assad’s recent victories via use of massive anti-personnel weapons and Hezbollah invaders. If unchallenged, this could lead to Assad refusing to attend Geneva or putting up too many conditions, while also driving the poorly armed Syrian rebels further into the arms of the relatively well-armed Al-Nusra.

By the same token, the long delay after the last round to tough talk some 6-7 weeks earlier (when the media were full of “the US is about to”, or “may think about”, allowing arms to be provided to “vetted” Syrian rebel groups), and the fact that hardly any arms reached the rebels in that period, and that every time Obama opened his mouth since it has seemed less likely than ever, was also timed to help Assad go on the offensive to mop up a little before the proposed international conference, allowing pressure on the rebels to agree to participate at Geneva without their precondition of Assad agreeing to step down. The blatantly obvious withholding of arms from rebels in southern Syria (see below) and then in the crucial battle of Qusayr makes this rather clear, as does the fact that the US has now finally moved on the question of arms as Assad and Hezbollah get carried away and head north to Aleppo.

The Syrian revolution continues – the forces involved

I will first clarify what I think is going on generally. The Syrian revolution, which broke out in February 2011 as a democratic mass revolt against the dictatorship, is still the fundamental fact. The fact that after eight months of slaughter by the regime revolt was forced to take up arms by late 2011 does not change that.

Countless reports from liberated towns about the nature of this democratic process, under attack from the dictatorship, for example in Taftanaz (http://harpers.org/archive/2012/08/welcome-to-free-syria), Saraqeb (http://world.time.com/2012/07/24/a-dispatch-from-free-syria-how-to-run-a-liberated-town/), Qusayr (http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2013/03/syria-witness-running-the-town-of-qusayr-without-assad-81450/#ixzz2NdfWSbWK), the Damscus outer suburb Duma (http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2840), Sarmada (http://syriasurvey.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/local-governance-in-sarmada.html), Idlib
(http://syriasurvey.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/what-to-do-with-idlibs-islamists.html), Azaz (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-rebels-tackle-local-government/2013/04/30/3f2181d8-b1b9-11e2-baf7-5bc2a9dc6f44_story.html), parts of Aleppo (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/1103/In-rebel-held-Aleppo-Syrian-civilians-try-to-impose-law-through-courts-not-guns) and elsewhere, are examples which deal with the real-world difficulties of revolutionary democratic governance from below, but nevertheless reveal some semblance of popular structures that surely deserve defending against the dictatorship and its tanks, scud missiles and torture chambers, and which on the whole do not show evidence of imposition of sharia law or sectarian cleansing of minorities.

While a complete run-down of the various forces and organisations involved in Syria would require another article, for the sake of clarity it is worth noting that the liberated towns and networks of activists throughout Syria are connected via the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), the main opposition force on the ground in Syria. It does not have a “political line” as it represents the spectrum of people’s opinions involved in the revolution. Since the armed struggle began to dominate, the LCCs still organise all manner of demonstrations and other non-military actions.

Some units of the Syrian army refused to murder civilians and thus defected to the revolt; these armed groups all over Syria are called the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which likewise has no central chain of command or overriding “political” view as it is basically the armed wing of the LCC. Thus when leftists slander the FSA as a whole, either as dupes for imperialism (usually based on statements by some exile leader) or as jihadi extremists or criminals (based on actions of some rogue faction), they are in fact slandering the entire movement on the ground, as the overwhelming bulk of the armed forces are nothing other than these “council regimes” with arms to defend themselves, not under the effective control of exile-based leadership bodies, and not responsible for actions of any rogue group.

The neo-pacifist critique that some of the Western left have newly taken up, that says no matter how much you get slaughtered you should still turn the other cheek, can be countered by the following rather typical description of how the civil uprising became the armed uprising in the northern liberated town Taftanaz (http://harpers.org/archive/2012/08/welcome-to-free-syria/):

By April 2011, demonstrations were popping up all across the country. The Syrian army tried to cut them down, firing on and killing scores of civilians, only to inspire further protests. The mukhabarat, meanwhile, targeted the core activists in each town

… But the conscript army started to buckle, and some soldiers found they could not fire on their countrymen. I had met one of them in Turkey, a twenty-seven-year-old named Abdullah Awdeh. He was serving in the elite 11th Armored Division, which put down protests around the country, when one day he was directed to confront demonstrators near Homs. Their commander said that the protesters were armed terrorists, but when Awdeh arrived he saw only men and women with their families: boys perched atop their fathers’ shoulders, girls with their faces painted in the colors of the Syrian flag, mothers waving banners. He decided to desert.

By June 2011, there were hundreds like him; nearly every day, another uniformed soldier faced a camera, held up his military identity card, and professed support for the revolution for the entire world to see on YouTube. These deserters joined what came to be known as the Free Syrian Army. Awdeh, with his aviator sunglasses and Dolce & Gabbana jeans, assumed command of a group of nearly a hundred fighters.

Many activists worried about the militarization of the conflict, which pulled peaceful protesters into a confrontation with a powerful army that they could not defeat. But in small towns like Taftanaz, where government soldiers had repeatedly put down demonstrations with gunfire and thrown activists in prison, desperation trumped long-term strategy. Abu Malek likened the actions of the rebels to those of a mother: ‘She may seem innocent, but try to take away her children and how will she act? Like a criminal animal. That’s what we are being reduced to, in order to defend our families and our villages.

In Taftanaz, fighters from the FSA started protecting demonstrations, quietly standing in the back and watching for mukhabarat. For the first time, the balance of power shifted in favor of the revolution, so much so that government forces could no longer operate openly. Party officials and secret agents vanished, leaving the town to govern itself.

Let’s be completely clear: these grassroots FSA fighters are what a section of the left has come to routinely slander as an imaginary “US-Saudi intervention allied with Al-Qaida making war on Syria”. Should Assad’s “anti-imperialist” scuds bomb them to bits to “defeat imperialism”? This is a concrete question. As is the question of why much of the neo-pacifist left believe these fighters should be denied better arms from wherever they can get them from.

Part of the issue many have is that many of the militias that fall under the broad umbrella of the FSA are Islamist militias. For example, the Farouk Brigades are partly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (which has broad support in Syrian society, and which is regarded to be relatively “moderate” in Islamist terms and not classed as “salafist” or “jihadi”), but also contain secular fighters. Meanwhile, other militias within the FSA, which cannot be called “Islamist” in any political sense, adopt Islamic-sounding names, unsurprising in a Muslim country. This simply reflects the political broadness of Syrian society.

However, assertions that all fighting groups in Syria are Islamist (a claim, made for example by the New York Times and repeated ad nauseum in pro-Assad left websites) are simply untrue; anyone can, for example, look at the list of names of FSA militias that signed the LCC code of conduct that will be discussed below (http://razanghazzawi.org/2012/08/15/lcc-new-fsa-battalions-sign-the-code-of-conduct/) to see a mixture of religious, non-religious and neutral names, for example “Falcons of the Land Brigade in Hama”; or the many that are just called after the name of their town, such as “Revolutionary Military Council in Deir Ezzor” or at the list of secular Syrian nationalist names associated with the National Unity Brigades of the FSA (http://darthnader.net/2012/10/17/interview-with-member-of-the-national-unity-brigades-of-the-fsa), such as the Abdel Rahman Al Shabandar Brigade (named after a Syrian Arab nationalist who organised the Iron Hand society against French rule); or for that matter the first fully Christian FSA brigade (http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=2528) or the FSA brigade headed by a defecting female Alawite officer (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/10/20121022105057794364.html), hardly a symbol of Salafism.

Meanwhile, both the LCCs and the FSA should be distinguished from the exile leaderships, the Turkey-based Syrian National Congress (SNC) and the broader group that incorporates the SNC but is more representative, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (often shortened to “Syrian Coalition”), and the exile military leadership, the Supreme Military Council (SMC), which officially “leads” the FSA but in practice has no control over it on the ground.

All of these internal and external organisations should be further distinguished from the hard-line “salafist” militias outside of both the FSA and these political structures, which either belong to their own umbrella armed organisations, such as the Syrian Islamic Front to which the hard-line fundamentalist Ahrar al-Sham belongs, or Al-Nusra, which acts entirely on its own, of which more below.

The intellectually lazy amalgam made by the pro-Assad and neo-pacifist left between imperialism, exile opposition leaderships, the FSA, the LCCs, the jihadists, Al-Qaida and military struggle as a tactic – i.e., everything they don’t like – gets them into serious problems with reality. If it is thus assumed that these imperialist-influenced exile leaderships have driven the innocent internal uprising to militarisation in order to “make war on Syria”, then the discussion between the grassroots military brigades in the town Taftanaz referred to above and the exile leadership makes for difficult reading:

Had it been wise for the guerrillas to try to defend Taftanaz rather than retreat, as they had in other towns? It was a question that Malek said Riad al-Asaad, leader of the Free Syrian Army, had put to him at their headquarters in a Turkish border camp. “I shouted at him, ‘Who are you to ask me anything?’ ” Malek recalled. “‘You sit here and eat and sleep and talk to the media! We’re inside, we aren’t cowards like you.’”

Had it been wise for the guerrillas to try to defend Taftanaz rather than retreat, as they had in other towns? It was a question that Malek said Riad al-Asaad, leader of the Free Syrian Army, had put to him at their headquarters in a Turkish border camp. “I shouted at him, ‘Who are you to ask me anything?’ ” Malek recalled. “ ‘You sit here and eat and sleep and talk to the media! We’re inside, we aren’t cowards like you.’”

When I asked Ibrahim Matar’s commander in Taftanaz about the FSA leadership, he answered, “If I ever see those dogs here I’ll shoot them myself.” The Turkey-based commanders exert no control over armed rebel groups on the inside; each of the hundreds of insurgent battalions operate autonomously, although they often coordinate their activities.

Thus the Turkey-based “FSA” leadership, those who “sit and eat and sleep and talk to the media” and are most exposed to the imaginary imperialist conspiracy, who questioned the local FSA’s decision to defend themselves with arms, and they responded with contempt to the suggestion that they should not try to defend our families.

Dangers to the Syrian revolution

However, armed conflict does have the potential to corrupt a movement in many ways, whether via the growth of revenge war crimes, an over reliance on military means, the enhancement of already existing sectarian dynamics, the tendency towards harsher and less rational ideologies (e.g. jihadism) and the avenues it gives to foreign interference.

Not all these negatives can negate a democratic revolution as such, unless we live in a dream world (see the excellent article “Syria or elsewhere there are no pure revolutions just revolutions” http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/syriaor-elsewhere-there-are-no-pure-revolutions-just-revolutions for this point). However, if such factors reach a certain level, and they are combined, this could lead to a situation which is simply civil war between two equally undemocratic forces, as quantity becomes quality.

In my view, while all these factors exist at reasonably serious levels and should not be underestimated, it would be extremely premature to make this conclusion. Let’s look at these factors one by one briefly.

First, like in all revolutions, the sheer brutality of the regime often results in brutality by the armed opposition forces (e.g., examples of killing captives etc). While criminal and indefensible, these actions take place within the context of the regime’s extreme violence, and occur at a level dramatically more minor than the regime’s systematic crimes. The LCC’s code of conduct (http://razanghazzawi.org/2012/08/15/lcc-new-fsa-battalions-sign-the-code-of-conduct), signed by dozens of FSA battalions, shows the lengths to which revolutionary forces have gone to try to rein in such activity, and such ongoing debate and condemnation by revolutionary forces is evidence that this alone cannot be used to equate the revolution with the regime, quite aside from the enormous difference in scale. While much was made by the mainstream media, pro-Assad leftists, rightists and Islamphobes the world over about the apparent bite into the heart of a dead regime soldier, shot in battle, less prominence was given to the energetic condemnation of this act by the FSA leadership and by the leadership of his particular brigade.

Indeed, the sheer hypocrisy of this focus on this single act can be highlighted by the reason the man, Abu Sakkar, claims to have been driven to this. By no account was this an attack on an innocent person or ordinary soldier, still less a sectarian attack on an Alawite as some claimed; after having had so many of his family killed by Assad’s stormtroopers, it was when Sakkar found video on the phone of the soldier showing him raping and murdering a mother and her two daughters, that he was driven to his crazed act (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23190533). The minor cannibalism was symbolic, not the reason for killing the thug, which occurred in battle; yet for leftist and rightist moral hypocrites the world over, raising the heart of a dead man in uniform, who was also a murderer, to ones mouth is far worse than raping and killing live people and recording it for your kicks. Sakkar ran his own militia, Omar al-Farouq, and thus was not under the discipline, even formally, of the higher FSA structures, which, while condemning his act, were not in a position to expel him from anything.

Second, while taking up arms for self-defence was inevitable and eminently justifiable, it is certainly true that an over-reliance on military struggle can seriously distort a struggle. That is particularly the case if military struggle goes beyond defence on to a strategy to take the state militarily, if it is in the context that the masses in certain regime-controlled regions are not also mobilising and/or remain grudgingly beholden to the regime. In other words, a military offensive strategy can only really work, indeed only really be democratic, if it is strategically guided by the movement on the ground.

The FSA’s military thrust into both Damascus and Aleppo contained grave dangers in this respect. The dangers have been limited to some extent by the fact that the FSA was simply unable to go beyond the parts of either city where it did have clear support among the masses, largely working-class areas containing a large proportion of recent migrants from the impoverished countryside, where the opposition is primarily based. It should be understood that there is a class basis to this division, something the pro-Assad leftists try not to dwell on: the FSA’s roots are in the countryside and impoverished new urban areas around cities due to the Assad regime’s turn to neoliberalism, which devastated the peasantry; the Sunni “business classes” in Damascus and Aleppo are one of the core supports to the regime (indeed, are organically attached to the regime). However, behind the bourgeoisie stands a large section of (Sunni and Christian) urban petty-bourgeoisie with little love for the regime, but with an understandable fear of the chaos an invading rural-based movement, especially one with an Islamist component, may bring to their lives if the revolutionary forces are not disciplined.

Thus, on the one hand, we see a flowering revolutionary-democratic council running the Damascus suburb of Douma (http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2840), and also similar attempts in Aleppo (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/1103/In-rebel-held-Aleppo-Syrian-civilians-try-to-impose-law-through-courts-not-guns). However, the much more difficult situation in Aleppo also saw how the evolution of the struggle into a military clash along a divide, with constant regime bombing and shelling and a lack of resources for the rebel side to even run a police force, could cover for outright criminality (above all looting) by elements among the rebel forces, towards the very people in the areas that had supported them.

The outcome of this is even more complex: the Islamist militias, including the hard-line Ahrar Al-Sham and Al-Nusra, later expelled the mainstream FSA militias from much of the liberated territory, and in the process were welcomed by much of the population, because whatever else is wrong with them, the consensus appeared to be that the Islamist hard-liners don’t loot, and that they deal harshly with rebel criminality (a good description at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-syria-rebels-islamists-specialreport-idUSBRE95I0BC20130619). However, many others then chafe under the new reactionary Islamist laws, and now there is active fightback by revolutionary forces against both the Islamist repression and the thuggery of FSA elements (http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/syria-the-people-will-not-kneel-and-will-accept-no-injustice). In the meantime, the section of Aleppo under regime control is hardly encouraged to rise in order to replace Assad’s regime of terror with either criminal militias or Islamist repression.

This brings us to the third danger, that of “salafist” forces, with an anti-democratic agenda, coming to dominate the movement and hence expunge its democratic content. Incidentally, the fact that in Aleppo this danger apparently grew stronger precisely as a reaction against indisciplined and criminal actions of some of the mainstream rebels indicates how wrong it is to conflate all these different issues. Nevertheless, it is true that the very ferocity of military struggle and regime terror can naturally increase the trend towards more extremist ideologies among the opposition.

While clearly growing stronger, there is no evidence that this trend has come to dominate the movement (see discussion above on the variety of militias within the FSA). There is however clearly a minority of truly reactionary forces that do threaten to impose an anti-democratic religious dictatorship. The recent murder of a 15-year old in Aleppo for “blasphemy” is an example of this. This murder was vigorously condemned by the Syrian Coalition, which called for punishment of the killers and described it as a “crime against humanity” (http://www.facebook.com/SyrianNationalCoalition.en#!/photo.php?fbid=478723065546817&set=a.437287806357010.1073741828.436337196452071&type=1&theater).

Throwing the whole Syrian uprising into the “jihadi” camp and then washing one’s clean distant Western hands of the atrocities on both sides may be convenient, but what it does is undermine the very forces within the revolution that confront this reactionary trend on a daily basis (for examples of popular demonstrations against these currents and their actions, see http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com, for countless photos of demonstrations with anti-sectarian slogans see http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com, other anti-sectarian actions, declarations, struggles etc., see http://darthnader.net, http://www.aljazeera.com and http://www.jadaliyya.co, and http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/syria-the-people-will-not-kneel-and-will-accept-no-injustice).

It is important to distinguish the anti-democratic nature of “salafism” as such from the fourth danger, that of the revolution degenerating into a sectarian war between largely Sunnis and Alawites. While extremist salafist groups are also likely sectarian (Al-Nusra explicitly is), whether the dynamic of open sectarian slaughter comes to pass is a different question. Islamic extremism is just as dangerous to secular Sunnis (and part of the reason for the reticence of sections of urban Sunni Damascus and Aleppo). Meanwhile, the sheer brutality of an Alawite-dominated regime could also make non-religious FSA fighters from the Sunni community turn anti-Alawite.

While either full-scale religious dictatorship or full-scale sectarian war would be totally reactionary outcomes, events in recent history, especially since the Iranian revolution, have shown that a democratic mass movement can often contain reactionary religious elements without them necessarily coming to dominate early on – the extent to which they do is largely determined by the power of the movement, as thousands of people do not come out in struggle for dictatorship, but for democracy; the anti-democratic forces rely on demobilisation or repression to assert themselves more forcefully, and their ultimate victory is not a given; and in any case we need to be careful of deeming every expression of Islam as “Islamic extremism.”

In this context, a recent Reuters special series on Syria (and http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-syria-rebels-governance-specialreport-idUSBRE95J05R20130620) indicates the complexity of this issue of Islamism and revolution. The town of Raqqa is in rural east Syria, the region dominated by salafist forces such as Al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham (which opposes Al-Nusra’s alliance with Al-Qaida and works more cooperatively with the FSA, but nevertheless also remains outside the FSA and any of the opposition political coalitions), while Aleppo is a major urban centre, where the mainstream FSA militias were initially in charge. Yet reading the series, one is struck by an apparently more open situation in Raqqa than currently in Aleppo.

Allowing of course for problems related to the reporters’ perhaps limited and impressionistic research, the difference appears to be that, since Raqqa was taken outright by the armed opposition, and is far enough away from the centre of things for the regime to not focus its massive firepower on it, this has allowed the non-salafist revolutionary forces and other people such as women’s groups in Raqqa, empowered by their outright victory, to openly oppose the salafists’ attempts to impose reactionary religious rules on them (other reports back up this assessment, for example, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/04/the-black-flag-of-raqqa.html, or this women’s demonstration against the salafists in Raqqa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9hOsyH7zasw). By contrast, Aleppo was only half-seized, via terrible conflict, and is in ongoing conflict with the regime; this state of siege has had opposite results, as described above.

Full-scale sectarian war, however, would be a more clear-cut reactionary situation from the outset, as it pits one section of the popular masses directly against the other, making revolution impossible.

The energetic support for elements among the Syrian rebels by the reactionary, anti-democratic monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar from early on (compared to the extreme hesitance of the US) can only be explained by their terror of a democratic revolution, and hence their aim to hijack it and turn it into a Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict to destroy the revolution from within, while also connected to their regional rivalry with Iran (and indeed with each other). Other elements of the powerful Gulf bourgeoisie which are vigorously opposed t the ruling monarchies have also been active (possibly more active) funders of various Sunni Islamist forces.

There certainly has been a strengthening of the hard-line Islamist forces, such as Al-Qaida connected Jabhat al-Nusra, or the equally fundamentalist, but non-Qaida, Ahrar Al-Sham. This is largely due to them being much better armed than the mainstream and more secular opposition, whether by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, or in Al-Nusra’s case by private bourgeois individuals from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and other regional Islamist networks (generally, bourgeois opponents of the monarchies), including via the open Iraqi border where Al-Nusra “becomes” Al-Qaida of Iraq. Al-Nusra itself not only advocates religious dictatorship but is unashamedly sectarian towards Alawites and Shiites.

After much consideration, however, my conclusion is that the sectarian element has been exaggerated, though it certainly is present and serious. In fact, while there clearly have been sectarian attacks on non-Sunni people (Alawites, Shia and Christians) and even some massacres, by radical Sunni elements of the opposition (as opposed to general war crimes), they have not been either of the number or the scale necessary to characterise the conflict as, overall, a “sectarian war” on both sides, as is often lazily done. In particular, the crimes, while real, do not compare to the horrific sectarian massacres and ethnic cleansing of Sunni towns by the regime.

Nevertheless, sectarian crimes and massacres have certainly occurred, for example, Al-Nusra’s massacre of 60 Shiite villagers in the far eastern Syrian town of Hatla in early June 2013 (see http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Jun-16/220541-qaeda-linked-militants-blow-up-shiite-hall-in-syria-activists.ashx#axzz2WQuWjkI3). Even in this case, the massacre was allegedly in response to an attack on a rebel base by regime militia from that town, which happened to be Shiite, so it is possible that the initial motivation may not have been specifically sectarian as opposed to revenge, but it clearly was a massacre of civilians and thus sectarian in effect anyway.

Moreover, the simple fact of the leadership of a movement to replace the current regime being taken over by Sunni extremist groups, if that were to eventuate, would tend to have the required sectarian effect even without massacres. Alawites and Christians initially pro-revolution would tend to baulk at being ruled by such forces, and if not rejoin the regime, at least desert the revolution or remain neutral, in the same way as continual massacres of Sunnis by an Alawite-dominated regime tends to drive them to the opposition and possibly to more extreme elements of it.

The massive intervention of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah to aid the Assad regime’s conquest of the Sunni town of Qusayr has given an enormous boost to this sectarian dynamic. To the extent that the movement heads in this direction, it is far more the fault of the regime itself; whatever its reactionary aims, the Gulf intervention has not had the level of success it aimed for, or at least could not have if not for the regime’s sectarian crimes. Indeed, the number of anti-minority sectarian attacks appears to have taken a clear upturn directly in response to Hezbollah’s reactionary and short-sighted intervention, the Hatla massacre itself an early example.

Saudi-Qatari adventure hits the rocks of rivalry and blow-back

The Saudi and Qatari strategy in any case does not necessarily rely on full-scale sectarian war; if their particular Sunni Islamist supporters can distort the revolution enough for a Sunni Islamist-led or -influenced regime to be “their” chess piece against Iran and against each other, and to discourage democratic revolution (especially in places such as Shiite-majority Bahrain chafing under the Saudi-backed repression of the Sunni-minority princes), their purposes are largely served.

In any case, as an aside, an important snag in their strategy has been that Saudi Arabia and Qatar appear to hate each other as much as Iran and Syria and their backing of different Islamists has been quietly destructive inside the opposition.

Tiny Qatar has been “punching above its size” throughout the Arab Spring using the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood to impose an Islamist dampener on the process (in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria and Palestine via Hamas), without openly confronting its democratic impulse. The Brotherhood (similar to the Turkish AKP, which has emerged as its ally) believes incremental Islamism can work with bourgeois democracy. The Brotherhood on the whole has also been less concerned with anti-Shia sectarianism; witness Egyptian Brotherhood leader Morsi’s overtures to Iran for example, and Qatar’s formerly good relations with Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia, however, hates the Muslim Brotherhood, due to its strongly republican impulses and bourgeois-democratic field of operation, which threaten the Saudi monarchial tyranny (aside from the fact that the Saudi version of fundamentalist Islam is starkly more extreme and repressive). Of course, Qatar is also a monarchy, but with such a small population with so much oil and thus such high per capita GDP it does not feel as threatened by revolution. This article on Saudi Arabia’s welcome to the coup against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/07/saudi-arabia-glad-to-see-morsi-go.html) explains this well (and of course the Saudis backed the “secular” Mubarak dictatorship).

Therefore, Saudi Arabia initially tended to back more extremist Salafist groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham, to rival Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood. However, that turned out to be a very narrow field of operation, because as this encouraged an atmosphere that led to the rise of Al-Nusra as the leading Salafist force, the Saudis got burnt fingers and withdrew, as Al-Qaida’s raison d’être is the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and its replacement by an open clerical dictatorship, viewing the Saudi tyrants as tools of the West despite their identical religious ideologies.

Most analyses agree that by around September 2012, after having been the most enthusiastic backer of the Islamist wing of the uprising, Saudi support dried up. Its new drive to send arms (partially stifled by the US) from early 2013 took place from Jordan (whereas Qatari intervention tended to take place from Turkey in the north), now more directly aligned with the US strategy of finding one mainstream exile rebel leaderships that could be hijacked. The Jordan angle is important for the Saudis: Jordan borders both Syria and Saudi Arabia and is ruled by a monarchy whose main internal opponent is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Why the US and EU have not armed the opposition

With the current change of tack by the US in agreeing to send arms to the opposition, it is important to clarify why imperialism has been so hesitant about arming the Syrian opposition to date, why it took two years, before getting to the specific issues.

None of the pro-Assad left really explains why the US and EU have not been providing arms to the Syrian rebels all this time if they had really wanted to. Apparently arming every other reactionary tyrant or contra movement they choose to is easy, but when it comes to providing a few arms to a movement against a tyrannical regime that is using every possible means to crush it, apparently imperialists have to struggle for years with all kinds of legal restrictions. The idea that maybe they have neither intervened, nor even provided arms, because they don’t want to is apparently too radical a proposal.

The general answer is that the US is opposed to the Syrian revolution; but since it exists (which never had anything to do with the US), it must try to hijack it; but to do that, it needs a “partner” that the US can control and which can control the ranks of fighters on the ground in Syria, i.e., control the revolutionary process and put it in the necessary straightjacket. But this is the key problem; the US does not have a partner, neither the Assad regime with its Hezbollah links; nor the reactionary Islamist forces such as Al-Nusra, to which it genuinely does not want any arms it may send to “vetted” sections of the FSA to seep to; nor the genuinely democratic-revolutionary forces on the ground in Syria who are not controllable by pliant exile leaderships.

This is why, despite all the talk about the need to arm non-jihadi FSA forces in order to reduce the jihadi influence, the US still took two years to do so. About the only leaders the US seems to have in its pockets are a few of the exile leadership, such as General Salem Idriss of the Supreme Military Command (SMC), a body set up by exile elements of the FSA leadership, which simply has no way of controlling the FSA as a whole and which has no central chain of command.

Before continuing, it is also important to understand what the Syrian rebels are up against when we hear lazy talk of the trickle of light weapons from abroad representing some great “war on Syria.”

The Syrian regime possesses:

•Nearly 5000 tanks; 2500 infantry fighting vehicles; 2500 self-propelled or towed artillery units
•325 tactical aircraft; 143 helicopters
•Nearly 2000 air defence pieces.

It has used all this massive equipment, all this military air power, scud missiles, cluster bombs and virtually anything against its own people and its own cities for more than 18 months, leaving 100,000 people dead, 2 million refugees across its borders and much of Syria covered in moonscapes (such as in these photos: http://syriawitness.middleeastvoices.com). This is the reality of what the Syrian people are up against.

Massive quantities of arms to rebels … or rebels starved of arms?

What of the arms situation before this latest US turn? Many opposed to the Syrian revolution claim that, even if the US hasn’t been directly sending arms until now, it has approved Saudi Arabia and Qatar supplying arms, and that these allegedly large quantities of arms “escalate” the conflict and encourage the rebels to go for a military solution, and this is part of the “imperialist war on Syria.” However, almost every article about alleged massive arms provision by these states, when read right through, show that the rebels on the ground have got next to nothing. First some examples will be given, followed by some analysis of this glaring contradiction.

The May 21 Washington Post carried an article (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-21/opinions/39412628_1_geneva-idriss-weapons) that claimed Saudi Arabia had recently sent 35 tons of weapons to the SMC leadership in Jordan. In the same article, SMC commander General Salim Idriss is reported as saying these weapons “aren’t advanced enough to combat Assad’s tanks and planes in Qusayr”. He said the only way there could be any “military balance” before the Geneva talks would be if the rebels could get “modern anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons”. He also claimed the rebel forces “are chronically short of ammunition”.

Perhaps Idriss is just angling for more. But even more important than his assertions was the reality on the ground at the time: this was during the Assad-Hezbollah siege of the Sunni city of Qusayr. The question is whether any of those 35 tons of weaponry in Jordan ever reached the FSA forces defending Qusayr; countless reports on the ground suggested the defenders had precious little to defend their town with, certainly not against the vast array of heavy weaponry Assad was using.

Moreover, Qusayr is not near Jordan; yet as was widely reported the previous week, Assad’s forces were able to re-take Khirbet Ghazaleh, a strategic town in the south, right near the Jordanian border, where the FSA had control of the border, and the SMC exile leadership (being trained and minded by 200 US troops based in Jordan) made sure the rebel defenders didn’t get a rifle, which “raised resentment among opposition fighters over what they saw as a lack of Jordanian support for their efforts to defeat Assad’s forces in the region, according to rebel commanders and activists in the area” (http://news.yahoo.com/assads-forces-capture-strategic-town-southern-syria-034605544.html). If arms from Jordan couldn’t even get across a nearby border, how likely is it they got to Qusayr?

For another example, a recent Financial Times article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f2d9bbc8-bdbc-11e2-890a-00144feab7de.html#axzz2TeyItOcb) made the unsubstantiated claim that Qatar has provided $3 billion to the opposition in one form or another (presumably including arms, buying loyalty of individuals, aid to refugees etc.).

Yet the same article, noting the “erratic and limited nature of weapons shipments”, quoted Mahmoud Marrouch, a young fighter from Liwaa al-Tawhid, a rural Aleppo group believed to be a major recipient of Qatari arms, saying that Qatar does a lot of promising but not delivering weapons. What the fighters have, he says, was seized from regime bases or purchased on the black market. “The Qataris and the Saudis need a green light from America to help us”, implying it is often not given.

An article on the role of the CIA in Turkey ((http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) likewise claimed the arms airlift from the Gulf “has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes” landing in Turkey or Jordan since early 2012, estimated to be 3500 tons of military equipment.

Yet once again, on the ground:

“Still, rebel commanders have criticized the shipments as insufficient, saying the quantities of weapons they receive are too small and the types too light to fight Mr. Assad’s military effectively … “The outside countries give us weapons and bullets little by little”, said Abdel Rahman Ayachi, a commander in Soquor al-Sham, an Islamist fighting group in northern Syria. He made a gesture as if switching on and off a tap. “They open and they close the way to the bullets like water”, he said.”

Thus rhetoric about “massive” quantities of arms going to the rebels from the Gulf and “escalating the war” needs to be taken with entire silos full of salt. What then is behind this apparent contradiction?

CIA coordination of weapons shipments?

An article “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) from the March 24 New York Times, has often been quoted by those who want to show that the US is already involved. And the article does show this. But what it also shows about the US is far from what those highlighting this often want to show. Indeed, one may ask, does the CIA’s role in this operation have anything to do with the contradiction noted? To answer, one need go not further than the article itself, which describes the CIA’s specific role in the following terms:

“The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said, gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles that might be used in future terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft. “These countries were going to do it one way or another”, the former official said. “They weren’t asking for a ‘Mother, may I?’ from us.”

“But the rebels were clamoring for even more weapons, continuing to assert that they lacked the firepower to fight a military armed with tanks, artillery, multiple rocket launchers and aircraft. Many were also complaining, saying they were hearing from arms donors that the Obama administration was limiting their supplies and blocking the distribution of the antiaircraft and anti-armor weapons they most sought.”

To summarise: the arming of the Syrian rebels was a Saudi-Qatari initiative, who were not asking US permission; the US steps in to help “coordinate” it by “limiting supplies”, “steering weapons away” from groups they don’t like and making sure that none of the weapons the rebels actually needed to fight Assad’s heavy weaponry, e.g. anti-aircraft missiles, got through to the rebels.

Another report by Nour Malas in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443684104578062842929673074.html) was even more explicit, pointing out that “the Pentagon and CIA ramped up their presence on Turkey’s southern border” precisely after more weapons began to flow in to the rebels in mid-2012, especially small numbers of portable anti-aircraft weapons (Manpads), some from Libya, “smuggled into the country through the Turkish border”, others “supplied by militant Palestinian factions now supporting the Syrian uprising and smuggled in through the Lebanese border”, or some even bought from regime forces.

“In July, the U.S. effectively halted the delivery of at least 18 Manpads sourced from Libya, even as the rebels pleaded for more effective antiaircraft missiles to counter regime airstrikes in Aleppo, people familiar with that delivery said.”

Finally, the reporter Joanna Paraszczuk explained that a US-Saudi conflict has been going on for some time:

“While Saudi Arabia has built up large stockpiles of arms and ammunition for the Free Syrian Army, the US blocked shipments until last Thursday. The US and the Saudis are involved in a multilateral effort to support the insurgency from Jordanian bases. But, according to the sources, Washington had not only failed to supply “a single rifle or bullet to the FSA in Daraa” but had actively prevented deliveries, apparently because of concerns over which factions would receive the weapons. The situation also appears to be complicated by Jordan’s fears that arms might find their way back into the Kingdom and contribute to instability there. The sources said the Saudi-backed weapons and ammunition are in warehouses in Jordan, and insurgents in Daraa and Damascus could be supplied “within hours” with anti-tank rockets and ammunition. The Saudis also have more weapons ready for airlift into Jordan, but US representatives are preventing this at the moment” (http://eaworldview.com/2013/06/23/syria-special-the-us-saudi-conflict-over-arms-to-insurgents).

Some comments can be made here. First, this report strongly confirms the US role has been the exact source of the contradiction between alleged “massive arms supplies” and the rebels having nothing much on the ground. Second, the report makes clear that the failure to supply weapons to the rebels in the strategic south Syrian town, noted above, was directly due to US pressure. Third, the concern about who gets the weapons is probably particularly strong in that region for two main reasons. First, the report notes concern about weapons going back into Jordan and creating “instability”. This refers to the fact that Jordan’s concern has never been Assad, but on the contrary, the danger that a Muslim Brotherhood-influenced regime could lead the powerful Jordanian section of the Brotherhood, the main Jordanian opposition, to overthrow the monarchy. Second, southern Syria is near the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan, and Israel has made it continually clear that it prefers Assad’s army on the border, which it has protected for 40 years, to any of the Syrian rebels.

All those demanding the withdrawal of the US from the Middle East in all forms, including ending its interference in Syria, need to reckon with the fact that this would mean the lesser powers involved in supporting the Syrian opposition would have been far more free to send any arms they wanted, especially anti-aircraft missiles, to whoever they wanted without the CIA preventing them.

US wants to use FSA to strike Al-Nusra to prove loyalty?

What else does the US role involve? And was the US demanding anything else of the SMC/FSA leadership that might explain the extreme reluctance to provide it with arms for so long?

What is a good way to prove you are willing to be a compliant group of puppets? How about agreeing to become a strike force for the US against Al-Nusra and other “jihadis”?

According to a May 9 article by Phil Sands (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/americas-hidden-agenda-in-syrias-war), Syrian rebel commanders met US intelligence officers in Jordan six months earlier to discuss the possibility of the US supplying arms. “But according to one of the commanders present at the meeting, the Americans were more interested in talking about Jabhat Al-Nusra”, especially about “the locations of their bases”.“Then, by the rebel commander’s account, the discussion took an unexpected turn. The Americans began discussing the possibility of drone strikes on Al-Nusra camps inside Syria and tried to enlist the rebels to fight their fellow insurgent”, offering to train 30 FSA fighters a month to fight Al-Nusra.

When the Syrians at the meeting protested that opposition forces, at this stage at least, need to unite against Assad’s far more powerful army rather than war among themselves, a US intelligence officer replied: “I’m not going to lie to you. We’d prefer you fight Al-Nusra now, and then fight Assad’s army. You should kill these Nusra people. We’ll do it if you don’t.”

This is not the only indication of such a role being demanded of the rebels as the price for support. A recent Financial Times article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/71e492d0-acdd-11e2-9454-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2UPVgOFXt) claims that at the recent “Friends of Syria” conference, the National Coalition “issued principles that pleased western foreign ministers but for now at least, had no particular relevance to people inside Syria”, including the declaration’s denunciation of “radical/extremist elements in Syria which follow an agenda of their own” (i.e. Al-Nusra).

The article then quotes Colonel Akaidi, the military defector now heading the Aleppo military council, who claims “the US wants to turn people like him into the Sahwa, the tribal groups in Iraq that were enlisted by the US to fight al-Qaeda”, but his view is that “if they [the US] help us so that we kill each other, then we don’t want their help”.

France has also been explicit about this. On June 23, France’s president, Francois Hollande, told Syrian rebels to “retake control of these areas” that have fallen in to the hands of extremist Islamist groups “and push these groups out” so that they don’t “benefit from the chaos in the future” (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Jun-23/221321-hollande-urges-syria-rebels-to-retake-extremist-held-zones.ashx#axzz2X5dwF4Mo); this was a necessary condition for the lifting of the EU arms embargo being translated into any actual French arms getting to the rebels.

Curiously, despite this furious hostility of imperialism towards Al-Nusra, the European Union’s recent lifting of the embargo on Syrian oil seems to have benefited Al-Nusra, as most of this oil is in the north-eastern region mostly controlled by Al-Nusra.

This appears to be most likely a miscalculation, especially given that the UN Security Council had just subjected Al-Nusra to sanctions and a global asset freeze, at the initiative of Britain and France (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/nowsyrialatestnews/syrian-islamists-to-be-added-to-un-sanctions-list-diplomats-say), meaning the group won’t be in much of a position to sell its assets.

Or, if not a miscalculation, was this move aimed precisely at goading the SMC/FSA exile leadership into this imperialist-preferred war with Al-Nusra? According to the May 19 Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/19/jihadists-control-syrian-oilfields):

“The impact is immediately visible. With a new independent source of funding, the jihadists holding the oilfields between al-Raqqa and Deir Ezzor are much better equipped than their Sunni rivals, reinforcing the advantage originally provided by Qatari backing. They have been able to provide bread and other essentials to the people in the areas under their control, securing an enduring popular base.”

“This serves to marginalise the western-backed rebels, the National Coalition and the Supreme Military Council (SMC), even further. The blustering claim by the SMC commander, Salim Idriss, that he was going to muster a 30,000 force to retake the oilfields served only to undermine his credibility.”

Idris’s alleged claim that he would send 30,000 fighters to re-take the oilfields sounds exactly like the kind of war “to kill each other” the FSA colonel in Aleppo was complaining about above.

Interestingly, not all the oil is in the region under Al-Nusra control – part of it is in the region under the control of Syria’s Kurdish minority, which, given the recent peace agreement between Turkey and the PKK and Turkey’s current rapprochement with Iraqi Kurds against the Iraqi Shiite regime, could perhaps benefit Turkey.

Imperialist-orchestrated jihadi uprising?

In light of all the above facts about the US and EU desire for the Syrian rebels to take the fight to Al-Nusra and other “extremists”, it is worthwhile, as an aside, returning to the cartoonish schema drawn up by the pro-Assad left, that the Syrian conflict is an imperialist war on Syria where imperialism, via its Saudi and Gulf allies, is using Islamic extremists and jihadists, including Al-Qaida, to destroy the country.

Considering most supporters of the Syrian revolution oppose both imperialist intervention and reactionary Islamists such as Al-Nusra, it may suit our purposes well to half-support this kind of discourse, and say, “yes, the US supports reactionary Islamists with the aim of diverting the genuine uprising into a sectarian war and undermining the revolution”. Indeed, I think Saudi Arabia and Qatar have tried to do this, but I see neither as mere imperialist tools. However, there is a slight problem: reality. It is preferable to not use obvious nonsense to back one’s view.

The world is more complicated than all reactionaries simply lining up on the same side (even cartoons are better than cartoonish-left analysis). Just as it is possible for both the Assad regime and the US to be reactionary, so likewise it is possible for Al-Nusra to be reactionary yet still hate and be hated by both the US and Assad.

And as for the Syrian revolution, the fact that Syrians went out into the streets to denounce the US when it labelled Al-Nusra a terrorist organisation ((http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Dec-14/198527-syrian-protesters-slam-us-blacklisting-of-jihadist-group.ashx#axzz2F62w5Yns), chanting “there is no terrorism in Syria except Assad”, makes the allegation that they are US puppets as absurd as the idea that the US is backing Al-Nusra. If that then suggests they support Al-Nusra and its reactionary politics, and the revolution is just an Islamist one, then one would have to read the countless links I point to above with protests, demonstrations, declarations, clashes etc. against the hard-line Islamists. It is just that they didn’t want the US telling them what to do, and that they wanted to focus on the main enemy first and not have the anti-Assad ranks clashing.

Imagine: a revolutionary movement that refuses to take orders from imperialism, when imperialism tells them to fight the Islamists, but also refuses to bow to reactionary Islamists; to some that is a movement that is but a tool for imperialist-backed Islamists. Better get used to the idea that the world is more complicated than that.

Attitude to Syrian rebels getting arms and ‘our’ governments sending them

Given the balance of military forces, between a massively armed regime, which uses enormous quantities of mass-murdering firepower against largely defenceless civilians, and rebel forces, most arising directly from the revolution, with short supplies of light arms, the Syrian revolutionary forces have the right to get quality arms, including anti-aircraft weapons, to defend themselves from whoever wants to supply them. It is not up to socialists within imperialist countries to demand our governments not provide arms just because we understand our governments aims are different to ours and such arming demands a political price from the rebels.

In any case, those terribly frightened about the prospect of a trickle of arms reaching the rebels from the wrong people should console themselves with the fact that the main role of the US and other imperialist powers has been to deny arms to the rebels and even intervene to prevent them receiving arms of decent quality or quantity.

However, given this general situation, the question arises: should supporters of the Syrian revolution therefore be advocating our “own” imperialist rulers send massive quantities of arms to the rebels? And if so, would this be equivalent to calling for deeper imperialist intervention, or even effectively for war on the Syrian regime?

In brief, my answers are no, but also no and no.

If imperialist states, after 2.5 years of watching the slaughter, finally do provide some arms to Syrian fighters, who do all the fighting themselves, with their own aims, for their own revolution which they have made and shed blood for, it is wrong to call this “intervention” in any meaningful sense.

Apparently, US blocking arms all this time (while the regime with overwhelming military superiority continues to be further massively and openly armed by Russia and Iran), and the EU embargo on arms, was not intervention, but ending such embargoes is. On the contrary, I regard the EU arms embargo on the besieged revolutionary people to have been an act of intervention, and its lapsing an act of non-intervention. Whether or not one sees an actual move by the Britain and France to send arms to be intervention or not, at this point both governments have declared they have no plans to do so, and the EU as a whole immediately made a joint declaration that it would not proceed to deliver any military equipment.

In any case, the aim of the new type of “intervention” is to attempt to sway sections of the rebel leadership, to try to hijack the revolution, not to launch the revolution against Assad which has been entirely Syrian-made and never had anything to do with US or imperialist support. And there is very little guarantee such attempts to hijack will be successful, given the lack of control the exile leadership has over the rebel ranks. The premise that a genuine locally based movement is turned into an imperialist stooge merely by the receipt of arms has never been a logical one, neither in this case nor in any other.
In that case, why shouldn’t we call on “our” imperialist governments to send arms, if we support the right of these people to get them?

We should not call on our governments to do anything whatsoever in the Middle East, other than to completely evacuate all troops, military bases, warships, embargoes and so on entirely from the region, and cut off all aid, military or otherwise, to Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, and any other repressive regime.

Imperialism’s overall role in the region has always been reactionary by definition, so we cannot demand our governments do anything, because we understand that any bolstering of their position in the region can only give it a stronger position to carry out its overall counterrevolutionary role, regardless of whatever small tactical concessions it may sometimes make to the side of liberation. The very fact that over these two years of massacre the US has refused to provide arms, has vetted and restricted the arms others supply, has ensured no heavier weapons get to the opposition, has encouraged the FSA to attack Al-Nusra, all point to the counterrevolutionary nature of US involvement with Syria, and therefore we should not be giving the US advice to do anything that would inevitably be in its interests, rather than those of the Syrian masses.

However, if the US or other imperialist states did decide for their own reasons to provide some arms, we should also not protest against it, robotic style. Any leftists choosing to stand on a street corner to protest against some US arms getting to people who are currently massively outgunned by a murderous regime, allowing them to protect themselves just a little better than now, open themselves to justified parody. Neither “demand” they do nor “demand” they don’t!

It is curious that many have argued that the end of the EU arms embargo, and the recent US announcement that it may provide some light arms, amounts to a “massive escalation of the war”. Apparently, two years of Assad’s scorched earth, the slaughter of 100,000 people, the creation of millions of refugees, including 2 million in neighbouring countries, the reduction of much of the country to a moonscape, the murderous sieges of towns such as Qusayr recently, Homs yet again now, the horrific sectarian cleansing of Bayda and Baniyas several weeks ago, the ongoing massacres of all kinds of popular protest, even the massacre of dozens of students inside campus buildings by aerial attack, all the time with massive Russian and Iranian arms provision, do not constitute that much of a problem compared to a situation in which the outgunned populace may get a few more light weapons to just slightly better protect themselves with – only the latter is “escalation”. I believe no comment is necessary.

At the same time, while the Syrian opposition should in principle be able to get as many arms as it can from anywhere it can, it could be argued that just at the moment, it may be tactically wise to not emphasise this point (except if arms could get directly to those defending besieged places such as Qusayr yesterday or Homs today), in order to give maximum chances to the possibility of a ceasefire arising out of the US-Russian Geneva process.

That is not to have any great illusions in the aims of either the US or Russia or others involved in trying to bang heads together and bring about a Yemeni solution; they do this for their own reasons. However, given the deep divisions within Syrian society, deepened by the civil war and the rise of sectarianism on both sides, there is no “military solution” in Syria in the sense of a victorious armed rebel movement, as now constituted, marching to power in Damascus. The long-term stalemates in both Damascus and Aleppo, as well as the hardening of an Alawite-dominated coastal region and an Al-Nusra-dominated east, are evidence enough of that. Therefore, any ceasefire that may be gained from the Geneva process, or a different process, would be a necessary breathing space for the movement, to allow popular mobilisation to revive. Especially given the sheer horror of the continuing war and its effects on all Syrians.

Therefore, to be focusing on demanding more arms in general at this moment could impact negatively on the possibilities of a ceasefire. I want to stress however that this is only a tactical consideration – we must remember that it is the regime imposing the military solution, and it is thoroughly shameful that people on the left, who traditionally solidarised with the oppressed and supported their right to resist bloody repression, now blame the victims for fighting back and call it “escalation”.

But what if …?

The fact of the Geneva process and the long-term imperialist preference for the Yemini solution makes it extremely unlikely that the quantities of arms delivered to the rebels under the “new policy” will have any decisive effect, though it may lead to small tactical reverses to Assad’s forces. None have been in evidence so far.

And arguing here against a military solution is also not an argument against the imperialist powers, as if they are pushing such a solution; for their own reasons, they are not. Indeed, given the relationship of forces, the only possible military solution would be if the US or NATO carried out the “Libyan solution” and brought the opposition to power riding a massive imperialist onslaught – something that has never been on the cards.

However, this does not mean a deeper level of imperialist intervention is impossible or even unlikely. There is the slippery slope argument; once the US does begin to send more serious arms, there will be pressure to protect supply routes, to set up no-fly zones in border areas of Syria controlled by US warplanes, leading to pressure to ground the Syrian air-force. While so far the Obama administration has ruled this out and these have largely been opportunistic calls from right-wingers out of power, there is the possibility of one thing slipping into another and imperialist intervention sliding out of control.

Then there is the “just got to do something” argument: given the continuation of massive instability in Syria, which is not in long-term imperialist interests (though short term it can be useful for Sunni and Shiite Islamists, including Al-Nusrah and Hezbollah, to kill each other), and given precisely the lack of any clear “partners” in Syria, there is the slight possibility of imperialist leaders deciding they really need their own forces to take control of the situation, even if no obvious solution is at hand. If there were to be an imperialist intervention, it would be this kind, involving the most imperialist control of the process. That is most preferable to Israel, which otherwise is far more comfortable with the Assad regime (preferably under less Hezbollah influence than currently) than with any of the Syrian opposition groups with which the US might otherwise try to use.

While unlikely, if intervention were to eventuate, there should be no illusions that this would offer anything positive to the Syrian people. I make this point because I know there are sections of the pro-Syrian revolution left that have tended to suggest some kind of imperialist intervention may not be an entirely bad thing if it doesn’t involve imperialist troops overrunning the country and the initiative remains with the forces on the ground. Some at the North Star Network – with whom I have substantial agreement on the Syrian revolution in general and I much appreciate their solid analysis – have hinted this way before, though I don’t think it has been spelt out clearly for some time and hopefully there has been some rethinking.

In any case, below is a list of solid reasons why this is a very wrong-headed idea – these are the likely outcomes of a direct imperialist escalation:

•A huge increase in killing on all sides – an actual escalation – would be first immediate effect, not only of countless civilians inevitably killed as imperialist missiles and fighter jets match those of Assad in unconventional butchery, but also a likely “rush” by Assad and his regime to grab what they can from the chaos (the fact that the onset of NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 led to an immediate dramatic, indeed qualitative, increase in the level of butchery meted out by Milosevic’s racist regime against the Kosovar Albanians);
•The bolstering of Assad’s entirely fake Arab nationalist “credentials” as a result of being bombed (and is it coincidental entirely that Assad’s recent battlefield ascendancy occurred almost entirely since the day of the Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah-bound missiles in Damascus in early May);
•The further evaporation of the non-military aspect of the movement and the further entrenching of the power of military commanders, not necessarily even those favoured by imperialism but as an inevitable outcome of such militarisation, with the anti-democratic flow-on effects later (see the power of the “militias” in Libya, disconnected from the real movement, still causing much trouble);
•A likely orgy of revenge on both sides as the idea of “finality outside our control” approaches as death is rained from the sky on both sides;
•The fact that imperialism has only ever had the “Yemeni solution” in mind in any case meaning that this kind of catastrophe would only serve to oust Assad and a narrow clique while keeping most of his political, bureaucratic, security and military apparatus intact (is that worth it?);
•Or if the logic of the situation forced imperialism to move from a Yemeni to a Libyan solution, such a forced defeat, by a foreign imperialist power, of the sections of the Syrian masses still attached to Assad, however grudgingly, will be rightly viewed by them as a foreign conquest, and the effects would be virulently undemocratic;
•Such a move could also result in imperialism engaging in orgies of irrational destruction as occurred in Libya – regardless of years of disinterest in confronting Assad, wars once decided on have their own logic. For example, in early 2011, the US was still doing great deals with Gaddafi, and he was happily torturing Islamist suspects for the US; yet after he fell in August, the US bombed his hold-out town of Sirte for another two months, as Libyan “rebels” besieged from the ground, with results like this: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29405.htm, which look so much like the results Assad has achieved throughout Syria (e.g., http://syriawitness.middleeastvoices.com).
•As a result of this, the development of an entirely reactionary consciousness on both sides, with the defeated pro-Assad sections of the masses tying support for the tyrant to a false “anti-imperialism”, while those believing imperialism “liberated” them would tend to adopt a cravenly pro-imperialist viewpoint (again one of the outcome of the NATO war in Kosova);
•A country emerging more wrecked even than Assad has left it, even more dependent on imperialism and on international loan sharks for recovery;
•An imperialist presence on the border of Israeli-occupied Golan, which would be every bit as loyal to preserving the Zionist peace-of-the-conquest as the Assad regime has been for 40 years, even more loyal in fact, whereas among the revolutionary forces fighting Assad are those who would be much more likely to challenge this status quo, as Israel well knows and has therefore continually expressed its preference for Assad;
•A more solidly entrenched imperialist position in the region, against the interests of the Palestinians and Iran against Israeli or US attack. Critics will rightly say that this would be the fault of Assad’s terror allowing an opportunistic imperialist intervention to strengthen its hand; the Syrian masses shouldn’t be forced to sacrifice their lives forever and what occurs elsewhere cannot really be blamed on them seeking liberation from the regime. I agree entirely.

Given all the above points, it seems clear enough that no great liberation for the Syrian masses would come of this, and so could hardly be considered a worthwhile gain given the loss to imperialism throughout the region. This is a partial list which many could add to.

Whatever the case, this is not the current situation, and should not be used to argue in support of the Assad regime which is now the one carrying out this unconventional slaughter and destruction of its country, not the future possibility of the US or NATO doing it.

Rather than demagogically denounce every new rifle that gets to a desperate Syrian oppositionist as evidence of a “war on Syria”, we need to keep our focus on the actual war on Syria being waged by the regime and continue declare: “Solidarity with the heroic Syrian people’s uprising!”

By Michael Karadjis

May 11, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — In the wake of two Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria on the May 4-5 weekend, the second causing massive explosions close to Damascus and killing at least several dozen Syrian troops, discussion rages about the aims of this aggression and the relationship it has to the ongoing mass uprising and civil war in Syria.

Israel claimed both attacks were aimed at Iranian long-range rockets, or the military depots where they were housed, that were in transit via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. As the Zionist regime has continually indicated that its “red line” was the transfer of any significant “game-changing” weaponry to either Hezbollah in Lebanon (which is currently aligned to Syria’s besieged Assad regime) or to the Sunni Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow that regime, this explanation seems plausible.

In fact, Israel also bombed a convoy of rockets in western Syria destined for Hezbollah at the end of January, and according to some reports, also a biological weapons research centre near Damascus, which “was reportedly flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad”, according to Aaron Klein and Karl Vick writing in Time magazine.

Indeed, after the latest bombings, Israel’s leaders went on to stress that these attacks were not aimed at the Assad regime, still less to support the armed opposition, as will be discussed further below.

But of course such aggression must also be seen in a wider context. Clearly the situation in Syria is falling apart and the war daily is getting more vicious and criminal (on both sides, but above all on the side of the regime), without any end in sight. Clearly at some point there may well be some form of more direct imperialist intervention than at present, even if only to try to stamp its mark, in whatever way possible, on an almost impossible situation. The myths about “recent gains by the Syrian regime” is just bravado to talk up the latest rounds of horrific massacres in the north coastal region, which promise no more stability than the last two years of brutal massacres.

Mass terror

Therefore, in such a context, with Israel everyday lamenting the “lost peace” on the northern border of occupied Golan (i.e., the peace it has enjoyed for 40 years as the Assad regime never challenged the Zionist occupation and annexation of its Golan territory), Israel is also announcing loud and clear to all sides in Syria, and to the Syrian masses, that “Israel is here, and this is what we can do”. The overall aim, in other words, is mass terror.

Yet while the situation may inexorably drive towards some kind of imperialist intervention, the outstanding fact to date has been the reluctance of imperialist states – and above all Israel – to lend any concrete support (or in Israel’s case, even verbal support) to the opposition trying to overthrow Assad’s tyrannical capitalist dictatorship.

And while a simple comparison with the extremely rapid intervention in Libya (within a few weeks of the beginning of the uprising in early 2011) might ignore practical differences for intervention in the two cases, any analysis of statements and actions of the US and especially Israel over these two years make clear that both have fundamental political objections to the nature of the opposition. These even extend to prospect of the overthrow of the regime itself, unless it can occur under a very strong degree of imperialist control, which is a very unlikely prospect.

No secular fighters?

Iit’s worth looking at a recent article in the New York Times which, like a great many articles, over-emphasise the significance of the radical Islamist element in the armed uprising. In this case, the NYT made the case more absolute:

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of”.

Curiously, for a number of those on the left convinced that the US is hell bent on backing the Syrian rebellion against the regime of Bashar Assad, or who even claim the US is explicitly backing these “Islamist” forces within it, or even that the whole Syrian rebellion is a “US war on Syria”, this statement was greeted as a sign that “even the US” is coming to understand how bad the rebels “that it supports” are.

This is a very odd argument for a number of reasons. But before analysing the reasons for the NYT’s statement, it is worth looking at the evidence. It is certainly true that there is a strong “Islamist” element within the armed opposition, and that as Assad’s brutality grows, so does the “radical” nature of the ideology of many of the rebel groups, and also the reverse brutality of some of the armed rebels (whether secular or Islamist). It is also true that part of the Islamist opposition is backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar as part of a reactionary-sectarian regional game (see below). And it is further true that some Islamist groups, such as Al-Nusra, are allegedly linked to Al-Qaeda.

However, there are also a vast number of articles, interviews, documents, photos, videos and other evidence of opposition, both armed and unarmed, and opposition-controlled towns, that remain secular, or at least religious only in a formal sense without any “sharia law”, or that are opposed to the Islamicisation of the movement. While this article is not aimed at proving this, here are some useful links that demonstrate the point:

“The Syrian revolution has changed me as a writer”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/03/samar-yazbek-syrian-revolution-writing?CMP=twt_gu

“Welcome to Free Syria Meeting the rebel government of an embattled country”,
http://harpers.org/archive/2012/08/welcome-to-free-syria/

“How should Idlib’s Islamists be handled?”,
http://syriasurvey.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/what-to-do-with-idlibs-islamists.html

“Syrian rebels tackle local government”,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-rebels-tackle-local-government/2013/04/30/3f2181d8-b1b9-11e2-baf7-5bc2a9dc6f44_story.html

“Syria: the ‘no secular fighters’ myth”,

http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/4/30/syria-audio-analysis-the-no-secular-fighters-myth-scott-luca.html

“Jihadists and secular activists clash in Syria”,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/world/…/syria-war-developments.html

“Some rebels worry about extremists but Assad comes first”,
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/some_rebels_worry_about_extremists_but_assad_comes_first_20120822/

“Syria rebels see future fight with foreign radicals”,

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Aug-08/183858-syria-rebels-see-future-fight-with-foreign-radicals.ashx#axzz22zO6OH7J

“First Christian unit of FSA forms”,

http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=2528

“The battle to name Syria’s Friday protests”,

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241314026709762.html

A similar list could of course be made of all kinds of brutal, reactionary and religious-sectarian actions by parts of the anti-Assad revolt. But that is not what is in question in such a variegated, bottom-up, mass uprising. The evidence above makes clear that the sectarian element can by no means be declared in complete control.

‘US war on Syria’ … means what exactly?

So, given the evidence, why did the NYT make this ridiculous, sweeping, clearly false statement? An obvious explanation might be precisely that the NYT, which tends to closely reflect US ruling-class thinking, is simply pushing this line precisely in order to justify US policy, consistently over the last two years, of not supporting the Syrian uprising.

Overwhelmingly, the reason continually being stressed by the US government for its lack of support to the rebels is its hostility to the growing “Islamist” part of the rebellion, especially, but not only, the Al-Nusra organisation, which the US has officially listed as a “terrorist organisation”. The Islamist forces are generally hostile to US imperialism, and very hostile to Israel, which has even in stronger terms expressed its opposition to these forces coming anywhere near power in Syria (see below). The CIA has even made contingency plans for drone strikes on the radical Islamist rebels.

The idea that the US wants to support these Islamists, and is just pretending not to, is a fantasy indulged in by parts of the left who have decided to throw their lot in with the reactionary dictatorship of Assad. Since the Islamists are doing a significant amount of the fighting, and the extreme fringe of Islamists (e.g. al-Nusra) have taken responsibility for the actions that can most correctly be called “war like” (e.g., terrorist bombings in Damascus etc.), the best way to claim the uprising is a “US war on Syria” is to make the inherently unlikely claim that the US is supporting and arming these Islamists, despite the US and other imperialist governments stressing nearly every day that these Islamists are the primary reason they are not supporting and arming the uprising.

Just to clarify: this claim by the US and Israel that they are hostile to the Islamist element in the uprising, especially the more radical elements, is not simply rhetoric; it is clearly true. However, both the US and Israel are relentlessly hostile to the democratic element of the Syrian uprising as well. A genuine people’s revolution would challenge the reactionary US-backed dictatorships in the region, and would be much more likely than Assad’s pliant dictatorship to challenge Israel’s 46-year occupation of its Golan territory. But it is not smart politics to say the latter very loudly. So by pretending the entire anti-Assad movement is Islamic fundamentalist, the US has sought to justify not giving concrete support to any element of the uprising.

Oh, but the US is sending arms to the Syrian rebellion, isn’t it? But simply making that statement for years does not prove that it’s true. A CBS report on May 1 noted, “The first shipment of U.S. aid to the armed Syrian rebels was being delivered Tuesday to the opposition Supreme Military Council (SMC). It includes $8 million in medical supplies and ready-to-eat military food rations”.

You read it right. After nearly two and a half years of the Syrian uprising, about two thirds of that time in the form of armed rebellion, the first US shipment of aid to the rebels occurred in May 2013 in the form of “medical equipment and food rations”.

In reality, what we see most of the time is the US expressing extreme reservations about any kind of intervention in the Syrian civil war, not just about the outlandish suggestions by Republican Party hawks like John McCain for air strikes, but even for arming the armed opposition. In February, the US did authorise a US$60 million package for “non-lethal aid” for the SMC, once it had decided that the SMC leadership could be controlled and could control the flow of whatever equipment it got. Of that $60 million, it is only this $8 million in food and medicines that has yet seen the light of day.

More recently, hints were made that the package could include things like body armour and night-vision goggles. On May 1, the Washington Post reported anonymous US officials saying, “they are moving toward the shipment of arms” beginning at some unspecified time in the next few months, “but emphasized that they are still pursuing political negotiation”, with US President Barack Obama pursuing further talks with Russia to try to find agreement.

These talks with Russia have now begun, with US state secretary John Kerry visiting Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to try to hold an international conference, attended by both members of the Assad regime and the opposition, aiming to set up a “transition” government in Syria which would include both some Assad regime ministers and opposition figures, thus keeping the core of the regime intact. The role of Assad himself appears to be a key sticking point.

Indeed, with all the hoo-ha about the Syrian military allegedly using chemical weapons, and leftist claims that this was the parallel of the “WMD” excuse to invade Iraq, one might have expected the US to take advantage of this to order some kind of aggressive action. In reality, Obama’s reaction was to re-define his “red line” he had made of any use of chemical weapons to mean any “systematic use”, which no one claims to have occurred.

In sharp contrast to the emphatic lies about Iraqi WMD peddled in order to justify an invasion, in this case Obama has reacted to allegations of use of chemical weapons by stressing the evidence “was still preliminary” and thus he was in no rush to intervene, stressing he needs to “make sure I’ve got the facts… If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, we can find ourselves in a position where we can’t mobilize the international community to support”.

Therefore, most analysis suggests the US is very unlikely to sharply change course. US defence secretary Chuck Hagel stressed that “no international or regional consensus on supporting armed intervention now exists”, while “NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has ruled out Western military intervention and U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander, cautioned last month that the alliance would need agreement in the region and among NATO members as well as a U.N. Security Council resolution” (ibid).

Likewise, the until-now more hawkish British government is now “exercising more caution in its attempts to arm the rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, following intelligence reports and warnings by other governments that the major part of the rebel movement has been taken over by Jihadist groups with links to Al-Qaida”, and the recently hawkish French government has in the last week swung strongly towards advocating a political solution. Germany for its part has remained steadfastly opposed to recent Anglo-French attempts to end the European Union arms embargo on the Syrian rebels.

There are of course the much more hawkish calls from Republicans such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham for US air strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons sites. Notably, McCain was not concerned about whether Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons or not – even if they hadn’t, he said the US should still “use Patriot [missile] batteries and cruise missiles” and ready an “international force” to enter Syria to secure stocks of chemical weapons.

Clearly enough, these are more aggressive imperialists even than Obama. Yet still not that useful for Assad fans as an argument – McCain’s reason for this is that “these chemical weapons … cannot fall into the hands of the jihadists”.

Others also pushing hard to arm a vetted section of the rebel leadership also do so mainly to counter the growing strength of the radical Islamist forces. For example, on May 7, top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, claimed the US will “shortly” start arming some “moderate” rebels to boost them over the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra front. He said the “moderate opposition groups that we support are not as good at fighting, they’re not as good as delivering humanitarian aid, and we need to change the balance” because “a nightmare would be al-Nusra, if you will, gaining control of Syria. That’s worse than Assad being there”.

Notably, legislation introduced the previous day by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Menendez to “greenlight the flow of arms” from the US to rebel groups “that have gone through a thorough vetting process” would not include the transfer of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (ibid), i.e., the arms that rebels would need to even come close to dealing with Assad’s massive air power. In other words, the bill mainly deals with small weapons that the US can use for leverage over the rebels and with Assad, rather than being of any effective concrete assistance.

Thus while two years of fighting the Assad regime did not qualify the Free Syrian Army to receive US or EU arms, now that radical Islamist forces appear to be getting an upper hand in the anti-Assad rebellion, they may qualify in order to fight the Islamists. The imperialist dilemma is that by the US refusing to send arms, and the EU imposing an arms embargo (which favours the massively armed Assad regime, which in any case gets loads of arms from Russia and Iran), more and more anti-Assad rebels will turn to the Islamists, as they receive arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and regional Islamist networks. The argument is that arms need to be sent to non-Islamist fighters to balance those received by the Islamists; the counter-arguments is that many of the arms may end up with the Islamists anyway.

In any case, the US is only dealing with exile rebel leaderships in Jordan and Turkey, such as the unrepresentative Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Supreme Military Command, the high command of the Free Syrian Army (SFA), which liaises with the SNC. They have minimal control over what the locally organised FSA and the Local Coordinating Committees do all over Syria, and it is precisely this lack of control over the largely self-organised revolutionary ranks – not only for Islamists – that makes the imperialist powers so hesitant to arm anyone.

While much was made of 200 US troops being sent to Jordan to help coordinate aid to the rebel leadership, it was astounding that the leadership was unable to get any arms to the FSA in southern Syria, near the Jordanian border, when it just lost the strategic town of Khirbet Ghazaleh. A very strange “US war on Syria”.

Aside from arming the rebels, other “possible military choices range from limited one-off missile strikes from ships … to bolder operations like carving out no-fly safe zones”, or the creation of “humanitarian safe areas that would also be no-fly zones off limits to the Syrian air force”. However, US officials have warned that “once you set up a military no-fly zone or safe zone, you’re on a slippery slope, mission creep and before you know it, you have boots on the ground”, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution (ibid).

Of course, despite all this there may well come a time when the US decides that the level of ongoing instability is simply too great to be allowed to continue, or that its so-called “credibility” is at stake if it doesn’t do something, or that if it is all going to fall apart anyway, so the US needs to choose those who it wants to take over, despite the difficulties of enforcing such a choice. Imperialism cannot be trusted to act “rationally”, even from its own point of view, at all times, and a catastrophic – for all involved – US intervention cannot be ruled out.

Nevertheless, if the kind of action that people like McCain are urging came to pass, that would be a marked shift – to claim it gave credence to the idea that the last two years of uprising and rebellion was all a “US war on Syria” would be too illogical to warrant comment.

Saudi-Qatari intervention: promoting sectarian counterrevolution

Many of the assertions about US aid to the Syrian uprising, when examined for evidence, are nothing but reiterations of the well-known fact that the reactionary Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been providing a moderate stream of arms for specific rebel groups. The fact that these two states are pro-US is twisted in discussion to mean they are mere puppets of the US, as if they cannot have their own policies.

In fact, these two relatively powerful states are engaged in an aggressive regional “sub-imperialist” project, with the dual aims of countering Iranian influence in the region, and turning the democratic impulse of the Arab Spring, including its Syrian chapter, into a Sunni-Shia sectarian war. The democratic impulse was and is a mortal danger to the absolute monarchies just as much as to regimes like that of Assad, as Saudi Arabia’s suppression of the uprising in Bahrain shows. Saudi and Qatari intervention is thus a counterrevolution trying to hijack a revolution.
However, while the US may also see some benefit in diverting a democratic movement in a sectarian direction up to a point, it is very wary of this strategy, principally because the only available “shock troops” for this Saudi strategy are hard-line Sunni Islamists and “jihadists” who are more anti-US and especially anti-Israel than Iran itself, and much more so than the Assad regime, which does not have an “anti-imperialist” history at all.

Just to make things clear: just because these Saudi-backed forces are “anti-imperialist” and imperialism and Israel are hostile to them, does not make them “good”. To suggest that would be falling into the same trap as those who wrongly think Assad is “anti-imperialist” and that this makes his regime “good”. The Saudi-backed forces are the most reactionary in the Syrian context, especially given the sectarian dimension, and the reactionary strategy of the US (see below) would even be slightly better than an outright jihadist victory – except that such an outright jihadist victory is almost impossible, as there remains a real democratic anti-Assad movement on the ground that is hostile to the jihadists.

Israel: ‘Terrorists’ the main enemy

The strangeness of the argument that the US “must” be behind the anti-Assad rebellion if some of its Arab allies are behind parts of it, is that the key US ally in the region, Israel, remains steadfastly opposed to this Saudi-led project, viewing a victory of a Syrian uprising with a strong Islamist component as a nightmare. While Israel wants to weaken the Assad regime in order to disrupt the passage of arms between Iran and Hezbollah via Syria, it is also aware that the Assad regime has both kept the border with the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan completely quiet for 40 years, and that the same regime has continually waged war on the Palestinians (for more detail, see links.org.au/node/2766).

Therefore, Israel’s stand has been the polar opposite of the Saudi-Qatari stand.

That is not to say Israel won’t launch aggression – as it has clearly just done – but that such aggression, for its own reasons, is not aimed at helping the Syrian opposition overthrow Assad. Straight after the bombing of military facilities near Damascus on May 5, Israel sought to persuade Assad that the air strikes “did not aim to weaken him in the face of a more than two-year-old rebellion… Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria’s civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to
Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable stand off with the Jewish state for decades”. According to veteran Israeli politician Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the government “aimed to avoid an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime”.
In a similar vein, defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while “Israel has long made clear it is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the
Syrian government)”.

Israel’s overall stance was explained recently by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, who stressed the “only scenario” for Israeli military action in Syria would be to “prevent the delivering of arms, chemical weapons and other kinds of weapons into the hands of terrorists”. He noted that Netanyahu had made clear that “if there will be no threat to Israel, we won’t interfere”. Steinitz emphasised that Israel was not urging the US to take any military action “whatsoever” in Syria at this stage”.

In an interview with BBC TV, Netanyahu called the Syrian rebel groups among “the worst Islamist radicals in the world … So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists”, he said. In a recent meeting with British Prime Minster David Cameron, Netanyahu, who was visiting London for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, again warned of the danger of Western arms reaching jihadist rebels that could be used later against Israel and Western targets.

In particular, Israel “worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary” than Assad has ever been, specifically in relation to the Golan Heights. “The military predicts all that (the 40-year peaceful border) will soon change as it prepares for the worst”.

According to Israel’s Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz in March, “we see terror organisations that are increasingly gaining footholds in the territory and they are fighting against Assad. Guess what? We’ll be next in line”, while Major General Aviv Kochavi, warning that “radical Islam” was gaining ground in Syria, compared the region near the Golan with “the situation in Sinai, as a result of growing jihad movement in Syria”.

Clarifying that it is the fall of Assad that worries Israel, Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz that “the worrisome scenario in the north is that after Assad is gone Israel will be attacked, and the Syrian Golan will turn into a new version of the Gaza Strip, with southern Lebanon serving as a base for launching rockets and missiles. This is what is concerning the IDF’s top brass. Assad’s control of the Golan is disintegrating as his forces are being drawn into the decisive battles around Damascus and the fight for the city’s international airport”.

Thus while Hezbollah is seen as a mortal enemy, the anti-Assad Islamist fighters are seen as in some ways even less predictable. According to Aaron Klein and Karl Vick writing in Time in February, “Hizballah is not Israel’s only concern – or perhaps even the most worrying. Details of the Israeli strikes make clear the risk posed by fundamentalist militants sprinkled among the variegated rebel forces fighting to depose Assad … jihadist groups are less vulnerable to the same levers that have proved effective against Syria and other states – such as threats to its territory — or even the frank interests of an organization like Hizballah, which as a political party plays a major role in Lebanon’s government”.

Of course, outside the actual contest between Assad and opposition, Israel’s bigger project is to build up for an attack on Iran. In this sense, the bombings can also be seen as a warning to Iran, and even a test run. As Assad has been both asset and thorn for Israel, it prefers his regime to remain, if weakened, and to try to either attack Iran, or decimate Hezbollah, as its way of breaking the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah Shia nexus. In contrast, the governments doing the most to intervene against Assad’s regime – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – are all horrified at the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran, as it would tend to swing their own populations into “Islamic solidarity” with Iran (some evidence of this at links.org.au/node/2991). They prefer to try to break the nexus via destroying Assad and bringing to power a Sunni Islamist regime in Damascus – Israel’s nightmare.

The only reason Syria is in the “nexus” in the first place is due to Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan. Syria uses Hezbollah as a form of indirect pressure via Lebanon, while keeping its own Israeli Golan border quiet. With its bombing and Israel’s frank words afterwards, Israel is also sending a message to Assad that if he wants Israel’s help, he has to break the nexus with Hezbollah. Naturally, Assad has no reason to trust the Zionist regime, and still less as Israel is not offering the return of the Golan in exchange. With Syria weakened, Israel has the bargaining power.

A final thought on Israel’s intentions is that, given the fears expressed about south Syria becoming a “new Gaza” if Assad falls, some Israeli strategists may even be considering invading to set up a new “buffer zone” between its occupied Golan and victorious Islamists and/or Hezbollah infiltration into the region. Thus current aggression may be a prelude to a larger operation, if the Zionist regime sees it as necessary and feasible, but this would be a very high-risk move.

Let ‘terrorists’ kill each other?

One interesting angle to all this, however, is that as both the US and Israel view both Hezbollah and the anti-Assad Sunni jihadis as enemies, would it not be in their interests for them to kill each other in Syria? While Israel opposes weapons getting to Hezbollah in Lebanon, it may look differently at Hezbollah foolishly wasting its resources, energies and cadres in Syria fighting other Islamists, and focused away from Israel. This strategy was advocated by neo-con extremist Daniel Pipes, who asserted that “continued fighting does less damage to Western interests than their taking power. There are worse prospects than Sunni and Shiite Islamists mixing it up, than Hamas jihadis killing Hezbollah jihadis, and vice versa… This keeps them focused locally, and it prevents either one from emerging victorious and thereby posing a greater danger. Western powers should guide enemies to a stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their conflict”. As he believes Assad is currently losing, the US should support Assad.
The snag in that would be, of course, if Assad falls, Hezbollah would be in a similar position inside Syria to the Sunni Islamists in being able to grab access to Assad’s weaponry. All the more reason, from Israel’s point of view, for the regime to survive as the “least worst scenario”. They also cannot necessarily be relied on to keep fighting once Assad is gone; jointly turning their attention to liberating Golan is not out of the question. And the strategy also means the continuation of massive instability in Syria for the foreseeable future, precisely what most imperialist interests see as the problem.

Heading where?

The Assad regime, in its current form at least, is finished, if not now, then soon; it has at least a majority of its population fighting it, and even if it can hang on, it can never defeat the opposition. As long as the regime hangs on, the region will be in a state of permanent instability, wracked by massive war and terrible bloodshed. The figure of 70,000 killed to date may end up being dwarfed. Those interpreting the US verbal support for the regime’s replacement as some fundamental hostility are simply refusing to see that the US now wants Assad out because he cannot win and his presence guarantees continued instability, as well as the further rise of the radical Islamist element. But what does it want to replace the regime with?

The US interest is to balance between the mutually hostile Israeli and Saudi projects for the region, while at all cost trying to preserve some sense of “order” in the (inevitable) Syrian transition. The US therefore prefers a deal that would include significant parts of Assad’s regime, to preserve a “stable” core, joined with some defector generals from the regime, “liberal” oppositionists in the foreign-based Syrian National Council (which is unrepresentative of the Syrian movement on the ground) and more moderate members of the Muslim Brotherhood. This strategy is at variance with the Saudi strategy, and aimed at both stemming the reactionary Islamist tide, but also ensuring no genuine “people’s power” can arise from below.

The current US attempt to find a “negotiated solution” together with Moscow fits this strategy; Kerry was not wrong when he said that the US and Russia have similar interests in Syria.

While the Syrian opposition has not rejected this course, it has reacted coolly. Moaz al-Khatib, the recently resigned head of the opposition umbrella National Opposition Coalition (NOC), warned Syrians to “be careful of squandering your revolution in international conference halls”. Its “red line” would be any role for Assad himself in any “transitional government”, which would inevitably involve some members of his regime.

This is an understandable and valid reaction to any attempt by powerful outside states to derail the people’s will.

Cease-fire

However, the growing role of a reactionary-Sunni sectarian element among the armed opposition, backed by the tyrannies of the Gulf, and the fact that this sectarianism frightens the bulk of the minority populations, at least Alawis and Christians and probably some Druze and even secular Sunni, into grudgingly backing the regime or remaining neutral, and the fact that endless war with no victory of either side in sight is simply catastrophic to all, means that a “military victory” over Assad is highly unlikely. Also, any “military solution” in the current sectarian circumstances may be anything but the most democratic outcome.

Military struggle is by no means synonymous with Islamist or sectarian politics as is often thought; at the outset, the masses picked up arms to defend themselves from Assad’s slaughter, and a good part of the Free Syrian Army is still simply the armed people. But armed struggle, due to the very nature of bloodshed, in particular without a left-wing and consciously anti-sectarian leadership, can help bolster an existing sectarian potential. A ceasefire would arguably create the best conditions for the democratic element of the mass movement to gain some breathing space and revive the mass struggle.

Whether or not the current US-Russia talks can bring a ceasefire about is uncertain, but even if they can, whether or not such a cease-fire and transitional government can really give any breathing space to the masses also depends a great deal on whether such an unbroken “Assad state without Assad” allows such a breathing space, or simply continues its repression and terror with a new face.

Arms

In the meantime, it is important to stress that it is the regime that is imposing a “military solution” on a massive scale; in such circumstances the FSA has the right to get arms for self-defence from whoever it wants. Blaming whatever tiny trickle of arms the FSA gets for continuing military conflict is simply stating that the FSA should commit suicide in order to achieve the peace of the graveyard. To begin to ever-so-slightly equalising the fire power of the two sides – with the regime still absolutely dominant[1] – does not mean advocating a military solution. It just means people have the right to protect themselves against getting blasted to bits. It may even strengthen the possibilities for a negotiated solution, which at present Assad has no reason to consider.

If on the other hand the current talks break down, and the US and other imperialist powers, or even Israel, decide to desperately throw themselves in, and the McCain strategy comes to pass, the current situation would become even more catastrophic. While it is clearly not the Israeli strategy – yet another case where extremely pro-Zionist US neo-conservatives are not aligned with Israel’s strategy – Israel would likely move to take advantage of such a conflagration to carry out its own aggression against Iran, or even to forcibly expel a new wave of Palestinians.

Opposing imperialism should obviously not mean being apologists for Assad’s butchery. But it is important to remember that opposing this butchery should in no circumstances mean losing our critical faculties and forgetting the kind of armageddon a real imperialist war would entail.

Notes

[1] To discuss this would require another article, however, a good look at Syria’s massive military equipment is at http://www.revolutionobserver.com/2012/11/syrias-military-capability.html#!/2012/11/syrias-military-capability.html. It is beyond ridiculous to talk about a few small arms getting to the FSA coming anywhere near this massive array of tanks, APCs, attack helicopters, combat planes, scud and other missiles etc

By Michael Karadjis

August 13, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The continuing mass uprising against Syria’s Bashar Assad dictatorship on the one hand, and the growing intervention by the reactionary Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with Turkey, on the side of the growing armed insurgency on the other, has led to a situation where many on the left are sharply divided over who to “support”.

Some claim the Saudi-led covert intervention requires support for Assad’s bloody regime as a lesser evil “secular” alternative to what they believe is an inevitable “jihadi” regime, given the rise of a vicious Sunni sectarian aspect to the civil war and the Saudi-led backing of such forces. Also, given the largely verbal (until recently) support given to the Gulf states’ intervention by the US and other imperialist states, support for Assad against this allegedly “imperialist-backed” assault on Syria is necessary to prevent the destruction of the Syrian state, which they allege imperialism desires due to Assad’s alleged anti-imperialist credentials (which even most of these writers, however, admit is very tenuous at best).

As an aside, it should be emphasised that these two potentially reactionary aspects – the extent to which the opposition has become a “jihadi” Sunni sectarian force, and the extent of imperialist intervention, are not one and the same thing; as will be shown below, while there is some overlap, they also somewhat operate at cross-purposes.

Meanwhile, others erect virtual soap boxes from which they piously denounce anyone even raising these valid issues of the extent of the Saudi/reactionary intervention as sycophants for Assad and as “counter-revolutionaries”. While partially correct that the Saudi-led counterrevolution has probably not utterly extinguished the genuine uprising, they tend to exaggerate in the other direction, refusing to see the extent of reactionary and sectarian counterrevolutionary intervention; some go so far as to denounce opposition to imperialist intervention as … counterrevolutionary.

Syrian masses have the right to rise

This article does not propose a “solution” to this problem, as much of this heat appears to stem from lack of clear information over exactly what is occurring and the relative weight of genuine uprising (including elements of armed self-defence) vis a vis reactionary terror; the only thing that appears clear is that both exist. This is not an argument for neutrality. Rather, we should have no hesitation in saying the Syrian masses have the right to rise against a vicious dictatorship, and where a population is defending itself against the regime’s armed forces, including by arming themselves, our sympathies ought to be with them; yet we should also have no hesitation in sympathising with minorities under vicious attack, including sectarian ethnic cleansing, from armed reactionary elements that certainly do exist and have been increasingly carrying out such attacks.

To“know” which is the more dominant element seems to be largely a matter of opinion, with relatively few attempts at in-depth analysis of this question.Richard Seymour made one such solid attempt on his Lenin’s Tomb blog: while one may not agree with it all – I thought it was excellent but did somewhat underestimate the degree of sectarian degeneration – it is such solid analyses that are worth much more than the kind of feverish declarations of“support” and denunciation of opponents as traitors that much discussion has descended into.

This article will rather focus on the geopolitics of the situation. Often, some of the feverish views are accompanied by declarations that this is all an imperialist plot, as a way of showing opposing views to be beyond the pale. In reality, there is no one “imperialist” view, let alone an agreement of views between imperialism, Israel and the reactionary Arab monarchies.

Israel’s view: Assad the lesser evil

One view tries to emphasise an alleged Israeli role in the crisis. Sometimes this is motivated by a desire to show how reactionary Assad’s opponents must be if backed by such a reactionary regime as that of colonial-settler Israel and how this proves the imperialist hand. In other cases, it is meant to show that Israel (and perhaps the Jews) run the world, including the US government. The reason such arguments are appearing is to counter the embarrassing (for apologists for the Syrian Baath Party regime) reality of Israel’s very obvious silence for at least a year after the uprising began until very recently.

For example, James Petras writes that the insurgency is an attack on Syria by the “Triple Alliance” of the US, the Gulf Cooperation Council (i.e., the Saudi, Qatari and other reactionary oil monarchies of the Gulf) and Israel. More recently, Mimi Al Laham (aka “Syrian Girl”) and Lizzie Phelan penned a piece entitled, “How leftist anti-Zionists are allied with Israel against Syria”.As the title suggests, the authors claim that Israel has been a key proponent of regime change in Damascus, and that anyone disagreeing with their analysis is therefore “allied” to Israel in this alleged quest to topple Assad.

Much of the article is spurious – the authors give examples of statements by US leaders advocating the end of Assad or support to the insurgents, and say that because the US is Israel’s main ally, that is evidence of Israel’s view. At one point they even argue that the open Saudi-Qatari support for the rebels is evidence of Israel’s view, since these Arab states, like Israel, are US allies.

Talk about circular reasoning; and as if Israel and Saudi Arabia/Qatar agree on everything. The Saudi and Qatari leaders don’t even agree with each other on everything.

Al Laham and Phelan do give a few examples of Israeli leaders calling for support for overthrowing Assad. However, it is notable that even they admit these are very recent statements: such statements from Israeli leaders have mostly happened as Assad’s situation has become more untenable whatever anyone may do to help him. But even then, as we will see below, there are just as many, if not more, examples even from the recent period which reveal great Israeli trepidation over Assad’s likely fall.

The most serious argument, however, concerns the question of Iran. Al Laham and Phelan state:

Syria is a member of the Axis of Resistance, which is the only effective military resistance to Israel left. It is made up of Syria, Iran and the resistance inside Lebanon with Hizbullah at the helm… Israeli Intelligence Minister, Dan Meridor, was quoted on Israeli radiopointing out what was obvious all along: Regime change in Syria would break the Iran-Syria mutual defence pact thereby isolating Iran and cutting the supply of arms to Hezbollah … those cheerleaders who maintain that Assad is good for Israel have been unable to reconcile then why Israel relentlessly beats the war drums against one of Syria’s most important allies, Iran.

While this is the most serious argument, the reality is far more complex and contradictory. But before going into specifics, it is first necessary to deal with some of the simplistic thinking exemplified in this article.

It is first important to avoid the idea that there is “an imperialist position”, “a US position” or “an Israeli position”, let alone a “position”necessarily held by the US and all its allies together. “Imperialism” does not think and thus “have a position”; there are lots of different spokespeople and ideologues, who often have markedly different views on what is best for their class.

One very good article about Israeli views on Syria is, “The Israeli Position toward the Events in Syria”,because it looks at varying views among different sections of the Zionist ruling class and weighs them up, rather than assuming there is “an Israeli view”.This article covered the view above – regarding Syria as the link between Iran and Hezbollah – but also other concerns, particularly that the Assad dynasty has maintained its border with the Israel-occupied Golan Heights meticulously quiet for 40 years, which may not be the case if it is overthrown – and came to the conclusion that, overall, for the Zionist rulers, the dangers of the overthrow of Assad outweigh the possible benefits, despite differing views.

Meanwhile, Israel’s intelligence chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi, “warned that “radical Islam” was gaining ground in Syria, saying the country was undergoing a process of “Iraqisation”, with militant and tribal factions controlling different sectors of the country”, and claiming there was “an ongoing flow of Al-Qaeda and global jihad activists into Syria”. Making clear that his fears were about Assad losing, he said that with the Assad regime weakening, “the Golan Heights could become an arena of activity against Israel, similar to the situation in Sinai, as a result of growing jihad movement in Syria” (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Jul-17/180917-assad-moving-troops-from-golan-to-damascus-israel.ashx#axzz20t8QAeyJ).

In a similar vein, Yoav Zitun, writing forIsraeli newsagency Ynet, reportedthat, “The IDF is preparing for the possibility that global Jihad terrorists will launch attacks from Syria in case President Bashar Assad’s regime will fall … Army officials are not ruling a situation whereby terrorists will take advantage of the chaos that may follow a regime change in Damascus to seize control of the border region, as was the case in the Sinai Peninsula after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown.” The army was “gearing for a number of possible scenarios, including a cross-border attack by global jihad, which is operating in Syria against Assad’s regime”. Brigadier-General Tamir Haiman warned of possible attacks “launched without prior warning from army intelligence – as was the case in the attack in Ein Netafim a year ago, which originated in Sinai”.

The analogy being made in both excerpts above to the fall of Mubarak and the resulting “instability” on the Egyptian border highlights precisely one of Israel’s key geopolitical concerns about the Arab Spring.

According to Khaled Amayreh in Al-Ahram, Israel was “dismayed” by the election victory of Muslim Brotherhood chief Mursi in Egypt. He claimed a major “pillar” of Israeli policy “was courting and neutralising Arab dictators who proved highly effective in pacifying their own masses” but now Israel“is beginning to lose” this pillar. He quotes Ron Ben-Yishai, editor-in-chief of the Israeli website Ynet, not only warning of the “danger posed by the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood to the helm of power in the most important and populous Arab country”, but also that “Egypt’s Islamicisation constitutes a very negative harbinger for secular regimes that rely on the army, not only in Lebanon and Syria, but also in Jordan and the Palestinian Authority”.

Thus, while the idea that Israel may desire the fall of Assad derives from the idea that it aims to break the strategic connection between Iran, Iranian-influenced Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon (the so-called “Shia crescent”) – above all Syria’s role as the link between Iran and Hezbollah –Israel is in fact more concerned about a new rising “crescent” of Sunni regimes strongly influenced by the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood – the new Egypt, Hamas in Gaza, Turkey led by the soft-Islamist AKP, which has come into serious conflict with Israel under this regime, and now the possibility of forces linked to, or led by, the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in Syria.

And since Assad has kept the Golan border meticulously quiet for 40 years – just as did Hosni Mubarak in Egypt – Israel fears this turn of events would lead to similar disquiet on the Syrian Golan border as has occurred on the Egyptian Sinai border.

While it might seem odd that both combinations of states and movements are regarded as a threat by Israel, it is not really: being a colonial-settler state and imperialist outpost in a region dominated by the nation you have ethnically cleansed en masse does tend to lead to everyone in the region – Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Christans, Druze, atheists etc. – hating you. But the idea of the new “Sunni crescent” completely surrounding Israel, and including an actual Palestinian component (Hamas), is actually more threatening than the less-connected“Shia crescent”, even if the latter includes Hezbollah.

It is thus no surprise that nearly every statement in recent days from Israeli leaders threatening to intervene in Syria under the guise of the risk of chemical weapons has been worded to the effect that such intervention would be reacting to the threat posed by the fall of the Assad regime, which might allegedly lead to “terrorists” – whether Hezbollah or anti-Assad Sunni “jihadis” – getting these weapons. As Israel’s defence minister Ehud Barak stated, “The moment Assad starts to fall we will conduct intelligence monitoring and will liaise with other agencies” regarding such intervention.

More generally, the idea that the Assad regime has been one of the “resistance”forces to Zionism and imperialism is so far from reality that one wonders why it is often believed. Israel has annexed Syrian territory – thus any Syrian regime, whether Assad or a regime which overthrows him – will never “make peace” without getting Syrian land back. Syrian backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon is the regime’s way of putting indirect pressure on Israel without confronting Israel itself; yet in the past, the regime has not been averse to slaughtering Hezbollah militants.

Yet while no shot has been fired on the Golan since 1973, the Assad dynasty has more Palestinian blood on its hands than any other Arab state except Jordan, with events in 1976, 1985 and 1985-6 standing out (see full analysis at http://links.org.au/node/2766), as the regime tried to show Israel how good a Camp David style partner it was willing to be if only it handed back the Golan; Israel, however, with a regime like that next door, figured it could have its cake and eat it too.

Some claim, contrawise, that the secret “Israeli position” has always been the “Lebanonisation” – fragmentation – of all Arab states, to weaken them, and allow Israel to run roughshod over them. As above, this has historically been “one” Israeli view rather than “the” Israeli view. It may have been correct about Israel’s view of Iraq, given that country’s size; and thus with the US destruction of Iraq, Israel began viewing Iran as its main enemy. But with Iraq already in pieces, there is little need for it in smaller Syria, especially given the dangers involved and Assad’s pliant behaviour.

Moreover, there is a serious problem in this argument, however good it sounds. The argument is that Israel would prefer Syria to be the same mess as Lebanon. Yet Syria’s main crime in the recent past, from Israel’s point of view, has been its semi-backing of Hezbollah (more on this below), the only Arab force to deliver a defeat to Israel.

Hezbollah, however, is in “Lebanonised” Lebanon, not in Syria.

The Saudi-Qatari-Turkish-led counterrevolution: Region-wide sectarian struggle

So since there is not even one single Israeli view, there can hardly be a US-Israeli view; and even though the dominant Israeli view has been largely pro-Assad, this does not at all mean this is the US view (aside from the differences within US ruling elite itself), because Israel is not a puppet of the US, and still less is the US a puppet of Israel, as more fanciful views claim. And for the same reasons, it is also very wrong to claim that the hard line pushed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Gulf sheikdoms, or Turkey, is the same as the US view, or is due to them being puppets of imperialism.

On the contrary, the Saudis and Qataris are pushing their own very ambitious regional realignment, using parts of the Muslim Brotherhood as a proxy, for their own reasons, while the AKP regime in Turkey is doing much the same for similar reasons, as well as other specific reasons related to Kurdistan. Israel is extremely uncomfortable about this (as some of the views expressed in that article showed). US President Barack Obama’s regime in the US stands somewhere uncomfortably in between.

What then are the key interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey in this?

On the one hand, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been the most active in pushing for Assad’s ouster via arming the opposition, it ought to be understood that the potential in 2011 for a popular uprising to oust the Assad dictatorship was a mortal threat to these tyrannical monarchies. If people can overthrow dictatorships in Egypt, Tunisia and then also Syria, and neighbouring Yemen and Bahrain can be openly threatened, then why not Saudi Arabia and Qatar? In fact, there has been a popular upsurge in eastern parts of Saudi Arabia, which has been brutally crushed, as was the uprising in Bahrain.

On the other hand, despite their horror at the prospect of popular revolution, these states are also engaged in regional rivalry with Iran, and a key ideological prop of this rivalry is the division between Sunni and Shia Islam. Saudi Arabia projects its power via support for various extremist Sunni fundamentalist groups (“Salafis”), while Qatar is headquarters of the somewhat more moderate Sunni fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. While the whole Arab Spring was a mortal threat to these tyrannies, they used their grotesque wealth to fund such Islamist currents within these movements in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia in order to try to take control of them.

Meanwhile, Iran funds Shiite fundamentalist forces, in Iraq and in Lebanon. With the majority Shia in Iraq emerging much more powerful since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, and with Hezbollah emerging powerful in Lebanon due to its role in defeating Israel’s occupation there, the Saudi-led states see Iran’s position becoming more powerful.

Where does Syria come into this? In fact, Syria had a long-term good relationship to the Saudis and Gulf states, but maintained a strategic alliance with Iran. While very secular, the Assad regime is heavily based among the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam, and as such is widely detested by the Sunni majority there who feel disenfranchised by this unofficial reality. In the 1980s, Assad senior brutally crushed a popular uprising that was largely led by the Muslim Brotherhood, and so the regime saw Iran as a more reliable long-term ally against its sectarian rivals.

While Syria’s Western-backed invasion of Lebanon in 1976 was initially in support of the right-wing Christian forces and involved crushing the Palestinian-Muslim-leftist alliance, over time Syria’s role settled into being the key supporter of the disenfranchised Shiite element of the population. And with Israel refusing to hand back Syria’s Golan Heights, which it stole in 1967 and even annexed – an act of pure international piracy –in 1981, Assad allowed his country to be the link between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to put pressure on Israel while Assad kept the Syrian border on the Golan utterly quiet.

As such, the Saudi-Qatar need to derail the Syrian revolution coalesced with the regional rivalry with Iran to form a policy of promoting the Sunni fundamentalist forces active within the Syrian opposition in a bid to not only try to take control of the uprising – as elsewhere – but also to foment Sunni-Alawite sectarian conflict, to turn popular revolution into sectarian bloodletting, killing two birds with the one stone.

Given the fact that there is a large Shia minority in Saudi Arabia in the eastern oilfields region, where rebellion is centred, and that the Shia majority led the uprising in Bahrain against the minority Sunni sectarian monarchy, this fomenting of sectarianism regionally also allows these monarchies to demonise the uprisings in their countries as nothing but “Iranian subversion”. There seems little doubt that the Saudi-Qatar aim is the destruction of Assad’s regime and the conquest of power by a Muslim Brotherhood-led regime, effecting a victory in the regional rivalry with Iran and a sectarian victory over their own Shia minorities/majorities.

It would be a serious mistake to believe that just because Saudi Arabia is a reactionary pro-imperialist state that Israel would be fine with forces backed by this state surrounding Israel. On the contrary, these Sunni Islamist forces are a double-edged sword, and are largely just as hostile to Israel as are Shia Islamists like Hezbollah – Hamas is an obvious example –and a lot more so than Assad’s purely conjunctural position: Assad has to be officially “anti-Israel” since Israel occupies Syrian land, but no regime coming to power in Syria will be willing to give up the Golan to Israel.

In the case of Turkey, the AKP regime has also laid claim to regional leadership, and over the last few years has even projected a “neo-Ottomanism”, meaning Turkish leadership within the regions once ruled by the Ottoman empire. However, although the AKP, as a “soft” Sunni Islamist party, can be seen as related to the Muslim Brotherhood, the AKP’s neo-Ottoman strategy did not involve promoting sectarianism. On the contrary, it involved good relations with Iran and Syria as well as with the Sunni-led states as part of Prime Minister Erdogan’s quest for “statesman-like”leadership in resolving regional disputes within the Muslim world. At the same time, this “eastern turn” involved increasingly distancing Turkey from its long-term alliance with Israel, which had been cornerstone of policy when the anti-Islamist generals ruled Turkey. Turkey has clashed with Israel in cases such as the Mavi Marmara, and built links with anti-Israel Islamist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

At the outset of the Syrian and Libyan uprisings, Turkey reacted cautiously, initially opposing Western intervention in Libya, but as Erdogan saw the writing on the wall, suddenly jumped in to use the AKP’s Islamist credentials to support the same forces Qatar was supporting. In the case of Syria, however, this has a more specific significance. Syria, like Turkey, Iraq and Iran, is home to a large Kurdish minority. Part of Erdogan’s growing alliance with Syria and Iran had been anti-Kurdish solidarity. Assad abandoned his earlier opportunistic support for the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and policed Turkey’s border. However, the Syrian uprising threatened to pull all this apart, especially if Syria’s Kurds took part. Turkey has therefore actively intervened to try to ensure – through its “Islamist” connections and more generally hosting opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) leaders – that whoever eventually takes power will be in debt to Turkey and thus maintain an anti-Kurdish position.

In addition, the Israel-Turkey conflict has recently taken on a new dimension, with the discovery of natural gas fields in the east Mediterranean Sea. In a minor diplomatic revolution, Greece and Cyprus have developed a new strategic alliance with Israel to co-develop these fields and thus limit Turkey’s role there. Turkey for its part is trying to stop Cyprus exploiting these fields around the northern part of Cyprus still under long-term Turkish occupation. Israel’s energy minister Uzi Landau recently vowed, “Israel can support and secure the rigs that we are going to have in the Mediterranean”, after Turkey declared its plan to boost naval patrols in the eastern Mediterranean in a deepening diplomatic feud. Meanwhile, Lebanon has accused Israel of breaking international law by exploring for gas without an agreement on the maritime border between the two countries (http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defence/israel-vows-to-defend-gas-after-turkey-threatens-to-boost-navy-patrols-in-mediterranean-1.383820).

It is thus fairly obvious that Israel also has no interest in Turkey extending its influence into Syria.

Opposite views on dealing with Iran-Syria-Hezbollah link

What then of the fact that Assad’s Syria is Iran’s ally and that Israel has for months now been hell-bent on a ferocious display of aggression towards Iran, ever-threatening to attack the country to hit Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities? Why wouldn’t that make Israel the most anti-Assad of regional pro-US states? How does that fit with the obvious reality that it has been the least?

It is actually very interesting that of all these players, it is the state that has had the most pro-Assad position that is precisely the state that is most aggressively hell-bent on taking out Iran; and that contrawise, those most aggressive against Assad — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey — are also vociferously opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran and terrified of its consequences.

For example, in March, Qatar’s foreign minister Hamad Al Thani declared, “We will not accept any aggressive action against Iran from Qatar”, despite the presence of a US base on its soil (http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=263818). On August 10, the Israel newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Saudi Arabia had threatened to shoot down any Israeli aircraft over its airspace en route to or from Iran (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32129.htm). On March 29, Erdogan, on a state visit to Iran, declared, “Turkey has always clearly supported the nuclear positions of Iran, and will continue to firmly follow the same policy in the future”, stressing that “no one should be allowed to harm the friendly ties between Iran and Turkey” (http://www.payvand.com/news/12/mar/1271.html).

It is clear that the Gulf monarchies see an Israeli attack on Iran as enormously destabilising, risking to swing their Sunni Muslim populations strongly behind Iran and against any regime seen as collaborating with the US or Israel in such a venture, undercutting their drive to forge a sectarian divide in the region.

In this connection, Alistair Crooke penned a very interesting articlethat argues precisely that for many, regime change in Syria to break the “nexus” between Iran and Hezbollah is precisely being pushed as an alternative to a catastrophic Israeli attack on Iran. He quotes former Mossad head Efraim Halevy, who holds this minority view in Israel, that “ending Iran’s presence in [in Syria] poses less of a risk to international commerce and security than harsher sanctions, or war [on Iran would pose]”, and continues in reference to the aggressive campaign by Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters in the US Republican Party for war on Iran that: “It is against this background that ‘regime change’ in Syria becomes so important. Both in Israel and America, there are serious constituencies which argue that a direct military strike on Iran would provoke a terrible disaster. To answer this, the combination of financial siege on the Iranian people, in combination with the overthrow of Assad — in favor of an anti-Iranian, Sunni successor — is crafted precisely to assuage those hawks demanding military action.”

This argument closely fits the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish view — for them breaking Iran’s regional power and its connection to Hezbollah through Syria by overthrowing Assad is much better than an Israeli attack on Iran, while also giving them their proxies in power — an alternative Israel is not happy at all with. Israel, by contrast, prefers to solve the same“problem” via an attack on Iran while leaving a known dictatorship in power in Syria.

The US view: balance opposing views but maintain state structure in Syria

US imperialism dominates the Middle East partially via two key regional props, two “abnormal” formations that don’t exist elsewhere in the world: the Israeli Zionist settler state and the oil monarchies of the Gulf. In this particular conflict they appear to have opposing views and interests. Where then does the US stand?

Verbally at least, the US has appeared to stand closer to the Saudi alliance, especially with some of the aggressive – and sensationally and sickeningly hypocritical – rhetoric coming from Hillary Clinton and other leaders. There has also been a very recent shift to more active support to the anti-Assad forces.

For example, the July 20, 2012, New York Times claimed President Obama is “increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the [Syrian] government”. It reported that CIA operatives have been based in southern Turkey “for several weeks” while the US and Turkey are working on putting together a post-Assad “provisional government”in Syria. The US reportedly issued a “secret order” authorising “non-lethal” covert support to the Free Syrain Army (FSA), i.e. training, logistics, communications assistance. Not to be outdone, British former SAS soldiers are reportedly training Syrian rebels at a base inside the Iraqi border.

In comparison to the Saudi and Gulf tyrants, however, the US has been markedly slow to swing clearly this way, and even now that it has, it still emphasises that it will not arm the FSA, while now officially supporting the Gulf arms channel.

Even more clearly, in the very same period that the US has been moving more clearly to authorise some degree of support for the FSA, the US media and various leaders have also began expressing alarm over the rise of “Islamist” forces within the armed opposition, whether Saudi-backed “Salafist” groups or al Qaeda. For example, theNYT article, “As Syrian war drags on jihadists take bigger role” ,reported that “a central reason cited by the Obama administration for limiting support to the resistance to things like communications equipment is that it did not want arms flowing to Islamic radicals. More ominously for the US, articles such as “Al Qaida turns tide for rebels in battle for eastern Syria”report on “fighters who have left the Free Syrian Army for the discipline and ideology of global jihad”.

This is all the more reason why the US has been attempting to influence certain forces within the opposition: “The C.I.A. effort is aimed in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. By helping to vet rebel groups, American intelligence operatives in Turkey also hope to learn more about a growing, changing opposition network inside of Syria and to establish new ties to fighters who may be the country’s leaders one day” (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31958.htm).

But it is precisely in this way that the US interest somewhat diverges from the Saudi interest. This is not only in the sense that the Saudis back the most sectarian forces as part of their regional game, whereas US leaders have been emphasising the need for a post-Assad regime to be inclusive of Alawites, Christians an other minorities. More importantly, while the Saudi-led offensive aims to destroy the regime, the US has made abundantly clear that it aims for a“Yemen solution”, that is, one where Assad goes but his regime is preserved, with some of the opposition –screened by the US– joining in.

For example, as David Ignatius reports in the Washington Post,Obama “is seeking a ‘managed transition’ in Syria with the twin goals of removing President Bashar al-Assad as soon as possible and doing so without the evaporation of the authority of the Syrian state”.On July 30, US defence secretary Leon Panetta stressed the importance of“preserving stability” when Assad leaves: “The best way to preserve that kind of stability is to maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government” (www.reuters.com/…/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSBRE86T1KP20120730).

This need for “stability” reflects imperialist concern to maintain control vis a vis either a (increasingly unlikely) genuine popular quest for power, or a seizure of power by Islamist forces. “If the Assad regime did fall, this would provide more Islamist militants with a potential opportunity to establish a new foothold in the heart of the Middle East”, according to Charles Lister from Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center.“The temporary lack of state structures would also afford aspirant militant Islamists with a safe area for training” (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31958.htm). Expressing concern over “extremists” getting their hands on Assad’s chemical weapons, Panetta noted that “particularly when it comes to things like the chemical sites, they (the Assad regime) do a pretty good job of securing those sites”.

John Bolton, US neo-con and fanatical supporter of Israel’s  Likud Party – who has been calling for a US-Israeli attack on Iran for years – summed up these fears even more clearly, writing that, “There will undoubtedly be an imminent risk of humanitarian disaster if Assad falls, including a bloodbath against his supporters or massive flows of refugees and displaced persons”, but to prevent even greater disaster “we must not permit terrorists like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah in next-door Lebanon, rogue states or a radical Syrian successor regime to acquire these capabilities” (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/07/24/america-and-its-allies-must-prepare-to-secure-syria-weapons-mass-destruction).

As such, while US rhetoric often sounds closer to the view of the Saudi axis on this issue, actual US policy contains many of the same fears as those of Israel, and in many ways straddling the fence almost exactly.

Turkey and the Kurds: Islamists yes, Syrian break-up no

Interestingly, while Turkey’s forthright role in backing Syria’s armed opposition and promotion of Islamists places it in alliance with the Saudi/Gulf axis, Turkey itself also shares US and Israeli concerns over total collapse of the regime, precisely because any disintegration of the Syrian state opens the way for an autonomous or independent Kurdish entity in the north, which could join Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish entity and threaten to involve the millions of Kurds in Turkey and Iran.

Indeed, this is already happening. Until the uprising began, Ankara and Damascus were strongly allied in crushing their respective Kurdish populations. But with Turkey supporting the FSA, Assad decided on a maneuvre by releasing jailed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK – the Kurdish group fighting Turkey with a presence in northern Syria) from prisons, to cause annoyance to Turkey and to strengthen the PKK against the Kurdish forces there loyal to corrupt Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who, due to geopolitical reasons, was currently allied to Turkey and in opposition to the Shia regime in Iraq, currently allied to Syria.

In late July, this went further than Assad had bargained for, with the local Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish independence group allied to the PKK, taking control of a number of northern Syrian provinces with Kurdish majorities. To complicate things further, when Turkey then tried to use Barzani to intervene with his PDK (Kurdish Democratic Party) forces against the PYD-PKK, Barzani did something he has almost never done before – he joined forces with his fellow Kurds against all local regimes! Indeed, in the background, the Hawler Agreement had been signed on July 9-10, 2012, uniting all Syrian Kurdish groups in a Supreme Kurdish Council (ENSK).

Turkey’s collaboration with Syrian Islamists and the SNC aims to ensure that, as successors to Assad, they maintain Assad’s opposition to Kurdish autonomy (and this has been successful judging by the position of the SNC). However, whether total control can be gained by the SNC and Islamist forces is in doubt, and while an extended inter-sectarian blood-letting may suit the Saudi Arabian project as long as “its guys” have the upper hand, fragmentation of the Syrian state would clearly not suit Turkey.

According to analysis from Asia Times Online: “Erdogan’s best hope is that the Turkish intelligence could orchestrate some sort of ‘palace coup’ in Damascus… What suits Ankara will be to have Assad replaced by a transitional structure that retains elements of the existing Ba’athist state structure, which could facilitate an orderly transfer of power to a new administration… But Erdogan is unsure whether Turkey can swing an Egypt-like coup in Damascus. His dash to Moscow July 18 aimed at sounding out Russia if a new and stable transitional structure could be put together in Damascus through some kind of international cooperation. (Obama lent his weight to Erdogan’s mission by telephoning Russian President Vladimir Putin the next day to discuss Syria.)”

US-Russia stand-off?

Often when geopolitics is discussed, it is immediately assumed that a modern version of the US-Russia Cold War rivalry is the main issue. While rivalry does exist, it appears to not be the central issue in Syria, though the crisis itself exacerbates tensions.

The fact that Russia maintains a naval base in Syria and the regime has been a long-term ally is undoubtedly a factor in Russia’s strong support for the regime. It is much less certain, however, that the US aim is to remove Assad in a geopolitical struggle against Moscow. On the contrary, the US knows that Assad senior sent troops in the first US war against Iraq in 1991, and was engaged in torture “renditions” of “Islamist” suspects on behalf of the US“war on terror”.

As such, Assad was seen as useful, if not loved, by both Moscow and Washington, and even after the uprising broke out, the US for quite some time kept a low profile and emphasised “reform” rather than regime change.

In fact, to the degree that the US favours a maintenance of the regime with a cosmetic change at the top, this is not so distant from Russia’s view. As noted above, Turkish leader Erdogan tried to get such an agreement from Moscow, and Obama lent support. The main snag is that so far Russia refuses to budge even on Assad himself. Countless statements from Moscow seem to indicate, however, that Russia is not bonded to Assad, and indeed it has at times strongly criticised the regime’s excessive violence. However, in as much as US leaders are using the crisis to up war-like rhetoric – however divorced from their actual view – this pushes Russia into a corner and thus it refuses to make such a concession under apparent duress.

Israel Shamir is the name of a Jewish anti-Semite, almost neo-Nazi, who writes prolifically on the Middle East. Recently, he claimed to have a leaked report from a Netanyahu-Lieberman-Putin meeting during Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Israel. Shamir asserts in the article that Israel’s goal is the complete “Somalisation” of Syria and that it is very much behind the Islamist opposition to Assad. While normally, the writings of such a reactionary ought to be ignored, the interesting thing here is that if his evidence of the leaked report has any truth, it in fact shows the complete opposite of what he asserts.

Shamir claims Netanyahu asked Putin to facilitate Assad’s departure, and to “appoint his successor, and we shall not object”. The only alleged condition put by Netanyahu was that “the successor must break with Iran”. Putin replied that he didn’t have a “successor” to appoint. The point, however, is that if such a leaked document exists, it once again shows that Israel, like the US, aims to maintain the regime intact, and that it has no problem even with Syria remaining in the Russian sphere, as long as it breaks with Iran. Quite the opposite of “Somalisation.”

Conclusion

It is clear that there are any number of aims and strategies being pushed by various imperialist powers and regional “sub-imperialisms”, in many cases completely contradictory with one another. The left’s sympathies ought to remain with the Syrian people confronting a vicious regime. However, given that the Saudi-Gulf counterrevolution is also active in trying to hijack the revolution, and that this includes a rising tide of viciousness often directed against non-Sunni communities – and that a significant part of these communities is sticking to Assad precisely because of this increasing sectarian threat – there seems little one can do from the outside to give concrete “support” to whoever is under attack at any time, or even really figure out exactly the relationship of forces between revolution and concurrent counterrevolution.

_{Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, greets supporters after Friday Prayer, where he spoke out against President Bashar al-Assad}

By Michael Karadjis

March 7, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal http://links.org.au/node/2766 — The declaration by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the elected prime minister of Palestine but ruling only in Gaza, that his movement was backing the popular uprising in Syria against the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/hamas-leader-supports-syrian-opposition.html), was widely reported, as was the more general significance of his statement to worshipers at Cairo’s Al Azhar mosque. Hamas, while ruling the Gaza Strip, has had its exile leadership based in Syria in recent years (previous to that it was based in Jordan); now Haniyeh is betting on a new strategic relationship with post-Mubarak Egypt, in the midst of that country’s April Spring revolution. Haniyeh saluted “the heroic Syrian people, who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform”.

Haniyeh’s strong statements in support of the Syrian people were not the only statements from Hamas. Another senior Hamas official in Gaza, Mahmud Zahar, said Hamas was not taking sides in the Syrian conflict. “We cannot take one side, with half a million Palestinians living in complete freedom in Syria having to (face the consequences) of this position … We do not seek to get involved in internal or regional Arab conflicts. Our fundamental struggle is directed against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” He did “advise” the Syrian regime “to give more freedom to the Syrian people, in order to strengthen Syria so that it would be able to free the occupied Golan territory and support the resistance (against Israel)”.

Given the presence of so many Palestinians in Syria, he has a point. Palestinians have their own problems, to say the least; the last thing they need is to be on the “wrong” side in Syria when one or the other side wins, and have to face the consequences.

And while Hamas’ obvious sympathies are, as Haniyeh made clear, with the Syrian people who are fighting for freedom, the consequences of being on the “wrong” side in the event of Assad retaining power could well be dire, given the simple fact that no other Arab state except Jordan has as much Palestinian blood on its hands as has the Syrian regime under the 42-year Assad dynasty.

In fact, Zahar’s statement about Palestinians living in “freedom” in Syria was made before the full extent of the regime’s bloody crackdown and ongoing starvation siege and bombing of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp became evident (https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/4/7/assad-and-the-palestinians-from-tal-al-zaatar-to-yarmouk); soon after the events reported here, no-one would speak of Palestinian freedom in Syria, where hundreds of Palestinians have been tortured to death in regime dungeons alongside tens of thousands of Syrians (https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/9393.html), and their camps reduced to the same Guernica style situation as the rest of Syria by Assad’s regime.

That should be the starting point for any supporter of the Palestinian people: recognition that their first priority is to their struggle and the defence of their people, in particular to the highly vulnerable refugees, not to gaining nods of approval from Western leftists and some of their more peculiar views.

Hamas had been based in Damascus not out of love for Assad, but due to having few alternatives. As long as Mubarak ruled Egypt, that country was an active collaborator with the Zionist occupation of Palestine, especially the criminal siege of Gaza. Hamas had been based in Jordan until King Hussein kicked it out in the late 1990s.

The deal was, “we [Syria] give you offices, but you make sure to never use Syrian territory for any operations against Israel, even symbolic”. The Syrian border with Israel on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was as quiet as that of Egypt for 40 years, enforced by the “anti-imperialist” Assad. If the regime was never going to move even symbolically on its own occupied territory, it sure as hell was not going to allow Palestinians to. The idea of a “resistance” regime is make-believe, in its entirety.

After Mubarak

But with the fall of Mubarak things have changed. Certainly, the current Egyptian rulers, who include old-guard generals, are not exactly enthusiastic supporters of the Palestinian struggle, but under the influence of the revolution, their public posturing of the Egyptian government has shifted since Mubarak; certainly over the last year a number of events on the Egypt-Israel borders have shifted the number one most sealed border from Egypt to Syria.

Then in March 2012, the lower house of the Egyptian parliament unanimously declared that Israel is the number one enemy of Egypt, declaring “Revolutionary Egypt will never be a friend, partner or ally of the Zionist entity, which we consider to be the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation … It will deal with that entity as an enemy, and the Egyptian government is hereby called upon to review all its relations and accords with that enemy” (http://presstv.com/detail/231376.html). Soon after, a $2.5 billion export deal signed in 2005, under which Israel received around 40 percent of its gas supply from Egypt at an extremely low price, was annulled (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1205/S00007/egypt-just-annulled-mubarak…).

Hamas naturally sought to take advantage of this new situation – especially given the proximity of Egypt to Gaza. By making his announcement at Friday prayers in Egypt, Haniyeh manoevured to push forward the positive momentum in Egypt. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is now the strongest party in Egypt, and that Hamas was originally the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, is hardly insignificant either; and the Brotherhood is, of course, for better or worse, a prominent part of the Syrian opposition based among the Sunni majority there. Hamas and the Brotherhood are also strongly connected to Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been a prominent backer of the Syrian uprising; Turkish leader Erdogan’s comment that Israel is committing “state terror” in Gaza (http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/turkey-s-erdogan-israel-mu…), gives us a further idea of the context in which Israel has tended to stick with Assad throughout the uprising.

Assad dictatorship: a non-rejectionist, anti-Palestinian regime

Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, seized power in 1970 from the more left-wing Baath Party government that had been ruling in the 1960s. The context of Assad’s coup was the ‘Black September’ massacre of thousands of Palestinian resistance fighters by King Hussein of Jordan, where the Palestinian resistance had been building its forces since Israel’s conquest of the West Bank in 1967. As the leftist Syrian regime moved to support the Palestinian fighters, Assad, as head of the air force, launched his coup to prevent this move against Hussein.

The previous Baath regime had rejected UN Resolution 242, which called for Israel’s withdrawal from the 1967 occupied territories but only regarded Palestinians to be a refugee problem. There was nothing about Palestinian self-determination. Till then, only Egypt and Jordan had accepted Resolution 242, but the new Assad regime wasted no time accepting the resolution in 1971.

This Resolution 242 was rejected by the so-called “rejectionist” Arab states (e.g., the Iraqi Baathists, Libya, Algeria, South Yemen) and by the PLO, including by Yassir Arafat’s Al Fatah faction. Fatah was sometimes called the “right wing of the PLO”, but as a national liberation movement was always fundamentally to the left of the treacherous Assad clique (the current Fatah leadership is, of course, a different issue, in a different context). In any case, while Fatah was through the 1970s and 1980s thus a “rejectionist” force, Assad’s regime manifestly was not, whatever one’s opinions on the issue.

Assad’s Tal al-Zaatar massacre of Palestinians

Moreover, Assad did more than just support a compromising resolution; unlike most reactionary Arab regimes far from the conflict, Assad – like King Hussein of Jordan – was willing to put words into action by actively slaughtering Palestinians. After being expelled from Jordan, thousands of Palestinian fighters re-assembled in Lebanon. In 1976, the Syrian army invaded Lebanon, where the Palestinians had been allied to a Muslim and leftist coalition fighting for equal rights against the reactionary Phalange Party, which aimed to maintain the sectarian dominance of the Christian minority, which had been foisted onto Lebanon by retreating French colonialism in 1943.

The Syrian army took the side of the Phalange and participated in their siege of the Palestinian-Muslim-leftist coalition in Tel-al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp, a monstrous siege leaving 2000-3000 Palestinians dead or wounded.

Assad’s aim in all this – both in crushing Palestinian fighters and in fighting Lebanese leftist forces – was to do what Egypt’s Sadat had just done. Sadat had betrayed the Palestinians by signing the Camp David “peace” accords with Israel in order to get back the Israeli-occupied Sinai. Assad aimed to show the US and Israel how useful his regime could be to them, in order to try to get Israel to likewise return the occupied Golan Heights. But having returned the Sinai and pacified its southern border, Israel felt no need to return any more land.

What’s more, for all Assad’s efforts, Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, an act of outright international piracy. With this slap in the face, Assad was unwillingly forced into the “rejectionist” camp in a rhetorical sense.

Syria and Israel attack Palestinians in Lebanon

In 1982, Israel launched a mass-murderous 3-month attack on Lebanon, in particular focusing on destroying Beirut to try to destroy the PLO and kill Yassir Arafat. After months of slaughter, the PLO agreed to withdraw, undefeated, for the sake of Lebanon. Shortly after their withdrawal from Beirut, occupying Israeli forces facilitated entry into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla to the Phalangist death-squads, who went on a rampage murdering some 3000 defenceless refugees. Yet despite this PLO withdrawal and this bloodthirsty massacre, the PLO remained throughout Palestinian communities in the rest of Lebanon.

This was considered a major problem by the US, Israel and Assad’s Syrian regime, who now took over from Israel as the anti-PLO vanguard.

In 1983, Assad’s Syria and Gaddafi’s Libya encouraged a rebellion within Fatah among its cadres in Lebanon when Arafat was exploring various diplomatic manoevures. Yes, these were in fact hard-line “rejectionist” cadres of Fatah, who felt – rightly or wrongly – that Arafat’s diplomacy was too compromising; as such they were the opposite of the pro-242 Assad regime hypocritically sponsoring them. Assad’s real objectives were to weaken and take over the independent PLO, in order to better try to do a deal with Israel over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights; he only used the rejectionist rebellion for his own opposite purposes. And whatever compromises Arafat was making, they did not include recognising Resolution 242.

The more rejectionist parties in the PLO – e.g., the Popular front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – had many of the same criticisms of Arafat that the Fatah rebels had, but rejected this Syrian bid to take over the PLO and attempted to mend the feud. They said reform must come from within, and understood that if they let differences with Arafat lead to violent schism, it would only benefit the enemies of the Palestinian struggle.

Israel was well aware of what was at stake, and despite the “rejectionist” position of the Fatah rebels, it is a well-documented fact that Israel openly expressed its support for Syria taking control of the PLO. According to a senior Israeli government minister close to prime minister, Yitzak Shamir:

“Direct Syrian control of the PLO will be beneficial to us for a number of reasons. … our experience has shown that Syria can keep a firm hand on the Palestinian terrorists if it is in their interests to do so. Despite the fierce rhetoric from Damascus, there has been no attack against us from the Golan Heights for 10 years” (Christopher Walker, ‘Israel welcomes prospect of Syrian-controlled PLO’, The Australian, November 11, 1983).

Syrian-Israeli double siege of PLO in Tripoli

In any case, Assad soon abandoned the initial Fatah rejectionists (who, though discredited due to Syrian interference on their side, may at least be considered to have been initially principled) and instead took hold of a grotesque Palestinian splinter group which had originally been a split from the PFLP, called the PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, who was willing to be a puppet.

In late 1983, Syrian troops in Lebanon and their PFLP-GC stooges launched a monstrous tank, artillery and rocket attack on Palestinian refugee camps in Tripoli in northern Lebanon, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Again, the aim was to drive Arafat and the PLO from Lebanon. According to Arafat, Syria had amassed 25,000 men, 170 tanks and 180 artillery pieces around Baddawi and Nahr el Barad refugee camps, which housed 5000 to 8000 loyal Arafat soldiers among 45,000 to 60,000 refugees (http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1983/11/06/page/1/article/arafat-base-under-siege/index.html).

Consistent with its openly expressed support for the ejection of Arafat, the Israeli navy joined in the same siege and bombardment from the sea (http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1983/11/06/page/1/article/arafat-base-under-siege/index.html, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/12/20/5-ships-arrive-for-plo-evacuation-after-israelis-shell-lebanese-harbor/e85eb466-e180-4045-b237-93e1589b89e5/). While the alleged “compromiser” Arafat was there with his people defending them against this murderous double siege (just as he had been in Beirut the year before defending them against the murderous Israeli siege), the allegedly “rejectionist” PFLP-GC and Syria were bombing Palestinian refugees in direct coordination with Israel.

In relation to the second expulsion of Arafat’s forces from Lebanon, this time by Syria, an Israeli official declared that:

“From our point of view, there is nothing bad about Arafat leaving the scene. … I would say with pride that we started the process last year [ie, with the invasion of Lebanon the previous year] … What is happening now is one of the indirect consequences of our action last year” (Norman Kempster, ‘Israel won’t shed a tear for Arafat’, The Age, November 11, 1983).

As Israel continued to furiously bomb Arafat’s forces even after they had agreed to the Syrian demand that evacuate Tripoli, some theories arose to explain this:

“There had been widespread speculation that Israel was trying to force Arafat to make a deal with Syria in which the 4,000 guerrillas would be evacuated overland through Syria, with Arafat having to yield considerable influence in the PLO to the Syrians in exchange. Such a departure also would have denied Arafat the kind of dramatic withdrawal he and his guerrillas made from Beirut last year” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/12/20/5-ships-arrive-for-plo-evacuation-after-israelis-shell-lebanese-harbor/e85eb466-e180-4045-b237-93e1589b89e5/).

Given the importance of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp to the struggle in Syria today, it is notable that Assad’s attacks on Yarmouk were also a feature of those times:

“The trouble spread Saturday to Syria, where sources said Syrian security forces opened fire on hundreds of Arafat supporters in the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus. Six demonstrators were killed and 17 wounded, sources said. The demonstrators chanted pro-Arafat slogans and denounced (leader of the pro-Syrian Palestinian defectors, Abu) Mousa and his mutineers during a 20-minute protest march” (‘Arafat base under siege’, Chicago Tribune, November 6, 1983, pp. 1, 5, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1983/11/06/page/1/article/arafat-base-under-siege/index.html).

[Fast-forward: this same PFLP-GC, which some western propagandists for Assad have held up as evidence of Assad’s support by “the Palestinians”, has played the same role during the current uprising as a para-state security force against Syrian Palestinians: in mid-2011, its thugs even opened machine gun fire against protesting Palestinians, once again, in Yarmouk, https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/c%C3%A9line-cantat/palestinians-in-syria-struggle-for-bread-and-agency].

Syria-Amal war on Palestinian camps

Nevertheless, no number of military defeats by Israel and the Assad regime could keep the PLO out of Lebanon. The simple reality of a Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees ensures a large PLO presence. And, as with most Palestinians elsewhere, the vast majority remained loyal to Arafat; if anything, the maniacal drive by Israel and Syria to destroy Arafat – as the representative of an independent Palestinian voice – greatly increased Arafat’s standing. By the middle of the decade, countless reports speak of the Arafat wing of the PLO playing a major part in the growing resistance to the Israeli occupation of almost half of Lebanon. The city and refugee camps in Saida in particular became a Fatah stronghold.

In 1985-86, Assad launched the Lebanese Shiite sectarian militia Amal against the Sabra, Shatilla and Bourj a-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camps, in the famous year-long “war of the camps” in which thousands of Palestinians were killed by these pro-Assad goon squads. Anyone visiting these camps decades later can see thousands of bullet holes from Amal’s criminal siege.

Once again the Israeli air-force bombed Palestinian camps and bases in the Beqa Valley and around Saida. This became too much even for the charlatan “anti-imperialist” Gaddafi. Libya reoriented towards an alliance with Fatah, and sent military aid to Fatah to defend the camps. Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian splinter from Amal, also vigorously condemned its Amal co-religionists over these attacks, despite Assad’s alliance with the Iranian theocracy. In 1987, Syrian troops in Lebanon slaughtered 23 Hezbollah militants to demonstrate who was boss.

In 1988, the entire PLO, including Fatah, the PFLP and the DFLP, and all the smaller principled “rejectionist parties,” reunited in Algiers. Only groups entirely under Assad’s control, like the PFLP-GC, stayed out. Later that year, Arafat declared the state of Palestine, and declared that the PLO was ready to negotiate on the basis of the original UN partition in 1947 (which only gave Palestine 45 percent of the land, but at least that was a lot more than the 22 percent being offered as a Palestinian state in the occupied territories in the most generous of offers, and even this is actively rejected by Israel and the US). Perhaps this is what the wsws means by Arafat “recognised Israel”, but that year has no relation to what the wsws says also happened, which apparently refers to the events of the previous five years described above.

Assad and US wars

In 1990, Assad’s Syria and Saudi Arabia jointly sponsored a new religiously sectarian – but less-so – constitution in Lebanon; the two countries effectively controlled the new state apparatus. This brought together many of the sectarian players from both sides, including Amal and the Phalange. Those standing outside were sidelined. One of the more grotesque ‘players’ in the new regime was the pro-Assad wing of the now split ‘Lebanese Forces’ (a paramilitary wing of the Phalange); its leader, Elie Hobeika, the very perpetrator of the Sabra-Shatilla massacre of thousands of Palestinians in 1982, was foisted by Assad to be Minister of the Displaced in the new government! Hobeika has remained a close ally of Assad ever since.

The Lebanon deal was followed by Assad sending the Syrian army to fight on the US side during its attack on Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war, yet another of the long list of Assad’s policies which do not sit easily with the “anti-imperialist” image foisted onto the regime by overseas admirers on the left” and far-right.

This pattern continued after Hafez al-Assad bequeathed his crown to his son, Bashar Assad, in 2000. Assad’s Syria became one of the key destinations to where the US sent Islamist suspects to be tortured in the “renditions” program. Indeed, as Mehdi Hasan writes, “Syria was one of the “most common” destinations for rendered suspects. Or, in the chilling words of former CIA agent Robert Baer, in 2004: ‘If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria’” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/19/syria-us-ally-human-rights).

Assad and Israel

For its efforts, Assad still got nothing from Israel on the Golan Heights. As a result, today Syria is still “anti-Israel” for the simple reason that Israel still occupies its land. And Israel still occupies because it has never felt the slightest bit of “resistance” – military, diplomatic or symbolic – from the regime of Assad.

But no other government in Syria, no matter who comes to power, would agree to give up the Golan. Indeed, the fact that Assad has kept the border quiet for so long means that many Israeli leaders have clearly expressed their preference for Assad remaining in power (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/israel-and-the-syrian-war/). Israel has good reason to believe that any replacement of Assad may be less accommodating and have less control over the “border.”

Palestinians join uprising – and pay the price

In any case, solidarity with the Palestinian people does not require them to fall in with whatever grotesque schema sections of the Western left may have thought up. The unfolding Syrian drama is extremely complex, and while the people are right to revolt against a tyrant, the outcome remains utterly unclear. Those Palestinians who thus initially tried to keep out of it were well within their rights, but whatever the outcome, there is little point in denying the tyrannical nature of the Assad regime, and the fact that its actions – slaughtering peaceful protesters in huge numbers – is what has led to the situation as is.

However, it is important to note that thousands of other Palestinians in Syria did not keep out of it; young Palestinian people in particular took part in the democratic uprising from the outset alongside their Syrian brothers and sisters, with the same yearnings for freedom. In any case, even most who initially tried to remain neutral got drawn into the struggle due to the simple fact that their neighbours and in many cases family were those Syrians protesting for elementary rights and getting slaughtered by the regime. As Palestinians gave shelter to Syrian friends and family out of elementary human solidarity (http://english.dohainstitute.org/file/get/42bbd969-e593-45be-a4ff-cc55113be56c.pdf), the brutal regime siege of Yarmouk and other camps, which has left thousands of Palestinians killed, and the kidnapping and torture to death of hundreds of Palestinians inside Assad’s dungeons followed as night follows day.

It is only natural that, seeing the opportunities in revolutionary post-Mubarak Egypt, the Palestinians would want to identify with the Syrian people engaged in a struggle with many parallels to their own, and to break with a regime that not only kills its people, but whose entire history has meant the shedding of massive quantities of Palestinian blood.

_{Serbian president Aleksander Vucic meets the master.}

First published in LeftEast journal at  https://lefteast.org/serbia-kosovo-trump-jerusalem-israel-palestine/  

By Michael Karadjis

October 02, 2020

A bizarre Trumpist ceremony in the White House on September 4 saw the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo apparently signing two separate documents with the United States involving American-funded economic agreements between the two estranged countries.

Bizarre in so many way – not least with Trump claiming that he had ended “hundreds of years” of “mass killings” between Serbia and Kosovo because he said “fellas, let’s get together.” Of course, apart from a two-day outbreak in 2003, there have been no “mass killings” since 1999. In contrast, his equally right-wing Balkan envoy, Richard Grenell,

thought the Kosovo war was merely a “perceived conflict, which in some ways is a conflict.” Believing that Serbia and Kosovo are fighting over the name of the Gazivoda/Ujmani lake which borders the two countries, he suggested calling it “Trump Lake” as a solution.

But leaving aside this truly abysmal state of the US political leadership presiding over the deal, the strangest thing about these “agreements” was the added extras that had nothing to do with the issues between Serbia and Kosovo.

One example is the clause whereby the two countries agree to prohibit the use of 5G equipment “supplied by untrusted vendors.” Apparently, reconciliation between Serbia and Kosovo involves getting stuck in the middle of the global conflict between Chinese and US imperialism.

Even stranger was that these deals included a signed commitment by Serbia to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to illegally occupied Jerusalem by July 2021 (and to open a Ministry of State Affairs in Jerusalem immediately), and that “Kosovo (Pristina) and Israel agree to mutually recognise each other.” While not explicitly on the signed document, it has been widely reported that the condition for Kosovo to gain Israel’s recognition is that it also places its eventual embassy in Jerusalem, which it later promised to do.

Since, apart from the US itself, only some quisling regime in Guatemala has violated this article of international law by moving its Israeli embassy to illegally occupied Palestinian territory, if Serbia does move its embassy it will be the first European country to do so. Meanwhile, ideologically separating Kosovo from its European reality, Trump has disingenuously presented Israel’s reluctant recognition of Kosovo as a case of another ‘Muslim’ state recognising Israel, following in the footsteps of the recent, also Trump-sponsored, recognition by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Not surprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked “my friend the president of Serbia” for the Jerusalem decision, while Palestine’s ambassador to Belgrade Mohammed Nabhan declared it “contrary to international law.” Meanwhile, Turkey, a strong supporter of Palestine which was also one of the first countries to recognise Kosovo, said Kosovo’s Jerusalem promise was disappointing and urged it “to refrain from such steps that would undermine the historical and legal status of Jerusalem.”

Observers would be correct in wondering what Israel and Jerusalem have to do with the Serbia-Kosovo dispute. It is not difficult to see what’s in it for Trump: by attempting to “Middle Easternise” the Balkan dispute, the Trump regime seeks to present – in a flagrantly dishonest way – another Trump victory on behalf of Israel to the US electorate, especially the ultra-Zionist Christian fundamentalist part of it.

In addition, as we will see below, if Serbia and Kosovo do make these Jerusalem moves they may jeopardise their plans to join the European Union, which does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and which, until recently, has been the main body presiding over Serbia-Kosovo negotiations within the EU accession framework. With this move – and the background process, detailed below, involving a US-pushed move to partition Kosovo – the US is making inroads into the EU’s “backyard.” Ironically, in doing so, it is also competing with Russia on similar terms, virtually stealing its thunder, as both Trump and Putin see a partner in Serbia’s ambitious right-wing president, Aleksander Vucic.

Decades-long alliance between Israel and Serbian nationalism

However, what do Serbia and Kosovo get out of this? And what can one make of this Israel connection to the agreement from their perspective? On the one hand, Israel and Serbian nationalism have had something like a 3-decade long strategic alliance. The former Yugoslavia severed relations with Israel after Israel’s conquests of 1967, and as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, it was historically allied to Arab leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Nasser, and was a strong supporter of the Palestinian struggle.

However, with the rise of anti-Yugoslav Serbian nationalism in the late 1980s and 1990s, led by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, a new special understanding was reached with Israel, whereby both saw themselves resisting “Islamic extremism”, which Israel identified with the Palestinian quest for liberation, and right-wing Serbian nationalism identified with the Bosnian Muslims, who it wanted to eliminate, and the Kosovar Albanians, over whom it imposed a regime not unlike that imposed by Israel on the Palestinian West Bank. According to some sources, Henry Kissinger helped facilitate this alliance. This alliance was consecrated with a major deal Israel made to sell arms to Serbia in October 1991, when its army was razing the Croatian city of Vukovar to the ground. When the former Yugoslavia was dissolved and a ‘New Yugoslavia’ established by Milosevic’s Serbia and Montenegro in 1992, relations were established with Israel, and a delegation from the Israeli defence ministry arrived in Belgrade to do another deal to sell Serbia large numbers of shells

Throughout the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, Israel was identified as one of the countries, along with Greece and Ukraine, violating the UN arms embargo on “all of Yugoslavia” by arming the Bosnian Serb ‘republic’ (Republika Srpska), led by Chetnik genocidist Radovan Karadzic, as it seized 70 percent of Bosnia and ethnically cleansed these regions of their Bosnian Muslim (‘Bosniak’) majority. Bosnian Serb general Mladic, also convicted of genocide, refers to these arms in his diary; and according to Israeli professor Yair Auron, it was almost certainly Israeli-made shells used by Serbian Chetnik forces in the Markale market massacre in August 1994, which killed 68 people and wounded 142. In 2016, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition calling for details of Israel’s arms exports to Serbian forces during the Bosnian war be revealed.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Bosnian Serb ethno-statelet in half of Bosnia, that was consecrated by the US-orchestrated Dayton peace agreement in 1995, has long been one of the strongest supporters of Israel in Europe, continually stymying Bosnian government policy. For example, when the UN voted on recognition of Palestine in 2011, the Bosniak and Croat representatives in the tripartite Bosnian government were in favour, but the Serb delegates vetoed it, resulting in Bosnia being forced to abstain. Then three years ago, in a vote on a UN resolution to get the US to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Bosnia was forced to abstain rather than vote against like virtually all other Muslim-majority countries, due once again to the veto of the pro-Israel Serb representatives in the government.

When Israel’s US sponsor led NATO into its air war against Serbia in 1999, and Milosevic attempted to physically empty Kosovo of its Albanian majority, Israeli defence minister and famous Sabra-Shatilla butcher, Ariel Sharon, declared his solidarity with Serbia:

“Israel should not legitimise NATO’s aggression, led by the United States…Israel could be the next victim of the sort of action now going on in Kosovo… imagine if one fine day the Arabs declared autonomy for the Galilee and links with the Palestinian Authority.”

This alliance has included Israel refusing to recognise Kosovo for 12 years after it was recognised by the US, its biggest, most unconditional ally. As such, if Serbia really has decided to move its embassy to Jerusalem, this rather makes sense – if seen in isolation.

But then … why the Jerusalem move if Israel recognises Kosovo?

However, there is a context; and the context is … Israel ending that long period of non-recognition of Kosovo. Which would seem a somewhat strange moment for Serbia decide to reward Israel by promising to move its embassy to Jerusalem, in isolation from the rest of the world, and in particular, from the European Union, as we will explain below. So, how can this decision be explained in this context?

On the one hand, it is possible that Serbian president Aleksander Vucic did not even know that he had agreed to move its embassy to Jerusalem. This video of the ‘agreement’ makes Serbian president Vucic appear surprised when Trump announces Vucic’s decision on this.

However, Vucic’s signature is on the document immediately below the explicit statement regarding Jerusalem, so unless Vucic is a dill, it is not credible that he did not read it; and several months ago Vučić had already announced that Serbia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry would open in Jerusalem, and that a substantial package of Israeli arms was to be purchased. And the more general strategic alliance continues to play out: the day after the Trump show, Milorad Dodik, president of ‘Republika Srpska’ and Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, demanded that Bosnia move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He was overruled by the Bosniak and Croat leaderships.

So, if we assume that Serbia has in fact agreed to the Jerusalem move, despite Israel’s recognition of Kosovo, what might this mean is happening behind the scenes?

A Serbia-dominated south Balkan economic zone?

One possibility is that Serbia figures the economic agreements will be so much in its favour that the economic rewards outweigh Israeli recognition of Kosovo; so Serbia is rewarding Trump (rather than its ally Israel as such) with Jerusalem. This reasoning is based on solid ground. Serbia, after all, is already in a vastly superior situation compared to Kosovo. With 7 times Kosovo’s GDP and double its per capita GDP, and half the poverty and unemployment figures of Kosovo, Serbia manufactures and exports products such as automobiles, iron and steel, machinery, pharmaceuticals, electrical appliances and weapons; by contrast, Kosovo is heavily dependent on mining, base metals, foodstuffs and beverages and textiles.

Despite the “economic normalisation” hype about this agreement, Serbia and Kosovo have never stopped trading, and ever since 1999, the far more powerful Serbian economy has commanded a massive trade surplus over Kosovo; indeed while Kosovo exports very little to Serbia, Serbia is the Kosovo’s major source of imports; the value of imports from Serbia is twice as big as that of Albania.

Serbia may therefore believe that this inevitable domination of economic rewards will mean the ability to further economically dominate Kosovo; and extending this thinking, that such economic dominance may allow Serbia to impose political costs on Kosovo down the road.

From this perspective, the statement by the Kosovar opposition Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) movement condemning the agreement, where its states that “the construction of these internal corridors [ie, US-funded road and rail corridors] for Serbia in Kosovo create the ground for a dangerous project, such as the territorial division of the northern part of the country,” may well be the thinking of Serbian leaders. For Serbia, these major road and rail projects from Serbia into Kosovo, and in particular, cutting across the north of Kosovo through Albania to the Adriatic sea, are indeed huge – landlocked Serbia essentially gains a sea port funded by the US International Development Finance Corporation.

Another point made by Vetevendosje and other critics is that Kosovo has agreed to join the ‘Mini-Schengen’ agreement between Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania in 2019, involving the free movement of people, capital, goods and services between these countries of the southern Balkans. Montenegro and Bosnia have also been invited to join. But all Kosovar political parties had been opposed to joining a bloc; Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti claims he was pushed by the White House to accept it. As Vetevendosje explains, the Mini-Schengen “is a space that would be easily hegemonized by Serbia, due to military, demographic and economic inequality between it and other countries” – a logical statement, given the economic data noted above.

Indeed, Serbia commands very large trade surpluses not only with Kosovo but also with Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia; is the third biggest foreign investor in Bosnia and Montenegro; and the Serbian dinar rules in northern Kosovo and Republika Srpska. Thus, alongside the recent change in government in Montenegro – elections won by a Russian-backed, trenchantly pro-Serbia coalition which aims to revive the lapsed federation with Serbia – and continual threats by Republika Srspka – itself heavily dominated by Serbia’s economy – to secede from Bosnia, it is clear that Mini-Schengen can well serve as a vehicle for the hegemony of Serbian capital throughout the southern Balkans.

Furthermore, some of the economic agreements do arguably touch on sovereignty issues, in particular the clause which commits the two parties to “work with the US Department of Energy on a feasibility study for the purposes of sharing Gazivode/Ujmani Lake, as a reliable water and energy source.” The importance of this can hardly be underestimated; this lake supplies drinking water to one third of Kosovo’s population, and cooling water for two coal plants that produce 95 percent of Kosovo’s electricity; yet the power infrastructure is owned by a Serbian power company, and it is situated within the province of Zubin Potok, an ethnically Serb province in northern Kosovo bordering on Serbia which in practice has little to do with Kosovo’s government. Therefore, talk about “sharing” a strategic resource that Kosovo considers it sovereign territory comes on top of a situation in which most Kosovar politicians consider the region far too “shared” already.

According to Vetevendosje, by agreeing to this point, Kosovo prime minister Hoti “has allowed Serbia to intervene in Kosovo’s energy sovereignty, security, production and market,” further claiming “this also harms Kosovo’s position vis-à-vis the European network of operators who made Kosovo’s energy transmission operator independent from Serbia.” Notably, alongside the opposition Vetevendosje, even the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) party, a member of the current governing coalition, has threatened to withdraw from the government over this clause.

While certain other aspects of the agreements could be considered political concessions to Serbia, these are minor. Certainly the “protection of religious sites and implementation of judicial decisions pertaining to the Serbian orthodox Church” are relevant to Serbia (and highly justified), but only refer to long-term agreements giving special status to the church in Kosovo that Kosovo has not objected to.

There is also the fact that the original agreement included the ‘Republic of Kosovo’ but upon Serbian objections, the agreement called the two entities simply ‘Serbia (Belgrade)’ and ‘Kosovo (Pristina)’, thus highlighting Kosovo’s limited status; but this in itself is simply continuation of the status quo. Kosovo also agreed to suspend its campaign to gain recognition from other countries, but only for a year.

Vetevendosje may be stretching things when claiming the road and rail links could facilitate the territorial division of northern Kosovo – ie, the long term Serb nationalist project – but there is no doubt that these economic agreements as a whole – the road and rail networks connecting Serbia to the Adriatic cutting across northern Kosovo, the sharing of Kosovo’s major energy resource located in the north, all within a US-funded, Serbia-dominated, south Balkan mini-Schengen zone – will further entrench Serbia’s regional domination, arguably thereby reducing an internationally unrecognised Kosovo’s effective status.

Some background: EU negotiates Serb autonomy in Kosovo

Nevertheless, while this scenario arguably describes a comprehensive US-financed boon for Serbia, economically lording it over a hobbled Kosovo, this still represents a retreat from a more formal partitionist scenario that has been on the recent agenda. The big issue the last few years and earlier this year was a US-facilitated discussion on the possibility of ‘border correction’. While this has apparently disappeared in this agreement, it has never been given a burial; does Serbia perhaps think that is still somewhere in the sub-text, or something that its economic superiority may still be able to push in practice?

To put this question in context, it is worth going over these developments, which requires some background. Despite recognition by the US and EU and some 100 countries after 2008, Kosovo’s development has remained frozen due to crucial countries inside both the EU and the UN Security Council, which veto EU and UN membership. For the EU, unfreezing the conflict is an essential step in integrating the remainder of the southern Balkans.

In the 2013 Brussels Agreement, Serbia and Kosovo, under EU auspices, agreed that an autonomous Community of Serbian Municipalities (ZSO) would be set up inside Kosovo. This was a more explicit and detailed variation of Serb autonomy clauses already in Kosovo’s constitution as outlined in the Ahtisaari Plan which prepared it for recognition in 2008. The ZSO was thus seen as a landmark agreement with the potential to unfreeze the conflict.

The revolt of the Kosovar Albanian majority for independence from Serbian rule in the 1990s had, after all, begun in 1989-90 when Serbian nationalist warlord Slobodan Milosevic had suppressed Kosovo’s status of high-level autonomy, which it had enjoyed in Communist Yugoslavia under the rule of Broz Tito. Given that Milosevic had attempted to physically “cleanse” the entire region of Albanians in 1999 while NATO rained down bombs to “protect” the Albanians – protection which plainly didn’t happen – it was hardly surprising that the autonomous Kosovo emerging from that war, led by hardened Albanian nationalists, with a vengeful population, in chaotic post-war conditions, would in turn act oppressively towards the Serbs. After all, unlike the multi-ethnic Bosnian society which Serbian nationalism had destroyed, there was never any such thing in Kosovo, an outright Serbian colony, and now the tables were turned.

Therefore, the ZSO – Kosovar Serbs getting the autonomous rights in Kosovo that Kosovar Albanians had once had in Serbia – would seem a highly appropriate solution.

However, Kosovo has dragged its feet in implementing this agreement, which tends to be opposed by whichever Kosovar Albanian parties are in opposition at any time, a convenient nationalist target; and given that Serbia says it will never recognise Kosovo regardless, Kosovar leaders do not feel obliged to move in that direction with no bargain.

Meanwhile, while the ZSO would be of great benefit to smaller Serb communities scattered around Kosovo, the northern part of Kosovo – the four provinces of Zubin Potok, Leposevac, Zvecan and northern Mitrovica  – has remained effectively independent of Kosovo, and linked directly to Serbia, ever since 1999; the Serbian dinar is the currency. Much of the Serbian elite therefore has little more interest in the ZSO than the Kosovo Albanian elite, as it is more interested in keeping the north, with its economic resources, than an agreement that, if implemented, would reduce its argument for non-recognition.

Therefore, as Kosovo did not implement the agreement, Serbia went on a campaign to convince countries that had recognised Kosovo to withdraw recognition, a campaign which has led to some 15 countries doing so. This campaign gave Kosovo more excuses to not implement the ZSO, and in retaliation, in 2018 it imposed 100 percent tariffs on Serbian products.

US-backed drive for partition of Kosovo

Both the US and the EU tried to push Serbia to end its de-recognition campaign, and for Kosovo to scrap its 100 percent tariffs. But while the EU sees the solution as returning to the ZSO framework, in 2018 the Trump regime adopted a new tack. Led by Trump’s Balkan envoy Richard Grenell, the US got to work with a pair of ambitious and somewhat idiosyncratic leaders – Serbian president Aleksander Vucic, whose Serbian Progressive Party is a pragmatic split from the Chetnik-fascist Serbian Radical Party of war-criminal Vojislav Seselj, and Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDK), one of the parties to emerge from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Together these leaders jointly proposed the territorial exchange of Serb-majority northern Kosovo for the Albanian-majority Presevo region of southeast Serbia.

This proposal was strongly rejected by most EU leaders, especially Germany; any ethnic-based border changes pose the question of the Albanian minority in Macedonia, or of the Bosnian Croat demand for third republic status in Bosnia, or the Bosnian Serb campaign for secession from Bosnia, and are thus considered highly  destabilising.

In contrast, for the Trump regime, pushing this expedient and iconoclastic solution probably involved little more than an attempt to add a great “peace agreement” – like that between Israel and the UAE – to its resume, while gaining a special US foothold in the EU’s backyard, competing with Russia for the same turf. At another level, however, this course tapped into the views of a section of the US right who had never been comfortable with US support for Kosovar independence, which they associate with the Clinton legacy and ‘liberal internationalism’.

In particular, while then National Security Advisor John Bolton explained pragmatically that “if the parties themselves felt that as part of an overall solution that adjustments to territory made sense, that the United States would support that,” in reality he has long condemned successive US governments for alleged “anti-Serbian policy since the break-up of Yugoslavia,” and issued a joint declaration with other US leaders in 2007 opposing recognition of Kosovo. Grenell has indicated that Bolton was his inspiration for pursuing this course. Meanwhile, voices on the hard-right and Christian-right among Trump’s support base are even more committed to an anti-Albanian position. Grenell, who was spokesman for Bolton when he served as anti-UN UN Ambassador for the Bush regime, is a rather controversial figure himself; arriving as new US Ambassador to Germany in 2018, he gave an interview with the far-right Breitbart where he declared the US would “empower” right-wing forces in Europe.

For Vucic, enthusiasm for this partition proposal is a no-brainer. While the proposal takes the form of an exchange of territory of similar size (both approximately 1000 square kilometres), there is no equivalence. For pragmatic Serb nationalists, giving away one percent of Serbian territory populated by Albanians, with no special significance, is small change for gaining ten percent of symbolically invaluable Kosovo – especially the resource-rich north with the massive Trepca mining and metallurgy complex, and Gazidvoda/Ujmani lake – indeed, the entire worry about “sharing” the lake with Serbia in the agreements would be irrelevant if this partition took place.

As for Kosovo, this proposal was only supported by president Thaci and his PDK, which was part of the governing coalition. While Thaci assumed this would lead to Serbian recognition of Kosovo and therefore an end to the deadlock, he may also see it in broader nationalist terms – last year he proposed the unification of Kosovo with Albania, a course consistent both with gaining Albanian-populated Presevo and dispensing with Serb-populated northern Kosovo.

All other parties in Kosovo – both those in opposition (Vetevendosje, and the Democratic League of Kosovo – LDK – the old party of Kosovo civil opposition leader Ibrahim Rugova), and the AAK (the other party that arose from the old KLA), which was part of the governing coalition and whose leader, Ramush Haradinaj, was Thaci’s prime minister – strongly opposed this partitionist scenario.

To digress, while such a partition would allow Serbia to keep the north’s economic assets, it would be the worst outcome for Kosovar Serbs, only 40 percent of whom live in the north. The secession of the wealthy north would abandon the majority of Serbs, living in smaller, more vulnerable enclaves surrounded by the Albanian majority throughout the rest of Kosovo, and they would lose the city of northern Mitrovica as their major Serb centre (with university, hospital and so on) inside Kosovo.

Therefore, many Kosovo Serb leaders oppose partition; Rada Trajkovic, president of Kosovo’s Serbian National Council, proposes instead “the Cyprus model,” meaning the UN’s Annan plan for reunification based on a Greek Cypriot entity and a Turkish Cypriot entity forming a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. Such a scenario for Kosovo – more than mere Serb autonomy, less than full partition – would indeed represent the Kosovo reality, like the Cypriot reality – both involving parts of two external nations fated to living in the same geographic space.

Did the partition drive lead to the US overthrow of Kosovo’s elected government?

The Vucic-Thaci-Trump drive received a significant set-back with the shock election victory of Vetevendosje (‘Self-Determination’) in October 2019, a party furiously opposed to partition. Noting its opposition to partition was not a stance against the Serb community, the party’s leader, Albin Kurti, declared “I am ready to discuss the needs of the communities, rights of the citizens but not territorial exchange.”

Vetevendosje emerged after Kosovo gained its freedom from Serbian rule among a radical wing of Kosovar civil society, led by youthful radical Albin Kurti, a former political prisoner in Serbia and advisor of historic Kosovar Albanian leader Adem Demaci, who had spent 28 years in Serbian prisons. Radically opposed to any Serbian-state interference in Kosovo affairs (while, however, rejecting anti-Serb chauvinism at a popular level), Vetevendosje also opposed the entire structure of UN and EU institutions ruling Kosovo over the next decade, denying it independence; and then after independence in 2008, it opposed the “supervised” strictures imposed on it. Some analysts have called it Kosovo’s “anti-colonial movement.” Also campaigning against entrenched corruption among Kosovar political parties, big on street campaigns and radical direct action stunts, Vetevendosje is seen as a huge factor of instability by the incipient Kosovar Albanian bourgeoisie and all wings of the traditional political elite.

Despite this, needing a coalition partner, Vetevendosje managed to stitch together an unstable coalition agreement with the LDK, which received the second largest number of votes. However, while Thaci’s party was now out of office, he remained president and continued to push partition via heavily executive decision-making.

From its inception, the Vetevendosje-led government was confronted by a US-orchestrated campaign involving both its LDK partner and the now-opposition PDK. Vetevendosje indicated its readiness to drop the 100 percent tariffs on Serbian goods, but aimed to drive a bargain involving Serbia reciprocating by removing non-tariff barriers and ending its lobbying against recognition of Kosovo. Despite this, it was confronted by a sudden holier than thou campaign by parties inside and outside of government (including those who introduced thee tariffs) denouncing it for not scrapping the tariffs immediately, in order to remain in America’s good books!

They were joined, or possibly ordered, by the US government, which froze $50 million in development aid to Kosovo because of Kurti’s refusal to immediately and unconditionally lift the tariffs, while the US embassy informed Kurti the US was considering withdrawing its peacekeeping forces from Kosovo. As part of this campaign, Vucic dropped into Washington in late March for photo shoots with Grenell, Kushner and national security advisor Robert O’Brien, and announced Serbia’s rejection of Kurti’s conditional lifting of tariffs – a stance explicitly supported by Grenell, and also by both Thaci’s PDK and by the LDK coalition partner! Other Republicans and Trump cronies joined in the assault.

When the LDK moved a no-confidence motion against Vetevendosje in late March, all the other parties supported the move, in what has been described as a US-inspired soft coup against the just-elected government; in the face of this, angry Pristina residents, unable to protest in the streets due to the Covid-19 lockdown, banged pots and pans from their balconies in protest. Kurti himself accused the US of orchestrating his overthrow, stating “my government was not overthrown for anything else but simply because Ambassador Grenell was in a hurry to sign an agreement with Serbia.”

Just before Vucic and Thaci were to arrive for a summit in the US on June 27, where big announcements were expected, the EU-run Kosovo Specialist Chamber (set up in 2015 to investigate war crimes in Kosovo) indicted Thaci and nine others for some 100 killings during the war in 1999 – timing widely considered fortuitous to the EU. This put the deal on the back-burner, as new prime minister Avdullah Hoti of the LDK took Thaci’s place in negotiations.

While the parties were all united against the radical Vetevendosje on one side, the LDK, AAK and other small parties were also united against the partitionist agenda of Thaci’s PDK on the other. Thus the new government formed by a coalition between the LDK and the AAK had neither the mandate nor the interest in furthering the partition deal; the lack of any such deal in the Trump-Vucic-Hoti agreement may well represent the death of these scenarios.

The fact that Vucic is clearly pleased with the deal, however, may indicate that Serbia, and perhaps some in the Trump regime, perhaps see this as a mere setback, and believe that the weakness of the current Kosovo coalition and the continuous political instability in Kosovo, combined with Serbian economic domination, may give way to political concessions in the future. But even without that, it is not difficult to understand the huge advantages Serbia sees in this agreement in terms of its regional economic position, as described above, regardless of the formalities of Kosovo statehood.

Israel and ‘Muslim’ Kosovo

Returning to the question of the connection of Israel and Jerusalem to all this, an additional question is: why would Israel recognise Kosovo if it had rejected doing so for so long? On the one hand, clearly Netanyahu simply did it for Trump, to give his ally a propaganda victory for his upcoming election, allowing him to push the dishonest discourse of another ‘Muslim’ state recognising Israel, and as bait for Kosovo to accept a deal otherwise not very favourable to it.

However, we need to consider that this is part of a deal involving Vucic and Serbia; and that the reasons Israel had rejected recognising Kosovo were twofold, namely, due to its alliance with Serbia (and huge economic relationship – Israeli companies have invested more than a billion euros in Serbia and tourism has risen by hundreds of percentage points), and due to fear that it sets a precedent for recognition of Palestine. Which raises the questions of whether Serbia has given Israel the go-ahead, and whether Israel no longer fears the precedent.

For its part, Vucic denies giving any go-ahead to Israel; in a seemingly rational reaction, Serbia has indicated that while Israel may have some form of “diplomatic relations” with Kosovo, if it actually recognises Kosovo as an independent state, Serbia will renege on moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Yet even this message offers a way out; in situations where symbolism is everything, the fact that the document refers to ‘Kosovo (Pristina)’ rather than the Republic of Kosovo – as explained above – may turn out to be significant.

Alternatively, if there was actually a cryptic OK from Serbia to help stitch the whole deal together, this may mean that Serbia believes, as described above, that the agreement will allow for its regional dominance to effectively control a weak, unofficially dismembered, Kosovo; and if this is the case, then that kind of precedent for Israel/Palestine that would be acceptable to Israel as well. All of this is of course conjecture at present. But it is worth recalling that Serbia recognised Palestine back in 2011 – ironically enough at the same UN vote where the Bosnian Serb republic blocked Bosnia’s recognition – yet this had no effect on the increasingly blooming Israeli-Serbian relationship in the decade since. If Israel knows it can handle an ally recognising a dismembered, dominated semi-state, then perhaps Serbia can as well.

Trump’s tweet that framed Israel finally recognising Kosovo as a case of another “Muslim-majority” country recognising Israel which will lead to “more Islamic and Arab nations” doing so, thereby helping peace in the “Middle East” is absurd on multiple levels; and Netanyahu used the same discourse, declaring that Kosovo will be the “first country with a Muslim majority” with its embassy in Jerusalem.

Neither of them did Kosovo any favours by Middle-Easternising the Kosovo issue in this way. Kosovo is in Europe, not the Middle East, is not an Arabic country, and while the majority of Albanians are Muslim and a minority Catholic (with an Orthodox Serb minority who hold positions in all state institutions), it is in no way an “Islamic” nation, but is rather intensely secular and western-oriented.

Since Serbia framed its repression of Kosovar Albanians as a case of fighting “Islamic terrorism,” while an obvious bald-faced lie, this same framing by Trump and Netanyahu is seen as rationalising Serbian discourse. Further, Kosovar Albanians understand the effect such ‘Islamic’ framing has in the West, which they therefore deeply resent, especially at a time when the EU is “led mainly by conservative parties and with ideologies that see “Christian values” at the core of European identity” and where “public opinion … is increasingly influenced by right-wing, anti-Muslim, rhetoric.”

As a consequence, Kosovar Albanian leaders tend to bend the stick in the opposite direction, to rather an excessive degree, following an intensely ‘French-style’ secularism virtually hostile to the Muslim religion, which does not prevent them constructing an enormous new Catholic cathedral in the centre of Pristina, and erecting statues to (Catholic) Mother Theresa in towns all over Kosovo, vainly seeing this as the road to Europe.

Mother Theresa’s statues can compete only with those of the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, as a result of seeing the United States as their saviour in 1999. Kosovo in fact is the number one most pro-American country on Earth. Hence, far from ‘Muslim’ Kosovo finally deciding to recognise Israel as Trump implies, Kosovo has craved recognition by Israel forever, no matter how much Israel treated it with disdain, for the simple reason that Israel is known as the closest US ally in the Middle East. It is nothing to do with Israel as such; really, if the US were a supporter of Palestine, the Kosovar leaders would be the biggest backers of Palestine on Earth.

Thus, while Israel continually stressed its refusal to recognise Kosovo and its great friendship with Serbia, we get the spectacle of Hashim Thaci in 2007, just before the declaration of independence, declaring “I love Israel. What a great country. Kosovo is a friend of Israel … I met so many great leaders when I was there – Netanyahu, Sharon — I really admire them.” It is quite an extraordinary case of cognitive dissonance – not to mention political cringe – for Thaci to refer to Sharon, who openly cheered on Milosevic’s version of al-Nakbah on the Kosovar Albanians in 1999 – as a “great man.” The fact that it is also demonstrates an intense lack of awareness of the most elementary principles of solidarity among the oppressed is less of a surprise – unfortunately bourgeois nationalist leaders the world over rarely ever care about such inconvenient details.

By way of further conjecture, there may be another element at work in this puzzle. As noted above, the Bosnian Serb republic – dubbed by the Jerusalem Post ‘Israel’s best friend in Europe’ – demanded Bosnia also move its embassy to Jerusalem but was blocked by the Bosniak and Croat members of the tripartite presidency. The Bosnian Serb leadership has continually claimed that if Kosovo is internationally recognised, then ‘Republika Srpska’ – a pure product of ethnic cleansing whose particular size and shape has no geographic, historic, ethnic or cultural validity – will also secede from Bosnia. Is it just possible that the RS leaders, and perhaps even Serbian leaders, may see in Israeli recognition of Kosovo a potential spin-off, and may believe, rightly or wrongly, that Israel may see RS similarly? Bosnian Serb leader Dodik’s visit to Croatia straight after the Trump circus may well be pat of further geopolitical manoeuvring, given the decades-long strategic alliance of “friendly enemies” – Bosnian Serb and Croat nationalists – against the very existence of Bosnia.

Path to the EU or to Trump?

One explanation of the absurdity of the whole charade may well be simply that both Serbian and Kosovar leaders decided to try to get what they could out of an idiosyncratic Trump regime while it lasts, while realising they may not have to do any of it if Trump is out of power in a couple of months. And this applies particularly to the strange Jerusalem issue.

After all, both Serbia and Kosovo aim to join the European Union; Serbia signed its Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) in 2007 and became a full candidate in 2013, while Kosovo signed its SAA in 2016. Kosovo’s candidacy is currently blocked by the refusal of five EU member states to recognise Kosovo, while the EU has told both Serbia and Kosovo that membership is dependent on the two countries working out their dispute.

But moving your embassy to Jerusalem (Serbia) or promising the new embassy will be there (Kosovo) does not make sense from that perspective, because the EU does not recognise Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, rejecting any unilateral moves on “final status” issues.

In a press conference shortly after the Trump circus, the European Commission spokesman, Peter Stano, stressed that

“ .. there is no EU member state with an embassy in Jerusalem. The EU delegation is not in Jerusalem. This is in line with the UN Security Council resolution nr.748, from 1980. The EU has repeatedly reaffirmed our commitment to the negotiated and viable two-state solution … A way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, Israel and Palestine. …

“Since Kosovo and Serbia identified EU accession as their strategic priority, the EU expects both to act in line with this commitment.”

So why would both risk their EU accession plans? On possibility is precisely that the frozen nature of the process of EU accession has led both to try to get a better deal from the US; or at least to show the EU that they have other options. But this also means neither is likely to be in Jerusalem if the EU itself manages to break the deadlock and move accession forward; and if Trump is voted out shortly, a Biden administration, while shamefully ruling out leaving Jerusalem, would be unlikely to pressure European countries into conflict with the EU over the issue.

As such, it is hardly surprising that Serbia’s proposed move is for July 2021, allowing plenty of time to see which way the wind is blowing; as for Kosovo, so far mutual recognition with Israel has consisted of little more substantial than tweets. Keeping doors open, the EU is moving forward on its own next round of negotiations with the two countries, and as part of this, Hoti visited Brussels on September 10 and pledged to implement the Association of Serb Municipalities agreement.

Therefore, despite Trumps’ bluster, and the idiosyncratic and contradictory moves and statements by current Serbian and Kosovar leaders, the possibilities arising from this photo op range from a very significant shake-up of the geopolitics of the region to a mere hiccup within the ongoing status quo.

Let the masses eat nationalist poison

The emergent bourgeois leaders throughout the region have been attempting to bridge the long-term ‘national’ issues – in a way suiting their own nation – in order to stabilise the wider region for investment and ‘growth”; thus, alongside the Serbia-Kosovo issue, we have the recent Greece-Macedonia accords, and the ongoing wrangling inside Bosnia, often involving both Serbia and Croatia. Needless to say, however, this “growth” feeds the bourgeoisie far more than the working classes of the region, and therefore the status quo referred to above also sees these same bourgeois leaders concurrently continue their decades-long game of feeding the masses with the circus of nationalism.

Even before Covid-19 hit, the Balkan region has long been characterised by very high unemployment rates relative to the rest of Europe. It is significant that Serbia’s unemployment rate of around 10 percent – no small figure – is the lowest in the region, which ranges up via Bosnia’s 15 percent to Kosovo’s rate of 25 percent, the region’s highest. Clearly Kosovo’s situation is the most dramatic, being also the country with the lowest per capita GDP in Europe after Moldova, and some 17 percent of the population living below the poverty line, double Serbia’s figure. However, Serbia’s relative success, in being hailed in 2019 as the world champion of foreign investment, hides deep problems with precisely such a growth model: in 2017, the richest 20 percent of Serbs earned 9.4 times more than the poorest 20 percent, the highest level of inequality within the EU and candidate countries.

Enormous mass protest movements in Serbia in 2018-19, in Macedonia in 2016, in Bosnia in 2014, amongst others, have shaken the local ruling classes, alerting them that the free reign of post-Cold War neoliberalism under corrupt and semi-authoritarian governments is continually under challenge. In particular, in the Bosnian and Macedonian cases, a tendency to bridge the ethnic divide was a prominent feature of the mass movements, if less so in the Serbia case.

If we go back to 1987-88 when 2000 strikes involving workers of all Yugoslav nations united challenged the Yugoslav regime’s IMF-pushed austerity, the virulent nationalism of Milosevic, and later Tudjman, was the answer put up by the ruling classes to stupefy, divert, divide and break the movement – with the results now history. This choice of resorting to nationalism will not be given up lightly.