Syria - February 16, 2023
A polemic from the paper The Truth of the Oppressed from Syria
The position of Prensa Obrera (PO, Argentina)
on the earthquake in Syria and Turkey:
New catastrophe and old potions and recipes already outdated and long algo defeated by revolutionary Marxism
Last week an earthquake struck Syria and Turkey with a devastating toll of more than 37,000 dead, and the death toll is rising as more are found under the rubble in an attempt to rescue survivors. From The Truth of the Oppressed we have given an account of this real catastrophe, which is only part of the terrible devastation in Syria carried out by al-Assad, Putin, and the Iranian ayatollahs, while Turkey surrendered the rebel cities, all of them agents under US command.
An article has reached our hands written in the newspaper Prensa Obrera (PO, Argentina) which tells about all the destruction in Turkey and how Erdogan hindered both the prevention and the effective delivery of the aid that was being sent to the affected area.
But there is also talk that in Syria the effects of the earthquake are aggravated because the country has already suffered destruction due to an "imperialist war" and because the sanctions on al-Assad hinder the arrival of "humanitarian aid", because the imperialist powers "are not willing to deliver aid to al-Assad" nor does he want to allow it to go directly "to the rebels".
This is a falsification of events, as well as an embellishment of the genocidal al-Assad. First of all, there was no "imperialist war" in Syria. In 2011 a great revolution of workers and peasants for bread and freedom broke out, which was massacred and drowned in blood by the counter-revolution of al-Assad, Putin, and the Iranian ayatollahs who did the dirty work for all the imperialist powers.
Can you tell us which imperialist powers were at loggerheads in Syria? The US, Turkey, al-Assad, Russia were all together at the Geneva-Astana-Sochi conferences plotting against the Syrian people's uprising. The USA freed the skies for al-Assad and Putin to massacre, while keeping the oil wells for themselves. Erdogan commanded the surrender of rebel cities one by one. No US or Turkish troops ever clashed with al-Assad's or Putin's troops. They coordinated their interventions inside Syria well in order to fulfill their counter-revolutionary role. They never clashed in 12 years, with the exception of Turkey shooting down a Russian plane by mistake on the flight path, for which Erdogan later apologized. And the final verdict is given by the "reconciliation plan" they now want to impose to settle partition, defeat, and the "peace of the graveyards" in Syria.
But they not only embellish the genocidal fascist al-Assad as "the enemy of imperialism", and not only slander our revolution by saying that it was an imperialist attack. They also focus on the fact that the key in the current situation is the arrival of humanitarian aid and after denouncing how governments and states hinder it, they conclude "... entire solidarity with the peoples of Turkey and Syria".
A few crumbs and handouts called "humanitarian aid" is not the solution for the exploited. The solution will never come from the hands of the exploiters. Erdogan has closed the borders, preventing Syrians on both sides of the border from reuniting with their families and preventing solidarity from reaching northern Syria... al-Assad keeps for himself the so-called "humanitarian aid" while he continues his bombings together with Putin... The governments and states are responsible for genocides, devastations, political prisoners under torture, persecutions... The imperialist powers are which plunder our region and all our oil wealth to leave us in misery... The UN is the one who rapes our women in the refugee camps in exchange for offering a loaf of bread as "humanitarian aid"...
Prensa Obrera refuses to fight for a class-conscious workers' program for a way out of the catastrophe. On the contrary, from The Truth of the Oppressed, we affirm that the only solution is the expropriation of all the companies and banks of the Alawite bourgeoisie in Syria, of the businessmen who enriched themselves with the war, of the Turkish construction companies that make huge profits without complying with the normas of anti-seismic construction and the banks that financed them. This way we could use these assets and put them into production, and finance the rescue of the people. There are the funds to implement a large-scale rescue plan and only the unified Turkish, Kurdish, and Syrian working class can solve the catastrophes by setting up workers' and people's committees for the rescue, relief, and solidarity of the millions of Syrians, Turks, and Kurds trapped by the earthquake and the counterrevolutionary wars of the imperialist oil companies. Turkish and Syrian workers were affected in the same way with the loss of their homes and in their unity lies the key to recover homes and fight for dignity.
The earthquake does not interrupt the revolution or the counterrevolution, al-Assad keeps bombing the Syrian North! Therefore, today more than ever, the regime must fall! All invading troops out of Syria! For the working class to live, imperialism and all its lackey governments and regimes must die! |