9th Anniversary of the assassination of Abu al-Bara Syria
- November 1, 2025

Words by Florencia Cerrillos, from “The International Workers' Organizer”

“In this tribute we are going to talk about the revolution; particularly about a revolution that everyone has been trying to erase completely, which is the Syrian revolution as part of the whole chain of revolutions that took place in the Middle East”

Good afternoon comrades. Today we are paying tribute to Comrade Abu Al Baraa, on the 9th anniversary of his assassination, and with him, we also pay tribute to all the revolutionary socialist fighters who fell in the Syrian revolution. That’s why we wanted to honor the more than 600,000 workers and exploited people who were massacred in that enormous revolution. And, as could not be otherwise, it seemed of utmost importance to also pay tribute to the heroic Palestinian masses who are currently being martyred after two years of a terrible genocide imposed by Netanyahu, by imperialism, and by the complicity and besiege of all the Arab bourgeoisies.
With them, we pay homage to each and every one of the martyrs left by the working class, the rebellious youth and the exploited in every corner of the planet where decisive battles are being waged against imperialism and its governments, as we can see in Nepal, Indonesia, Africa, as we are seeing now in Latin America again in Ecuador and Peru and a very long etcetera.
We believe it is important to begin this day in this way because in this tribute we are going to talk about revolution; and in particular about one that everyone has been trying to erase completely: the Syrian revolution. First of all, all the traitorous leaderships don't want anyone to know what happened in Syria, because they have a lot to explain. They are the traitors of that revolution.
But there is something that seems extremely important to us, and it is the first thing they want to silence: the Syrian revolution was part of a huge chain of revolutions that took place in the Maghreb and Middle East. Nobody wants the world's working class to know what happened there: that this chain of revolutions shook the entire Middle East, from Tunisia to Egypt, from Bahrain to Yemen, from Libya to Syria. That is to say, it shook one the region where 80% of the oil that powers the world economy is extracted from.
That chain of revolutions that began in 2011 had a significant precedent. In 2008, the United States army, after massacring a million Iraqis, had to withdraw from Iraq, which it had invaded. To achieve this, they brought down the Twin Towers, and first they went for Afghanistan, and then Iraq, where it carried out such a massacre.

But the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses broke out, and above all, a massive uprising of the working class within the United States and also in the European imperialist powers that refused to go to war, confronting their own bourgeoisie. In other words, the struggle of the Iraqi masses was synchronized with that of their best allies, the masses of the imperialist powers. The United States had to withdraw its troops and was left unable to intervene directly with its marines.
So this chain of revolutions in 2011 caught the US without firepower; and its great guardian and gendarme in the region, Zionism, that damned fascist state of Israel, could not be used to massacre the revolution. They had a problem: if they used Zionism for the massacre, a single revolution led by the Palestinian masses would have united, and it would have become imperative that this revolution triumph in Jerusalem, destroying the occupier state.
In 2008, while all this was happening to imperialism, the Wall Street crash also erupted. Imperialism dumped the entire crisis on the masses of the world, causing food prices in the Middle East, for example, to rise by 150%.

Before this scenario, the masses, who knew they had "black gold" beneath their feet, refused to live under the brutal misery that continued to be imposed upon them. This sparked a firestorm that exploded in Tunisia, with a young computer technician who could not find a job and was selling vegetables. The police confiscated his cart; they wouldn't even allow him to be a street vendor. The comrade immolated himself, and that was the spark that ignited the revolutionary flame throughout the region.
Syria, within this process, went the furthest. There were enormous mass actions, local uprisings city by city against the fascist government of al-Assad. This class struggle also reached the barracks, and the army split. Workers' and soldiers' coordination committees emerged, where all the fighting masses coordinated themselves to fight against the al-Assad government and against the imperialist plunder of Syria, in a single, unified revolution.
Imperialism had to concentrate its forces there. Firstly, because Syria is next to Palestine; it was at risk that the triumph of that revolution would have been in Jerusalem. Secondly, because the coordinating committees established by the masses posed the threat of creating an Iraq-like scenario when these massive revolutions could synchronize with the struggles of the workers in the imperialist metropolises.
This is a great lesson that the Syrian revolution teaches us: imperialism, even without firepower, was able to massacre that revolution with blood and fire. It used different agents for it.

First, it used the Shiite bourgeoisie of Iran, which had already proven itself in crushing a huge uprising in that country in 2009. Hezbollah was also used, which went to Syria to carry out massacres after containing a massive battle waged by the Palestinian masses in southern Lebanon, who had defeated the Zionist invasion of that nation in 2006.
Those were the first forces imperialism used for massacre. But it was also inevitable, and even the US Secretary of State acknowledged this, that since USA “had nothing with which to defeat this revolution,” they spoke directly to Russia. They turned to imperialism’s great henchman, Putin, whom the entire left portrays as “anti-imperialist,” to massacre this heroic revolution.
To add insult to injury, they also turned to Turkey. The bourgeois generals of the FSA went there to disarm and hand over the newly formed coordination committees from within. This was the worst enemy, the one the masses had within, the one that surrendered their struggle from within.

But for us, none of this was the central issue, because none of it could have been done if they hadn't besieged the Syrian revolution. There was a counter-revolutionary international, the World Social Forum, made up of all the Bolivarian governments of Latin America, all the world's trade union bureaucracies, all of global Stalinism, and many of the Trotskyist renegade parties, who declared everyone in Syria to be a "terrorist" and therefore advocated their massacre.

They established an anti-terrorist front with the imperialist bourgeoisie and told the world's masses that those dying in Syria weren't workers and peasants, but "terrorists," and that it was right to crush them. Without that key factor, there wouldn't have been such a massacre of the revolution. They were the ones who gave al-Assad and Putin free rein to massacre, send 15 million exploited people away as refugees, demolish all their cities, and so on.
We have not forgotten those on the left who claim that al- Assad and Putin were "anti-imperialists" and "friends of the Palestinian cause." Because they supported a massacre that included the Yarmouk refugee camp, home to 180,000 Palestinians who rose up alongside the Syrian masses, and when the massacre ended, only 15,000 remained, and everything was reduced to rubble.
So today we see Zionism regaining its firepower. We always said, “Woe to the Palestinian masses if they defeat the Syrian revolution!” And unfortunately, that is what we are seeing today. Because the defeat of the Syrian revolution is what has given Zionism free rein today for this infernal genocide it is imposing, but also to advance further and impose “Greater Israel,” which is Trump’s grand plan.
Imperialism is coming to define a historical power balance to strategically finish off that chain of revolutions that left imperialism hanging by a thread in the region. It is coming to regain direct control of the oil routes.
For us, today more than ever, the great alternative that we are seeing and that the Middle East demonstrates is revolution or war.
That is why we also feel it is important to emphasize this in this tribute, stating first and foremost that our current has been the one that confronted this great betrayal to the Syrian revolution, to all those who have constantly slandered the masses, and Comrade Abu Al Baraa was at the forefront of that struggle, asserting that the revolution would triumph internationally, and that is why we felt, comrades, to share this day with all of you, and with this, welcome everyone and begin the tribute.