On December 8, the dictator Bashar el-Assad and his family fled to Moscow. The fall of the dictatorship was celebrated throughout the country, and by Syrian refugee communities across the world. Many Palestinians in Gaza and Al-Quds (Jerusalem) also celebrated the fall of the dictator, as did the Lebanese population in Trablous (Tripoli), Lebanon’s second largest city. The Syrian revolution has shown that tyrannies are not eternal and the working class must fight to overthrow them.
By Fabio Bosco, Sao Paulo, December 9, 2024
The Assad dictatorship lasted 54 years and was based on the repression, torture, and murder of any and all dissenters. This hated regime has murdered more than half a million Syrians since the beginning of the revolution 13 years ago.
In recent years, the country has been plunged into an economic depression in which 90% of the population lives in povert, and under constant and humiliating harassment from militias linked to the regime and those aligned with the Iranian regime.
This combination of brutal repression and misery has undermined the social foundations of the regime among the Christian, Alawite and Druze population, known as “minorities”. The majority of the Syrian population is Sunni, and has been against the regime since the beginning of the revolution in 2011.
The offensive by rebel groups led by HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) in Aleppo sparked the popular uprising and led to the overthrow of the Syrian dictatorship. This triumph is seen with sympathy by working people throughout the Arab world who also live under tyranny.
A military offensive in the midst of a popular uprising
It is estimated that the rebels launched the offensive with around 20,000 fighters from Idlib, in the north of the country. Most of them are young adults whose families have been driven out by Assad’s criminal bombardments over the past 13 years. This majority are linked to the interests of the refugee families in returning to their homes, and not to the sectarian ideologies of the leaders.
As they took each city, the rebels opened jails and prisons and freed thousands of political prisoners, positioned themselves against any retaliation against the minorities (Christians, Alawites, Druze and Kurds), and sought to reestablish the supply of bread and electricity, and to create some kind of administration. Behaving this way, they gained a lot of popularity and new supporters, strengthening ties with popular interests.
In the south of the country, there was a different development. In the absence of an organized and armed group, the population revived experiments in self-organization, seized police stations and checkpoints, and marched towards Damascus, liberating Deraa, Suweida and Quneitra until reaching Daraya, in the south of the capital.
To the east, a Syrian militia aligned with the Jordanian regime took Tadmor (Palmyra) as official forces fled. Soldiers throughout the country exchanged their uniforms for civilian clothes.
This mix of rebel’s militias and popular uprising with elements of self-organization imposed a series of democratic freedoms, the release of political prisoners, the return of refugees, and guarantees for minority communities, which are important achievements that, for the moment, make it difficult for HTS to succeed in a Bonapartist turn.
However, every democratic achievement is always threatened by regression within the capitalist system, especially considering that the main rebel group is HTS, which, in addition to defending a capitalist market economic model, has an autocratic heritage.
Regional and international powers with Assad
After Assad’s fall, several countries issued statements criticizing the old regime which they did not want to see defeated.
From the beginning of the offensive on Aleppo, from Washington to Moscow, no imperialist country wanted Assad to fall. The United States and its Arab League allies pressured the Syrian regime to distance itself from Iran. They considered Assad’s permanence as a guarantee against any popular revolution that could destabilize American interests as well as those of other regimes in the region.
The State of Israel also preferred Assad to remain, as far as it was a weak government that had never fired a shot at Israel and was distancing itself from the Iranian regime due to pressure coming from the Arab League. That is why Israel moved troops to the border with Syria and, after Assad’s fall, bombed Syrian ammunition depots and intelligence centers to prevent the new regime from having access to these weapons.
Only three countries gave some kind of support to the offensive. The Turkish regime gave the green light for the offensive to begin, which was expected to take some rural areas of Aleppo. Qatar always maintained some material support. The Ukrainian regime has passed on know-how for the manufacture of low-cost drones, according to information spread by the Ukrainian press.
Compromise between the ancient regime and the rebel forces
The advance of the rebels forces and the popular uprisings have defined that the end of the Assad regime was very close.
Thus, in Doha, Qatar, representatives of the Russian, Iranian and Turkish regimes met on December 7 and agreed on the “end of hostilities” and “dialogue between the government and the legitimate opposition”. (1)
In practice, that meant sending the dictator Assad into exile in Russia, and keeping the Assadist Prime Minister al-Jalali in charge of guiding the soldiers on the end of “hostilities” and maintaining the functioning of the state apparatus.
The president of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Hadi al-Bahra, explained that a peaceful transition was negotiated which predicts: the formation of a transitional government to draft a new constitution and call free elections within 18 months. (2)
In addition, al-Bahra spoke of national unity including all segments and ethnicities. Regarding the Kurdish-led SDF, al-Bahra stated that they must break with the PKK in order to join the “national dialogue”.
Transition without justice or sovereignty is a denial of the objectives of the revolution
The proposals made explicit by al-Bahra seek to limit the achievements of the revolution.
The release of political prisoners, and democratic freedoms that guarantee the safe return of refugees, and security guarantees for religious minorities (which must be guaranteed on the coastal provinces where rebel militias are heading) are important but insufficient steps.
On the one hand, al-Bahra’s proposals maintain the institutions of the old regime, in particular the 18 secret services responsible for 54 years of brutal repression. The leaders of these prisons, torture, and extermination centers fled in the face of the advance of the revolution. But these secret services must be dismantled, their leaders arrested, and their files handed over to human rights organizations and the forces of the revolution, so that they can investigate all the crimes of the dictatorship.
On the other hand, they are seeking to establish a transitional government to draft a new constitution without any popular participation. The prime minister of the transitional government will be Al-Bashir, one of the members of the HTS government in Idlib. A transitional government should be formed exclusively by forces of the revolution to call, within a short period of time, free elections for a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly, to which power should be handed over.
Nothing was said about the immediate withdrawal of all foreign military forces (900 U.S. military advisers and contractors in the northeast of the country, Russian military bases on the coast, Turkish troops on the northern border, and Israeli troops in the Golan Heights).
Nothing was said about the millionaires, such as Rami Makhlouf, who became rich thanks to the brutal repression against the Syrian people. It is necessary to nationalize the assets of these millionaires and put them to the service of the reconstruction of the country.
The Kurdish people’s right to self-determination was denied and transformed into a demand for a political break with the PKK (the Kurdish party operating in Bakur – areas with a Kurdish majority in Turkey). Worse still, the forces of Jeish al-Wattani (the National Army – aligned with the Turkish regime) have advanced towards Manbij and are signaling a new advance towards Raqqa, besieging the Kurdish population in Rojava.
The Palestinian issue
The fight against genocide in Gaza and the West Bank is at the center of global attention. HTS gave political support to the action of the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
The Syrians held several demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians in the rebel province of Idlib, governed by HTS. In other parts of Syria, there were no demonstrations because they were prohibited by the Assad dictatorship.
Hamas released an official statement welcoming the new Syrian regime. Between 2011 and 2014, Hamas supported the Syrian revolution, which is why it had to move its headquarters from Damascus to Doha.
The Zionist state has advanced further into Syrian territory, in addition to bombing weapons depots and intelligence headquarters in order to weaken the new government.
So far, neither al-Joulani nor al-Bahra have expressed support for the Palestinians in ending the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, nor have they taken any action against the Israeli bombings and invasions, repeating the behavior of Bashar el Assad.
It is necessary for the new transitional government to announce its unconditional support for the Palestinian resistance and take all possible measures to stop the Zionist advance.
We need a workers’ revolutionary party
Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011, the Syrian Communist Party (whether the wing led by Khaled Bakdash, the wing led by Youssef Faisal, or even the Popular Will Party led by Kadri Jamil) has always sided with the Syrian dictatorship, securing ministerial posts in the government and slandering the forces of the revolution.
In the history of Syria, there have been important efforts to form true revolutionary Marxist parties such as the Communist Labor Party (which had a strong Trotskyist wing led by the revolutionary Munif Mulhem, who was held in prison in abject conditions for 16 years, from 1981 to 1997), as well as the Palestinian revolutionary Salameh Keilah (imprisoned and tortured by the Syrian dictatorship for eight years) who formed the Syrian Left Coalition at the beginning of the revolution in 2011. However, these organizations were unable to survive the repression of the dictatorial regime.
The different wings of the Syrian Communist Party have not released any official position regarding the end of the dictatorship, which they have always supported.
But the general secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) denounced the Arab revolutions as part of imperialist plans, and defended the Assad dictatorship for having led the resistance against these plans as well as the jihadist threat, together with Russia and Iran.
These left-wing sectors, particularly those of Stalinist origin, defend the Assad regime, just as they defend other dictatorial capitalist regimes such as the Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Cuban and Venezuelan regimes. In practice, these sectors trade the socialist perspective of class struggle for the perspective of progressive imperialist camps, which has nothing to do with Marxism nor with the defense of the interests of the working class.
A revolutionary position begins with the recognition of the victory of the masses that is represented by the fall of the dictatorship. But it is only complete with a policy of class independence and the struggle for workers’ power and socialism.
The victory of the Syrian revolution will only continue with the formation of a revolutionary party that rejects conciliation with the old regime, promotes the formation of workers’ and popular councils in all neighborhoods and cities, demands the immediate withdrawal of all foreign military forces, stands for the nationalization of the assets of millionaires, defends the right of self-determination of the Kurds, and stands for unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people.
NOTES:
(1)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/7/lavrov-says-russia-wants-immediate-end-to-fighting-in-syria
(2)
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syria-opposition-leader-says-state-institutions-should-be-preserved-and-rebels-accomodated
