While
this blog has not supported Bernie Sanders and his campaign this is a very
thoughtful and balanced piece on the very complicated situation in Syria and
the Middle East, and we share it for our readers' interests. Admin
From Themos Demetriou, Cyprus’
Before making hasty judgments, revolutionaries in the West
should step back and ponder the
horrors Middle East populations find themselves in. Revolutionaries
should of course make correct, accurate and balanced analyses of all other
political forces and powers but they cannot stay aloof in any conflict,
especially in a civil war, unless they have the possibility to take power
themselves.
If the choice is between ISIS and Assad or even between American financed ex-al Qaida ‘rebels’ the answer is a no brainer. One does not have to buy the Socialist Assad spin – this Assad especially based his authority mainly on neo-liberal policies with fair success for an emerging middle class. But the fact is that Syria was a stable country until the US financed, organised and armed Islamic militia posing as ‘democratic’ rebels.
If the choice is between ISIS and Assad or even between American financed ex-al Qaida ‘rebels’ the answer is a no brainer. One does not have to buy the Socialist Assad spin – this Assad especially based his authority mainly on neo-liberal policies with fair success for an emerging middle class. But the fact is that Syria was a stable country until the US financed, organised and armed Islamic militia posing as ‘democratic’ rebels.
Especially repugnant is the
dismissal of Rojava as Assad’s allies. The three Kurdish cantons in the
North of Syria is probably the nearest we had ever to Revolutionary
organisation of society in the Middle East. The two eastern cantons were
effectively crushed and brought under US control after US proxy troops (the
Peshmerga) withheld support to the defenders of Kobani until they were
exhausted under the attack from Isis. The support the Peshmerga provided
in Kobani was like Lenin’s proverbial support of the hangman’s noose.
The Western canton of Afrin
was crushed by Turkey with the quiescence of Russia, its new potential
ally. Turkey is now poised for a long-term occupation of Afrin if not
outright annexation. The Kurdish question, which with Rojava was moving
away from nationalist discourse, is again being pushed hard towards unmitigated
nationalism.
Where does this leave
Revolutionary Theory? Clearly there is no country in the Middle East at
this moment capable of carrying out a Socialist Revolution capable of sparking
a World Revolution. The Arab Spring was a possibility but there was no
revolutionary programme to carry it through. Sadly, its turning point was
the overthrow of Qaddafi by western backed ‘rebels’ and western bombs, which
some naïve revolutionaries hailed as the overthrow of a dictator. Now
Syria is the theatre of a crisis that far from promising revolution is pregnant
with the possibility of a generalised conflagration.
We are powerless to save the
situation directly in Syria. But we can affect what is happening in the
West and fight against the West’s intervention in the Middle East. We can
support and help Syriza in Greece (2015), Bernie Sanders in the US (2016) and
Corbyn in Britain (today). I don’t see how we can intervene in Russia,
something I would support if we could. But simply fulminating against
Assad and Putin can have the effect of just obfuscating the responsibility of
the US and the West for the Iraq war, the creation of ISIS, the catastrophe in
Afghanistan, the slaughter in Syria and Yemen.
Having said that, at the
level of analysis we should be clear and precise. But we need not be at
each other’s throats when we differ. In fact, it would be a very poor
analysis if the discussion was limited within a close circle of uniformly
minded individuals. It would be a recipe for isolation within a small –
very small – echo chamber.
Unfortunately, the Left is very prone to that.
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