“The future of the Syrian and Kurdish people must be decided by the self-organization of their popular classes”

Anticapitalistas [Spain]

This statement by Anticapitalistas [Spain] on the fall of Al-Assad in Syria was translated and pubished Wednesday 11 December 2024 in English on the International Viewpoint website.

THE ASSAD REGIME has fallen in Syria and the former dictator has gone into exile in Russia. Events have moved in rapid succession and in 11 days, the kleptocracy that seemed to have stabilized its rule has collapsed with a crash.

Syria is now plunged into great uncertainty, where joy at the fall of the tyrant is intermingled with concern for the future. No wonder: unfortunately, it is reactionary forces that have overthrown Assad, a precarious coalition between fundamentalist forces from Al Qaeda and an army directly financed by Turkey.

To understand how we have arrived at this situation we need to go back to 2011. In the heat of the Arab revolutions and the deep economic and social crisis provoked by Al-Assad’s neoliberal policies, the Syrian people began a cycle of protests that sought to change the political situation and improve the living conditions of the working class.

Soon, in the face of the regime’s closed-mindedness, brutal repression and inability to listen to the protests, these mobilizations turned into a quest for its overthrow, for which local councils were formed. In classical terms, the Syrian revolution entered a democratic phase.

The lack of clear political leadership and the regime’s savage repression pushed towards a militarization of the conflict. Responsible for imposing this civil war was the regime itself, which preferred to feed reactionary forces, releasing jihadists from prisons and locking up protesters from the popular sectors, rather than admit the breakdown of its legitimacy.

With thousands of prisoners in jails (including Palestinians), millions in exile and more than 600,000 dead, describing the Al-Assad regime as a bastion of “stability” is a macabre joke. Despite its apparent strength, the regime has proven to be dependent on foreign powers such as Russia and Iran. When these countries decided that it was no longer in their interest to defend it, as their interests now lie elsewhere, the regime collapsed like a house of cards, with no one to defend it.

It is on this process of pulverization of the popular rebellion promoted by the dictatorship that the new reactionary forces have strengthened themselves. First ISIS, today HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, coming from Al Qaeda) and the ENS (Syrian National Army), serving the Turkish state. These forces defend a reactionary agenda and are enemies of the freedom and emancipation of the Syrian popular classes.

As we have seen, foreign powers have no qualms about making deals with each other to defend their interests in Syria: Putin has already announced his willingness to talk to the rebels in order to maintain his bases in the Mediterranean; the United States, which formally considers HTS a terrorist group, has no problem considering it a valid interlocutor; and Turkey seeks to increase its regional strength and crush the Kurds.

There is a real danger that Syria will enter a new destructive phase, prolonging in new forms the one initiated by the bloodthirsty Al-Assad regime, and that a warlordist division of the country, crushing of national minorities, a new dictatorship or subordination to the interests of foreign powers will be imposed. Israel, the main enemy of the peoples of the Middle East, has already taken advantage of the situation to invade new portions of Syrian territory.

Despite this difficult balance of power, Syrians have come out to celebrate the fall of tyranny. The obligation of the political organizations that practice socialist internationalism is not to support any bloodthirsty dictator or to hope in the machinations of the imperialist powers or reactionary forces.

It is to support the impulses, today surely very weakened, of all Syrians who seek to return to the path of 2011 and who refuse to subordinate themselves to the reactionary forces that today replace Al-Assad in power.

Far from relying on one or another capitalist power, the future of the Syrian and Kurdish people must be decided by the self-organization of their popular classes, guaranteeing the freedoms of women, queer people and oppressed peoples.

We must also intensify support for the Palestinian resistance, redoubling the struggle against the complicity of our governments and corporations with the Zionist genocide.

The road to liberation has never been easy and it is our political duty to revive internationalism: this is, far from all the traps, the only way to counterbalance and defeat the imperialist and reactionary forces that keep the world in disaster.

January-February 2025, ATC 234