10 years after the beginning of the revolution, with the masses re-taking the streets, in a partitioned country drown in blood…
The anticapitalist left, supporter of the transitional plans of imperialism
March 15 marked the 10th anniversary of the Syrian revolution and the people took to the streets again in the whole Syria. Millions marched to the cry “Out with Bashar!” and “We want the fall of the regime!” The fierce resistance not only keeps firm but pushes to re-open the revolution. Once again, the masses are rising for bread, because 10 years after their heroic fight, their suffering was increased and millions of refugees want to get their houses back. In the free areas and the ones controlled by the tyrant Bashar al-Assad, the living conditions of the masses are increasingly unbearable.
These new uprisings are putting the plan of imperialism and the UN, orchestrated from the conferences of Geneva, Astana and Sochi, in question. Imperialism, with Biden at the head, wants to impose a transition to an exit of al-Assad, which is but removing him and his gang from power, replacing them with another gang, keeping the whole regime that today rules the country, i.e. the same fascist officer’s caste that slaughtered the masses, a partitioned, invaded, occupied and destroyed Syria, plundered by different powers. They want to guarantee an ordered exit of al-Assad where they would only exchange the dog’s leash, only changing an image to settle down and legitimize the current regime in the country.
This plan is carried out with the sunnite bourgeoisie taking the role of selling out, disarming and liquidating the resistance, while al-Assad and his allies continue the bombings and massacre. The FSA generals today are either under the command of Turkey or they have put on al-Assad’s army uniform back again which they took off in order to control the masses. HTS today persecutes, imprisons and kills the best of the resistance that refuses to submit, inside Idlib.
This plan, as every step forward of the counterrevolution, couldn’t have been imposed if it weren’t for the siege on and isolation of the revolution performed by the world working class leaderships. They did this by showing the masses as terrorists or by openly supporting the dictator al-Assad, or supporting the “democratic” imperialism and the Syrian bourgeois opposition, as LIT and NPA did.
In these years of revolution, the seizure of power by overthrowing this infamous regime had been posed to the Syrian working class. If it didn't’ seize it, it was because these currents, that lead trade union federations –as Solidaires in France or Conlutas in Brazil and the International Union Network that group both of them plus other 80- never called for a strike, not even for a minute, to support the Syrian revolution. They didn’t promote any effective material solidarity campaign from the workers organizations they lead or influence, like collecting a contribution per worker, send brigades, meds, food… none of it. Anticapitalistas was in Spain’s government with PSOE and Podemos and they didn’t even pose to cut diplomatic ties.
For 10 years, they talked with the FSA generals and took them for a tour around Europe, but they never sent any ammo or any kind of aid to the Syrian fighters.
Instead, they spent years asking US and French imperialisms to arm the resistance, when they both are the butchers of Iraq and Mali and have plagued the planet with their military bases.
Then, hand in hand with Hollande, they were part of the anti-terrorist front saying that in Syria the biggest enemy is ISIS. This way, they broke the unity that was beginning to be formed between the European working class and the refugees that reached Europe, and legitimized the genocidal action of al-Assad and Putin’s bombing.
Later, they disguised the PKK of Rojava and Kobane as progressive. PKK, in a pact with Bashar, under the command of US generals, led the Kurds to act as a shock force against the Syrian resistance, as in the crucial siege to Aleppo. That is the same PKK that today supplies Zionism with oil.
This, they have been besieging and isolating the revolution, separating it from the world working class while subordinating it to the Syrian sunnite bourgeoisie.
Today, LIT, the international current of PST-U, in their tribute to 10 years of the Syrian revolution, says “If we had a national coordination composed by the Tansiquiat (local coordination committees, TN) and the Free Syrian Army, there would’ve been credit to prevent the sectarian fighting and the sectarian rhetoric. Stopping this would allow to attract the Alawite and Christian workers and also increase the international solidarity in favour of the revolution.” They say that this alliance could also have headed the Kurdish and Palestinian people to revolution. (“In a virtual rally, militants and refugees celebrate 10 years of the Syrian revolution”, March 22)
On the other hand, the NPA of France publishes a note of Joseph Daher on March 10 intitled “Syria, 10 years after the popular uprising” where he says the people “cannot challenge the regime nation-wide” due to “lack of a Syrian structured independent democratic progressive inclusive political opposition”. He also says during these years, “the lack of centralization and of an enrooted political leader to try to coordinate and federate the different armed group of the FSA around a common political program swiftly became a problem and left the door open for foreign countries to manipulate. The FSA became weaker and marginalized over the years.”
These currents always sought a way out for the Syrian situation by the hand of the FSA and imperialism, which they claimed to be democratic. But the unity between FSA and the Coordination Committees already existed. The outcome was the Committees being disarmed and disorganized by FSA, which made a pact with al-Assad to sell out each one of the free areas from within. The pact with Bashar meant the surrendering of the revolution, big business for the FSA generals, the return of mandatory conscription with which the dog sent the youth of the rebel areas to kill their brothers in the north… as the fighters themselves denounce. The generals and leaders of the FSA, for years, haven’t had any “weakness” for taking and hiding the weapons and food, or to manipulate the fighters in order to subject them to the blackmail of the pact with the regime and the surrender.
Can you take the revolution to victory and unite the Kurds, Palestinians and all the ethnic groups and layers of the oppressed with the Sunnite bourgeoisie? Really? The Sunnite, Kurdish and Palestinian bourgeoisies broke this alliance that took place at the beginning of the revolution, in order to negotiate with Bashar and with imperialism according to their own interests!
The only way to conquer bread, work, freedom, a decent life and even the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people is not with a “united FSA” or a “strong structured opposition” but with a workers and peasants government.
Only the working class, leading the poor peasants and the oppressed, can sweep away the al-Assad regime definitively, taking over power in their hands, supported in the self-determination armed organs of the masses, such as the coordination committees. Only this way we can also fight for even the most minimum democratic freedoms like the setting up of a free sovereign constituent assembly.
For this, we need to crush the fascist mercenary counterrevolutionary troops and expel the invading troops from Syria. In this perspective, the Syrian masses will be able to recover the oil that is stolen by the imperialist companies. They will be able to expropriate the wealth and properties of the country’s ruling elites, the ones that got richer with the war and the torment of the people, and to expropriate the banks to have bread and give back the houses and lands to the people.
This is possible if it’s hand in hand with the world workers organizations, particularly those inside the imperialist powers. But LIT and the anti-capitalists refused to make this struggle come true. For ten years, their policy of supporting the Sunnite bourgeoisie and the "democratic imperialism" was 180º opposed to the needs of the slaughtered Syrian masses. This is how the counterrevolution could be imposed with a million dead and tens of millions of refugees and IDP. This is how the partition of Syria was granted and the entering of invading troops was allowed. They are responsible of the siege and isolation of the revolution. They are accessories of such genocide.
Definitively, after ten years, everything is now clear. These currents are directly responsible for the advance of the imperialist plan. They’ve proven to be enemies to the working class' provifiy a way out for this revolution, based on a soviet strategy.
On the contrary, they support Biden and imperialism’s plan of “a Syria without al-Assad”. The same thing they did in Tunisia and Egypt, where the change of government meant a diversion of the revolution. The masses didn’t get any demands for which they fought and the new governments only brought more starvation and death. Now, they have to explain.
They are the left of Biden and the conferences of Geneva, Astana and Sochi! Guised as friends of the revolution, they are the biggest supporters of the imperialist plan that comes to strangle the revolution definitively.
Luisa Campos and Ana Negri
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