January 18, 2025

Syria: Al Jolani, the new regent of the protectorate

Yesterday with the genocide by al-Assad, the clerics of Iran, and Putin, the partner of Zionism…

Today with the HTS government, which seeks to expropriate the second Syrian revolution together with Turkey and the Zionist invasion…

Under US command, they seek to keep Syria occupied, divided and looted

* Statement by the Collective for the Refoundation of the Fourth International / FLTI
By Carlos Munzer for the Editorial Board of “The International Workers Organizer”

The exploited Syrian revolutionaries, who for years had endured a genocidal government that put tens of thousands of fighters in true human slaughterhouse-prisons and brought the absolute majority of the working class and the poor people to the misery of hunger, began a great mass uprising at the end of November, opening fronts to end up taking Aleppo, Homs, Daraa, Hama and most of the Syrian cities until recovering Damascus.
As we have been reporting with our spokesmen and correspondents in Idlib, for more than two years the masses have been taking to the streets with the slogan and demand to “open the fronts”. The thousands of refugees in that province could no longer live there or in the rest of Syria. The unbearable high cost of living and the thirst for justice of millions of oppressed people drove the rebellious youth to take to the streets. The HTS government in Idlib openly repressed these mobilizations, as demonstrated by the mothers and women who today still demand the freedom of their children imprisoned by Al Jolani.

As we have been denouncing, life itself has already demonstrated what the entire world reformist left, servant of imperialism and the bourgeoisie, has been denying for years: Al Assad was nothing more than a watchdog who did the “dirty work” (supported by Turkey, Russia and Iran) for all the imperialist powers, since from 2011 to 2016 imperialism could not use the state of Israel to drown Syria in blood neither the chain of revolutions that shook the Maghreb and the Middle East.
This is precisely the objective that imperialism and Zionism are pursuing today, massacring in Gaza and all of Palestine, and even entering as a gendarme to occupy the whole of the Golan Heights in Syria and part of the south of that nation.

As stated in statements from the records of the United States Department of State, they coordinated day by day, at each second the counterrevolutionary actions of the dog Bashar, of Putin, Iran and their partners of Hezbollah, massacring the Syrian masses for years.

As we Syrian Trotskyists have been denouncing in our newspaper “The Truth of the Oppressed”, al-Assad guaranteed to US imperialism, the Mossad and the State of Israel that not a single bullet or missile would be fired from Syria to attack the counterrevolutionary Zionist forces occupying Palestine. And this is what happened: al-Assad was part of the siege to the heroic masses of Gaza. Very typical of an anti imperialist indeed, is it?  actually his government was a devoted lackey of imperialism!

There are, as we have already published, the secret documents found by the Syrian resistance, where al-Assad informed Zionism about all the movements and military bases that the Islamic Guard of Iran and Hezbollah had in Syria. Thus, the dog Bashar gave guarantees to the state of Israel that these forces of the cowardly bourgeoisies of the Middle East were there to crush the Syrian revolution and not to defeat Zionism.
This question is crucial for conscious workers, and for the Palestinian masses who have suffered such genocide and destruction in Gaza, as well as in the demolished cities of Syria, to understand who are their real allies, and who their enemies are: the Arab bourgeoisies who we're fencing their heroic struggle.
This question is fundamental, especially at such a crucial moment as this: the signing of a temporary ceasefire between Zionism and the resistance in Gaza is imminent. This temporary agreement, which means a breathe for the massacred and tormented exploited in Gaza, will be used by Zionism and imperialism to achieve at the negotiating table, in new counter-revolutionary offensives or working from within the insurgent masses themselves, what they have not yet been able to achieve on the battlefield, that is, make Gaza disappear from the map.
Whether this can be prevented depends on the extent to which the masses of the entire Middle East, and the Palestinian and Syrian masses in particular (where Zionism has begun to occupy their lands), can coordinate a single Intifada and a single total war against imperialism and Zionism, breaking with all the cowardly Arab bourgeoisies, servants and junior partners of imperialism and the oil companies that plunder their wealth.

This is also crucial for the Syrian masses who have won democratic freedoms through their uprising, not because they were granted by Al Jolani, but because they won them through revolutionary struggle, freeing their prisoners, with weapons in hand, and imposing the trial and punishment of the shabihas and Assadist agents in Syrian cities. It is essential for the exploited Syrians to know that in the government there is not a friend, but a new “pseudo-democratic” enemy of the revolution who openly allows Zionism to intervene on Syrian territory in case the masses do not lay down their arms and submit.

Let us be clear: during one year and three months of bloody crushing by imperialism and Zionism against the martyred masses of Gaza, at a time when southern Lebanon was brutally attacked by the state of Israel, which also attacked Iran itself… neither from Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, which were attacked in their own countries, a single missile was launched or a single incursion made against the fascist Zionist forces that were massacring in Gaza.
The exploited Palestinians must know and be told the truth, because in Tehran their top leader (Ismail Haniyeh) was assassinated with a Zionist missile that fell on the Iranian capital. And they cannot say that they did not have military forces in Syria: 70,000 men armed to the teeth from the Iranian Islamic Guard were the counter-revolutionary praetorian guard on which Al Assad depended. That is the truth. We insist, they did not fire a single missile from Syria.
Moreover, before withdrawing from Syria, these cowardly murderers of their own people, together with Al Assad and the control of imperialism and Putin, gave Zionism the coordinates of all the barracks with heavy weapons in Syria, so that Zionism could bomb them and prevent them from falling into the hands of the revolutionary masses advancing towards Damascus. That is the truth. That has already come to light.

While the brave Yemeni nation bombed and almost interrupted the navigation of pro-Zionist ships in the Red Sea, openly clashing with USA in the region, those who called themselves and say “allies of the Palestinian people”, being on the very borders of the murderer state and Zionist occupation, they only covered its back. They did not even respond to the Zionist attack on Tehran. They were not in Syria for that, but to crush a heroic revolution.
Moreover, Russia has one of the most important military bases of the Russian fleet in Tartus, Syria 250 miles from Gaza, and it has not attacked the State of Israel either. Miserable people. They were all part of the siege to Gaza, associated with Zionism so that it could massacre the Palestinian people.

Today, we Syrian revolutionaries must draw these conclusions because the oppressed people are taking to the streets more and more every day in liberated cities with huge mobilizations in support of the Palestinian resistance, which would have been fiercely attacked and massacred by the Ayatollahs, al-Assad and Putin if they had taken place under their government. When the dog Bashar was in power, there was no action in solidarity with the Palestinian people… al-Assad, Putin and the Iranian clerics are miserable. Fascists, lackeys of Zionism and cowards.
The Syrian masses are beginning to distinguish their ally and are taking to the streets in Gaza because they know that the same one that is massacring there has already begun to occupy their nation.

Al Jolani, a farcical government that seeks to expropriate the second Syrian revolution, supported this time by Turkey and the bourgeoisie of Idlib, as the butcher Putin did yesterday with al-Assad

How does Al Jolani position himself today, as the “leader” who claims to be of a “transitional government” that nobody voted for?
This government must be exposed for what it is: a big fake. The trap it is setting for the exploited and its great revolution must be patiently explained.
The government tries to present itself as “kind” and “a friend of the people” and while it is busy disarming the masses that it could not control when they took Aleppo and Damascus, it “looks the other way” and with mistrust at the revolutionary attacks of those below against all the battered institutions of the Assadist regime. It remains silent about this. It is playing the distracted.
Meanwhile, it is forcing all the revolutionary forces, the rebellious militias, the masses who took over the police stations and seized weapons from Assad's counter-revolutionary troops, to hand over their weapons and disband in order to establish a single army, whose officer caste will unite all the bourgeois fractions of Syria, under the orders of imperialism. And it does so by sharing business with all of them. It does so with the bourgeoisie of the FSA, Erdogan's lackey, and the Turkish counter-revolutionary troops.
Under US orders, he also announced negotiations with the Kurdish bourgeoisie, demanding that they hand over their weapons and join the single army. This sinister Kurdish Zionist bourgeoisie, which is commanded by the 10 US military bases in Kobane, entered into negotiations “for the single army”: they demand a solution like they one they got in Iraq, where they control the rich oil north of that country as they good lackeys of the imperialist transnationals they have been during and after the US invasion. “70% and 30% of the royalties from the imperialist oil companies that are in the north of Syria,” is Al Jolani’s demand, favoring the central government. “50% and 50%,” is the response of the Kurdish bourgeoisie and Stalinism in Kobane, which the anarchists and the renegades of Trotskyism paint as if there were “socialist communes led by the likes of Che Guevara”.

The Al Jolani government is not coming to bring bread, or to free prisoners, or to imprison the shabiha; it is coming to reconstitute the state dislocated by the beginning of a great revolution and to defend the business of all the bourgeois fractions and imperialism in Syria and the entire Middle East, which are in serious danger due to the widespread arming of the masses.
His first measures were to increase taxes and make the cost of living even more expensive, which is becoming unbearable. He is coming to steal from the people to compensate what al-Assad fled of dollars from the reserves of the Syrian Central Bank and what USA kept abroad after the escape of the dog Bashar .

Meanwhile, the State of Israel, armed to the teeth, has occupied the rest of the Golan in Syria, took the province of Quneitra, appropriating a very valuable resource in the region: water, and took all the tank, artillery and missile forces that are in Syria to Tel Aviv, stealing them from the Syrian people, while that fraudster of Al Jolani pretends to be looking the other way
Zionism in Syria is seeking land and water, the same that it steals from the Palestinian nation with its fascist settlers and counter-revolutionary forces armed by imperialism. And if the HTS “transitional government” fails to disarm the Syrian masses and contain them, imperialism is preparing its fascist agent, this time Zionism, to drown Syria in blood again.
The lives of the Syrian people and their revolution depend on the defeat of Zionism in Palestine, Syria and the entire Middle East.
When the Syrian masses take to the streets of Aleppo, Damascus, etc., in support of Gaza, they understand that this is the way things are and will be; that there is a new enemy at home, as brutal and ruthless as al-Assad, the Arab bourgeoisies and imperialism, their boss.

Al Jolani, the new regent of imperialism that comes to restore order into the Syrian protectorate, plundered and occupied a thousand times

As we have already said, Al Jolani, the new regent of the Syrian protectorate, is already setting up, under the tutelage of Turkey and imperialism, a new army with a counter-revolutionary caste of officers made of generals-without-battles from the old FSA, converted Assadists and their paid forces from the bourgeoisie of Idlib, which is rapidly preparing to subdue, for now through “good” means and tomorrow by openly repressing, the revolutionary militias of Syria. He comes to disarm those who led this huge uprising and did not wait for any order from HTS and Al Jolani and much less from Erdogan. He comes to disarm the offspring of those massacred in 2011 and also the offspring of the millions of refugees who are the heart of the working class both inside Syria and in the bordering countries: Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon where they work as slave laborers. He’s miserable…

Meanwhile, thousands of political prisoners tortured in Assad's human slaughterhouses are asking for decent work and humanitarian aid. They don't give up. They know that work is needed in Syria. All the cities must be rebuilt. This is experienced and felt by the refugees who are returning, see their houses destroyed and have to go back to their tents.

Bread, freedom, housing and national independence will not come as expected by the petty-bourgeois fractions of the Syrian pseudo- intellectuality, which have the golden dream of a “democratic Syria with a democratic parliament with democratic freedoms like in Switzerland or USA” (which are already quite detestable since they command all fascist actions against oppressed peoples)… This is a totally reactionary utopia. In order to plunder oppressed nations, imperialism needs weapons to steal oil, water and empty their central banks. It uses counter-revolutionary governments or deceit and lies and sweet phrases to get the masses out of the streets and then punish them with harsh fascist dictatorships. That is what happened as a result of all the revolutionary uprisings from 2011 to 2018.
The democratic tasks of expelling imperialism from the oppressed nation, of breaking the colonial status by kicking out foreign powers, of conquering the land, can only be achieved by the working class and the poor peasants, who have no common business like the national bourgeoisies with imperialism that plunders the colonial and semi-colonial world.
These pacifists are now giving time to the Al Jolani government, which is preparing the conditions to strengthen itself and then strike a new blow at the masses.
Only a provisional revolutionary government of the militiamen, of the workers' committees in the refugee camps, of the liberated political prisoners, of the homeless oppressed, of the rural workers, that is, of the revolutionary committees and coordinating councils, will be able to carry through the struggle for national liberation, independence and freedom; and to do so it will be necessary to expropriate the businessmen and capitalist parasites who amassed fortunes while tens of thousands were tortured in the regime's prisons and millions had to take refuge at the borders and inside Syria, living as true pariahs.

The new Syrian government: like Assad yesterday, a “good neighbor” of the Zionist state of Israel

The new Syrian government, representing the cowardly and multi-millionaire bourgeoisie of Idlib, which made fabulous fortunes managing WITH the support of Turkey the “liberated areas” that Al Assad did not control, TODAY COWARDLY CALLS ON THE UN to intercede so that the State of Israel leaves its territory, while it remains silent and supports the removal of all tanks and anti-aircraft defense from Syria to Tel Aviv.
Al Jolani is as much or more terrified of the armed masses than the dog Bashar. It is his commitment to imperialism that he will not attack Zionism and will never put itself at the disposal of the uprising of the revolutionary masses of Gaza, the same as the bloodthirsty al-Assad, Putin and the murderous Iranian bourgeoisie did yesterday.
Zionism is now trying to impose a pact pf surrender on the Palestinian nation: just a breathe from the torment of the masses in Gaza, while it prepares hell for Syria, invading part of its territory, massacring in the West Bank or wherever imperialism needs it in the Middle East. And Al Jolani temains dead quiet. He is the “good neighbor” of the torturer and fascist Netanyahu.  It is not surprising. He lived together for many years with al-Assad and the protectorate regime.

We are faced with an attempt to expropriate the heroic second Syrian revolution that has begun. For now it is doing so in a “kind” way, because if it were to directly clash with the workers and exploited who are freeing their prisoners, taking justice in their own hands from their murderers, returning from the borders and finding their homes reduced to rubble, it would fall in a minute.
It does so by calling, as we have already said, to establish “a single army” because it knows that if it disarms the masses, it will be able to reconstitute the state and the regime in crisis, establishing the deviation of the revolution, or else openly repressing it. Without a doubt, as it is doing in Idlib, this government will reopen throughout Syria the human slaughterhouse-prisons like those that al-Assad had. The murderer Erdogan, like Putin yesterday, will not hesitate to send his guards as jailers of the exploited Syrians.

The masses must no disarm! No one should be handing over their weapons!
Disarm the generals-without-battle! Generalized arming of the people!
Arms for Gaza, for the whole occupied Palestine, to fight Zionism and expel imperialism!

AL JOLANI IS LYING: It is a lie that he is in favor of a “single army” in Syria. He is unmasking himself for what he is, an agent of foreign powers like al-Assad was. He is a liar. The US army is in the north of Syria with 10 military bases. There are 30 thousand men of the Turkish army breaking through the borders of Syria, entering through the north. There is the Russian army with its military base of murderers, the same ones who massacred in all the Syrian cities. There is the Zionist army invading.

AL JOLANI IS LYING: his “single army” is to disarm the people and subject them to a colonized and plundered Syria, while imperialism takes all the wealth and now his bourgeois gang receives a portion of the business.

For now, Al-Jolani is deceiving, trying not to directly clash with the insurgent people. He is relying on their illusions that “things couldn’t be worse” in order to gain time. Hundreds of thousands returned to their cities and saw their homes destroyed, then returned to exile or to refugee tents in the Syrian desert. Many have the illusion that “something will change”, while thousands are beginning to see that everything remains the same. The Syrian masses do not lack courage; there are plenty of leaders who have betrayed them a thousand and one times.

Once again, as happened yesterday with the capture of Damascus, the Syrian protectorate, the regime and its new government are in a race against those below. Yesterday, this race was played out in how quickly Al Jolani could reach Aleppo and Damascus to seize power, while the masses sought out his prisoners and imposed the trial and punishment of their murderers.
The race today is about how quickly they can raise a counter-revolutionary army supported by imperialism in Syria to intimidate and defeat the masses, and how quickly the masses, driven by their unprecedented suffering, would raise a revolutionary vanguard that regroup their forces and det up the true power of the exploited, the oppressed, the workers, the poor peasants and the militia.

It is necessary to establish the power of those below. The masses must take the resolution of the crisis into their own hands and break with all their executioners.
The Syrian revolution must stand up! Let no one think of expropriating the revolution from those who suffered genocide and put their martyrs, for a handful of businessmen and imperialism to come today and continue to take away the wealth of the Syrian people!
We must raise the power of the militiamen, of the 7 million who today live in tents in the Syrian desert, of the millions who are super-exploited across the borders in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, of the rural workers, of the students, of the freed political prisoners and the relatives of the disappeared who cry out for justice.

We must expropriate the expropriators of the people! We must impose a tax on the great fortunes that were amassed with the blood of the exploited. We must occupy and take their luxury homes…
All imperialist oil companies, their banks and businesses must be recovered and expropriated without compensation, in order to place all the wealth expropriated from the people in their own hands in order to rebuild a devastated nation.
A popular and working-class plan must be imposed to get out of the crisis.
For a massive public works plan, paid as war compensation by all the executioners and occupiers of the Syrian nation and their ill-gotten properties. There is work and a decent wage to end the martyrdom of the masses.
They must get their homes back. They had their children ground in the Assadist slaughterhouses. They deserve bread and dignity.

After the fall of the fascist Al Assad, it is not Al Jolani who will bring prosperity and freedom. These will be conquered by the masses arms i'm hands and through the revolution. LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!