Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Stop The Massacre In Aleppo! Full Support To The Syrian Revolution!

Over the last days, the dramatic current situation of Aleppo generated the solidarity of peoples all over the world. And it was not by chance.

The scenes of a besieged city under intense air-striking by the Syrian and Russian Air Forces, with death children taken out of the rubble, women that prefer to commit suicide to be raped by the regime military forces, young people sending goodbye messages through the internet, humanitarian aid convoys and ambulances shot and bombed by the dictator, it all brings to mind the city of Guernica, mercilessly bombed by the Nazi Air Force during the Spanish Civil War. Fascism is characterized by the use of civil war methods against the population, and there is no doubt Assad’s dictatorship uses fascist methods against the Syrian people.

In Aleppo, the historical narrative of a civil war in Syria between the “secular” regime of the dictator Bashar al-Assad and the rebel terrorist groups fell apart.

The dictatorship affirms it is fighting Islamic State terrorists. Does someone believe the 500.000 Syrians murdered by Assad’s regime, or the 12 million refugees, are terrorists? Or that the children killed by the bombs are terrorists?

What exist is, in fact, a war of the dictator against the Syrian population, which raised in march 2011 for democratic freedoms and social justice, as part of the ‘Arab Spring’. The dictator Bashar al-Assad and his allies prefer to kill half a million civilians, expel half of the population from their homes and destroy towns and cities before leaving the power.

Powers Join Together To Drown The Syrian Revolution In Blood

Assad and his regime are still in power because of the military and political support of Russia and Iran. Iran provides financial and military resources through sectarian militias of Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Yemen, with thousands of soldiers. Russia provides high-tech weaponry and heavy bombings through air and ground, besides making diplomatic efforts to guarantee the Syrian massacre to be executed with no third-parties interference. To that end, Putin negotiates with the governments of the U.S, Europe, Israel and Turkey.

The U.S. governments, as the European powers, hide behind the protests against violence in Syria. A few days ago, the U.S’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, stated Assad took Aleppo and asked to have mercy with the civilian population. The French government asked for a meeting with the U.N. Security Council, which ended without any resolutions. There are no actions beyond words. There is no sanction to Assad’s regime, neither occupation of Russia or Iran. No weaponry was sent to the rebels to defend themselves. Not even humanitarian aid was guaranteed in Aleppo. On the contrary, during last October the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) denounced that John Kerry asked to deliver the weapons in Aleppo and go to Raqqa to fight against Daesh (fascist group self-called Islamic State). The main imperialist powers in the world limited to allow their Russian and Iranian partners to do the dirty job of drowning the popular Syrian Revolution in blood.

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey complete the circle of enemies of the Syrian Revolution. In the middle of the battle for Aleppo, those governments reduced the financial and military help to the rebels under siege. It was not by chance that the Syrian regime dropped flyers over Aleppo demanding the surrender of the population stating all countries in the world abandoned them already. The Turkish government went to the point of moving the few battalions of the Free Syrian Army under its influence to Al-Bab and Raqqa, instead of fighting to break the siege. This proves the Turkish government never truly supported the revolution, as neither did all other Arab governments. And the miserable help they provided to the rebels had the goal of controlling the opposition, weaken the FSA and change the character [of the process from a] democratic revolution into a sectarian war.

International Stalinism Supports The Massacre

In front of the suffering of the Syrian population besieged in Aleppo, the reaction of most Stalianist, Castro-Chavist and allied organizations was to celebrate. Most reformist parties join the Stalinism in defense of the massacre in Aleppo.

In their effort to defend a murderer regime, those organizations lie regarding the facts and use a false methodology of analysis.

They repeat the justification of the “war against terror” used by the Syrian dictatorship, just like George Bush used it to promote the invasion to Iraq and Afghanistan.

What really happens is that the State terror of Assad -executed in several regions of Syria and now specifically in Aleppo, and which generated such a level of destruction of all ways of survival, and cold-blood killing of children and women- is no different than the Islamic State’s.

The Islamic State was expelled from Aleppo two years ago by the rebel forces. But the organization came back, two days ago, to the city of Palmyra, which was under regime control; a clear alliance with Assad to create a smokescreen to hide the massacre in Aleppo and feed the lie that the Islamic State and the rebels are the same thing.

Another sordid lie is related to the support of Assad to the Palestinians. All Palestinians know the regime of the Assad family is an enemy of the Palestinian cause. Hafez al-Assad invaded Lebanon in 1976 to avoid the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Lebanese National Movement from crushing the fascist militias and change the regime of the country. During the ’80s, he bombed the Palestinian refugees camps in Lebanon. In 2012, Assad sieged Yarmouk refugees’ camp and mercilessly bombed it until emptying it.

They also use a false methodology of analysis. They affirm that, as Assad’s regime calls itself secular, it is more progressive than several rebel groups that claim to be Islamic.

First, to self-proclaim “secular” is not guarantee of anything. Nazism, Fascism, Stalinism and the South African racists led self-proclaimed “secular” regimes and were not progressive at all.

Second, Assad’s regime was never secular. It always fed sectarian divisions to guarantee its domination. He privileged the Alawite minority in key State charges. The external militias carrying the massacre in Aleppo are religious, as Hezbollah and the Iranians, based explicitly on the defense of the Shiite supremacy. On the beginning of the revolution, in 2011, he liberated hundreds of fundamentalists from prison, helping the foundation of Al-Qaeda and Daesh, with whom he stablished a non-aggression pact to fight the revolution together. All of this to deform and weaken the forces of the revolution and to create a smokescreen for his genocidal policies.

They also say Assad is anti-imperialist, but he was always subservient to Israel and friend of the IMF. Yasser Arafat used to say Assad was a lyon against the palestinians and a rabbit against Israel. It is not by chance the Israeli establishment prefers Assad to remain in power, stating they prefer a “known enemy” than a unknown one.

Recent statements of Assad compliment Trump and affirm that, if he complies his electoral promises, he will be a “natural ally” of the regime. So Trump, the new extreme right-wing leader of the imperialism, the enemy of all Arab peoples and the world as a whole, who named a minister who recognizes Israeli settlements along the occupied Palestine, will be Assad’s ally.

The truth is those Stalinist organizations, as all the others that support Assad, are accomplices of the genocide in Aleppo, similar to Guernica’s during the Spanish Civil War. It is a blood stain on those parties that we will not allow to be neglected.

Is The Revolution Still On?

Excited by the victory in Aleppo, Assad and his allies are trying to re-take all the areas around Damasco, the province of Idlib and the cities to the South, still liberated zones under rebel control. The U.S. and E.U governments push, through Geneva and the international entities, for a quick solution that does not cause more refugees. Trump’s election should not change that, and it might even make it more explicit, as he named a businessman friend of Putin –the CEO of Exxon Mobil- as Secretary of State.

The Turkish government re-stablished relations with Russia and Israel, and its priority is to fight the Kurdish militias, supported by the U.S. and Russia but with no sympathy from Assad and the Iranian leaders. The Arab League hardly manages to meet and shows crocodile tears while it sighs relieved in front of the weakening of the revolutions in the entire region.

The defeat in Aleppo is a strong hit but is not the end of the popular revolution. Since 2011, the revolution has had victories and setbacks. There were other defeats, like the battle in Homs, center of the revolution since its beginning, later evacuated in the same terms of Aleppo.

Actually, the population of Aleppo incorporated to the revolution more than one year after its beginning. The strength of the revolution highly weakened Assad’s regime, and he became a puppet of Iran and Russia. A major part of the Syrian soldiers deserted or is refusing to fight. The economy of the country is destroyed. Assad’s regime did not fall yet only because of the strong intervention of Iran and Russia, without which it would collapse. And Assad’s dependence does not have a date to end, as it is improbable for the Syrian population to support the regime in the future.

On the other hand, the battle for Aleppo took thousands of Syrian refugees and sympathizers of the Syrian revolution to the streets, for demonstrations in front of the Russian embassies in several countries, the biggest one of which took place in Istanbul. There were demonstrations also in Jordan and Kuwait, something that had never happened before, since the beginning of the revolution. And there are calls to defend the Syrian revolution along the region and in the entire world.

Also, thousands of rebel fighters are still armed and strongly settled along the liberated areas.

As part of the analysis of reality, we point out the necessity of accompanying the Syrian process to evaluate if it will continue or not. As a policy, we declare that our support to the Syrian people against this genocidal dictatorship and its allies will increase.

The main weaknesses of the revolution are the lack of heavy weaponry to confront the Russian military high-tech, and the strategy adopted by the SNC, which the leadership of the FSA outside the country is subordinated to. Circulating between Turkey and Geneva, the SNC looked constantly for the support of the U.S. and the European powers. Those governments have no interest in a revolutionary triumph in Syria, and they bet on the Russian forces to kill the revolution and stabilize the region. So it is necessary to build a new leadership of the revolution from the workers and popular forces fighting inside and outside Syria, unifying the rebel soldiers with the population of the liberated areas, the supportive groups inside the regions controlled by Daesh, and the refugees on the outside of Syria. This leadership should propose an alliance with the Kurdish population, committing to their self-determination right and demanding from the leaders of the Kurdish PYD to break with Assad and join the revolution, taking all the U.S. weaponry they have with them. This new leadership must guarantee full independence from the imperialism and all the regional powers (including the Saudi, Turkish and Qatari’s powers), and at the same time demand weapons and humanitarian aid from them, for a chance to win. Finally, international solidarity is necessary. The IWL-FI calls all the union, students and popular organizations to active solidarity with the Syrian revolution and support to the millions of refugees, demanding the immediate concession of VISA for them to migrate to the country they want to and have housing, work and legalization of diplomas guaranteed, as much as political freedom to organize.

Down With Bashar! Down With Daesh!

Withdrawal Of All External Forces (U.S, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Lebanese, Iraqi, Iranian And Any Other Sectarian Militias)!

Heavy Weaponry For The Rebels! Humanitarian Aid For The Population!

Unification Of All The Rebel Groups In A New Free Army, Under Democratic Control Of The Syrian Working Population!

Long Live To The Syrian Revolution!

For A Free Syria Towards A Free Palestine, From The River To The Sea!

International Secretariat,

São Paulo, 20/12/2016

Check out our other content

Check out other tags:

Most Popular Articles