Wed Mar 27, 2024
March 27, 2024

Notes On The Free Syrian Army

Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, the Syrian regime has called peaceful protests a “global conspiracy” against a regime that “resists” against the State of Israel. That is why it has always considered the suppression of this “conspiracy against Palestine” as legitimate and necessary.

By Victorios B. Shams.

 

This false rhetoric did not prevent the cousin of dictator Bashar al-Assad, the billionaire Rami Makhlouf, from declaring to the New York Times on May 11, 2011, that “Israel’s security is the security of Syria”. The regime’s spokesmen simply said that it was a “personal opinion” in a country that security services have crushed any “personal opinion” in dissent for four decades.

These peaceful protests were faced with arrests, torture and killings, as was the case with the children of Deraa, the first of them in operations carried out by the “special forces”, current “Republican guard”, in particular their “Fourth Division” led by the dictator’s brother, Maher al-Assad. In weeks the protests spread to the whole country faced a brutal repression. The dissidents just follow: in late April 2011, a member of the Republican Guard, Walid Alakecama, from Deraa, testified before television networks that he had refused to shoot civilians protesting peacefully, exposing the regime’s lies and its Media that always claimed to face “armed terrorist gangs”.

The defections of the regime’s armed forces have multiplied, including officers since June, as it was the case of Lieutenant Abdul Razak Talas and Hussein Harmoush who called on soldiers and officers to join him in the “Free Officers’ Movement” (which began their operations in Idlib), before he was forced into exile in Turkey and disappeared after a few weeks in mysterious circumstances. Later it was found out that the Syrian intelligence kidnapped him and brought him back to Syrian territory, where his fate is unknown to this day.

The repression of the regime against towns and cities peaked when young Syrians took up arms for personal and collective self-defense, for their honor and for their lands. There was, however, no military organization, which implied that self-defense operations had an individual and unstructured character. The media adopted the name “Free Syrian Army” to designate any self-defense operation, as to notify the regime and its intelligence services, which continued to call them “armed terrorist groups” to convince the country and the world that, since the beginning of the revolution, they faced a terrorist plot, not a revolution.

In mid-July 2011, Colonel Riad al-Asaad announced in televised video the establishment of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in order to protect the revolution and overthrow the regime. The defections then multiplied and added to the thousands of young people who promoted the self-defense of demonstrators throughout the country in the formation of the most recognized military force against the regime.

A Popular Army With Political And Military Limitations

The Free Syrian Army has become a horizontally organized force with about 70,000 combatants divided into 14 battalions and 7 brigades, spread across five battle fronts. It has adopted the banner of the Syrian revolution and it is seen as the legitimate alternative by broad Syrian popular segments to replace the regime’s military after its overthrow.

There is an episode that demonstrates this situation well. In March this year, in the city of Maarit al-Nomen, the former Al-Nusra Front (now Fatah al-Sham Front) attacked the 13th Battalion of the FSA, prompting local citizens to attack and set fire to some Fatah al-Shams Front headquarters in repudiation to the aggression.

Among its main achievements, the FSA counts with important liberated areas in the south, around Deraa and Quneitra, and also around the capital Damascus. Furthermore, at the end of 2014 it managed to expel Daesh (the organization self-denominated Islamic State) from Aleppo. Another victory was the conformation of the “Army of the Conquest”, by joining a broad coalition in Idlib and Aleppo to fight the forces of the regime and Daesh.

Its limitations start on its program. The FSA advocates the overthrow of the regime and the peaceful and democratic transfer of power to citizens, without any discrimination based on religion or ethnicity. It also calls for the expulsion of the Russian, Iranian and sectarian militias such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, Daesh and others. Finally, it stands for a democratic and national program against the dictatorship.

It does not incorporate directly anti-capitalist elements, such as the nationalization of all the production and distribution of wealth under workers’ control, a necessary measure to carry out the struggle against the dictatorship and the subsequent socialist reconstruction of the country. Nor does it talks about the necessary expansion of the revolution for the whole region, particularly for the liberation of Palestine, despite the majority sentiment among the Syrian population in favor of these ideas.

These limitations are related to its leadership: the High Military Command of the Free Syrian Army. It was placed under the banner of the National Coalition of Revolutionary Syria and the Opposition Forces, an organization that operates under the influence of the Saudi government and has defended imperialist intervention on different occasions.

The point is simple: no sector of imperialism wants the victory of the revolution. Its direct intervention will serve to liquidate the revolution as demonstrated by the various attacks the American air forces have made against rebellious targets, and their policy of dividing the “rebels” by isolating the groups they classify as fundamentalists. To demand heavy weaponry from all governments, imperialist or otherwise, is correct and necessary for the victory of the revolution. But direct intervention removes the leading role from the Syrian population, and so it will become another force against the powerful revolution.

The same is true of Arab governments in general. The limited support of some countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, limited to light weapons, does not occur by chance. It is not by chance that these same governments propelled the fragmentation of the FSA with the formation of several militias that adopted programs and religious denominations.

Unite The Rebels And Form A Revolutionary Current On The Fight Against Dictatorship

The unity of all the groups in struggle against the regime, inside and outside the FSA, is a military necessity of the revolution. At the same time, it is necessary to look at the social contradiction between the High Military Command of the FSA and its popular proletarian base. While the policies of the High Military Command point to negotiation and composition with the interests of regional and international powers, rank-and-file combatants want to fight until the end of the regime, for social justice, to end all dictatorships in the Arab world and for the liberation of Palestine. In order to have a positive solution to this contradiction, it is necessary to form a revolutionary proletarian party, to play the same role fulfilled by the Bolsheviks in Russia 99 years ago: to lead the working class to power.

**

Translation: Fabio Bosco.

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