Syria conflict

Blood-Baath in Syria and proletarian direct action - statement from Tridni Valka

The main section that stuck out to me was the one on post-war Libya, since if the author is advocating that the left should have supported the Libyan rebels, and should now support those in Syria, the post-war situation is surely the part to look at.

However, while important, the section was also incredibly weak IMO. The only real points being made seemed to be that (a) "Libyan sovereignty emerged from the revolution intact despite NATO’s involvement", and (b) "Libyans enjoy freedom of speech, freedom to protest and organize, and most importantly, freedom from fear of state repression."

I'm not convinced (a) is true, and not sure how important it is anyway; the idea of a "sovereign" state is a bit meaningless in itself, and those states that would be called sovereign can be just as brutal as those that aren't.

As far as (b), again, that just doesn't seem to be true; there's plenty of reports* of torture and other atrocities carried out by the rebels (particularly against the black population in Libya, who don't even get mentioned once in that article as best I can tell). And until recently there was a government-imposed ban on expressing support for Gaddafi or anything that could "harm the revolution", punishable with up to fifteen years in jail, which would seem to be a bit of a problem for that whole freedom of speech business.

(* Note: both sites are pro-Gaddafi and so have an obvious bias, and also contain graphic imagery).

There's also the issue that the Gaddafi government, while authoritarian, provided some degree of welfare provision which is in the process of being abolished - something which, again, goes completely unmentioned in that article. While no fan of Gaddafi, if given a choice between a repressive government which provides things like healthcare, energy and education, or an equally repressive government which doesn't, well...

(Should point out here that I don't know a great deal about welfare provision under Gaddafi nor how much the reality matched the rhetoric, fwiw.)

The basic point that we "should reject knee-jerk anti-imperialism" is a valid one - much of the left is relatively uncritical in showing support for all sorts of reactionary groups just so long as they claim to defend "the oppressed" against "the imperialists". But to go from that to suggesting we should actually support imperialism is just as, if not more, ridiculous.

Boom! Shawkat and the Defence Minister dead, after massive suicide bomb at a top dogs meeting in the National Security Centre. Rumours of a possible inside job by Shawkat's own security detail. Could be a big game-changer.

Guardian feed

Beeb feed

Here's one for the conspiracy heads...

This afternoon has been the usual mass of rumours. Including a few reports from neighbours and people in the area of the site of the "explosion" reporting not hearing any explosion or seeing any signs of damage.

Now we have some backup of those reports from a beeb journo:

Torygraph feed

So, are those rumours about an internal regime coup more likely? Did Maher Assad finally go psycho and gun down everyone in the meeting that was pissing him off? (by all accounts, he'd shot Shawkat before). Unclear.

What is clear is that, even if it was some internal mentalness, it certainly hasn't helped the stability of the Assad regime. The downside is, that it looks like the perfect excuse to send out the death-squads to unleash hell.

They've already been unleashed, by both sides. Indeed, it seems as if the worst atrocities (the ones that got a lot of attention in the West) were perpetrated by the FSA.

But yeah, this could be a putsch of some sort.

Khawaga:

I've been reading conflicting accounts. What do you consider trustworthy accounts pointing to FSA responsability for these kind of atrocities? This is a factual; question, not an effort to go into polemics or something. Just trying to figuring things out.

I've read conflicting accounts as well hence why I used "seemed". I trust the Angry Arab on this so he's my "source". Not that he definitively says that the SFA did it, but he's questioning the accepted accounts based who victims were. A lot of the targets could be the ones the Sunni-dominated SFA selected. So sorry, I've got no hard facts to offer.

Angry Arab is good at debunking things, yes, I check that one too. Still, he leaves quite a bit out of the story. Saudi/ Qatar connections to Syrian fighters are mentined, working class or student struggles hardly ghets a mention, so that the Syrian struggle appears in his presentation much more right wing, manipulated, religiosly motvated, sectarian-deformed, than it is, in my view. And the way he treats protest movements in Israel is often horrible, so to trust him too much on other places may be a bit much. Still, a good source for stuff neglected elsewhere.

No you're right. I wouldn't trust the Angry Arab on almost anything related to protests in Israel. He's brain dead on that issue in that he makes an "exception". But on Lebanon (especially Lebanon) and Syria he knows his stuff, and he is really good at cutting through the black and white narrative in the west. So although he overstates how salafi the FSA is he presents a good corrective to the extremely simplistic view on Syria. But his politics are horrible! He calls himself an anarchist, but he oozes nationalism from every pore.

Could this perhaps be because there is no working class struggle to mention?

Devrim

FWIW the AngryArab did mention them when the uprising first started, but now focuses almost exclusively on exposing the cheerleading of Israel, US and the West of salafi groups. I am not sure if there are any significant worker or student actions anymore. I've not seen any accounts for a long time, but then again after the Syrian uprising went the Libyan way I stopped paying close attention.

the NCB, a coalition of liberal, left-wing, Kurdish and pan-arabic groups keeps its distance from the SNC and especially from the FSA, some of the leading NCB people e.g. from the Syrian Democratic People's Party (the former Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau)) played a major role in the General Federation of Trade Unions in the 70ies before the GFTU became a mere front of the Baath ... LabourStart has very little stuff about labour struggles in Syria: http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=Syria&alllanguages=1&languagename=English&langcode=en&lang=English

I think that like Libya the class struggle, or any form of social protest, has been subsumed by this increasingly dangerous imperialist conflict. A real nightmare is unfolding and it's not just the local powers involved but very much the major ones.

Already, on November 17 last year, Newsnight was reporting that the Free Syrian Army was conducting sectarian murders and the killings of civilians. It was clear then that deserters from the national army were escaping from one imperialist frying pan into another imperialist fire.

In an example of the major powers: The French Foreign Minister, Juppe, met oppositon forces in Paris in late November. France, like Britain, has many connections in the region from its imperiaist role in the recent past. Foreign Office Minister Hague met the opposition forces in London on November 21. When pressed who these "opposition forces" were, the FO declined an explanation, but elements of them included the FSA, the Syrian National Committee, the Committee for National Coordination, the Kurdish opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood and various jihadists. Within these were Stalinists, eleven Kurdish organisations, tribal and clannic structures and so on. In any case, Hague called for a "united front" and nominated an "ambassador designate" to them on November 21st (BBC News). Thus the diplomatic side of Britain's contribution to the war was partially put in place then.

To call this a "civil war", given the contradictory nature of the opposition, is a completely false description which attempts to cover up the major power's role in fermenting wider warfare. Saudi and Qatar are involved in supplying arms, etc., but it's the west, given their complete indifference to the at least 20,000 killed in the Syrian uprisings of 1980, which is using the truely monstrous actions of the Assad regime to put forward its own imperialist agenda. There have been reports of French and British special forces in Lebanon and Turkey and this is probably the tip of the iceberg. Another factor highlighting the nonsense of a "civil war", is the support for the Syrian killing machine by both Russia and China.

From the USA and the west generally, the real target for this war and instability is, in my opinion Iran.

Devrim:

Well, maybe not quite. What to make of this?

And, on student struggle:

Source: Syria Freedom Forever, a left-wing (I would think Trotskyist or related politics), blog, opposed to intervention.

That blog acknowledges weapons deliveries by Saudi and Qatar regimes, and a CIA role but according to this arcticle doesn't think they amount to much:

According to various opposition sources, only small amount of arms have been sent by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while the Turks have denied any role in arming the Syrian rebels. A large amount of armed opposition groups have actually refuse to pledge allegiance to the Gulf groups, a condition by these latter on delivery of weapons and arms(http://world.time.com/2012/06/22/opening-the-weapons-tap-syrias-rebels-await-fresh-and-free-ammo/).

The claim of Saudi Arabia to pay the FSA elements is still awaited and is not happening until now, while CIA presence in Southern Turkey is more an operation to list the armed opposition groups than to assist them in any way. A high religious cleric member of the High Council of Oulemas, the most important religious authority in Saudi Arabia, has actually issued a Fatwa beginning of June forbidding Saudis to go fight the Syrian regime, or in other words to make the Jihad in Syria.

Some of the armed opposition groups also used to purchase weapons and munitions via smugglers from Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, but these passages have been weakened considerably as these countries have arrested and forbidden increasingly any movement of arms on their borders.

This would seem a gross underestimate of Western interference, though I still think that there are independent forces at work within the Syrian revolt. Western imperialism tries to instrumentalize it, but is not (yet?) in full control.

That's a good reminder roo of the not too distant social uprising that took place in Syria - part of a regional and global movement. Men, women, different religions and the secular, workers and unemployed and particularly children and youngsters, all demonstrated against oppression and want together and side by side. They also fought together against the forces of order. The media in the west often portray the "Arab Street" as a ferment of anti-Israeli, anti-west sentiment. In these movements, for all the problems, the Arab street has been a vector of social struggle and solidarity. Not now though in Syria.

I agree that anti-tank weapons have been a sort of "ceiling" from Saudi and Qatar - possibly an Americn condition. And that they are not flooding in. I think that the US, British and French secret and intelligence services are providing intelligence and logicistics to favoured factions of the opposition.

Western imperialism isn't in control and my opinion is that they don't look like getting any sort of control soon - they are even driven to exacerbate the problems by their growing involvement. The same can be said for Russia and China.

idk if this is common knowledge yet or not, but after these recent supposed bombings i saw on major news stations here in the states that the usa was discussing pretty much giving the greenlight to the saudis to arm the sfa. just figured i'd share this tid bit i heard on like cnn or something like that.

Of course there is always some class struggle everywhere, but after reading your quote I am not convinced that there is a lot in Syria.

I will just quote the bit you quoted about workers' struggle and the preceding paragraph in full before going through it more carefully:

The things that strike me about this are:
* It starts by saying that struggle has been prevented
*The best example of struggle it comes up with is a demonstration (not a strike) of several hundred workers and a strike of taxi drivers in Aleppo six years ago.
*It talks of general strikes and disobedience in December 2011 yet if there had been general strikes in this period it was absent from both the world media, and the media in neighbouring countries (I lived in one at that time).
*I would imagine that the term 'general strike' quite probably is more connected to a shutting down of small shops as it often is rather than a strike of workers.
*The fact that factories are closing down and workers are being layed off during a period when the world economic is weak and the domestic economy is severly disrupted does not neccesarily mean that this is because the state is trying to stop some struggle.

I am sure there is a lot of student struggle and I didn't question this.

On the subject of foreign intervention:

Are we expected to believe them. Reorts in the Turkish media have talked about army veichles delivering heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels.

We are talking about some pretty porous borders where smuggeling is rife here.

But even if the influence of the Western powers, Turkey and the Arab monarchies is weak, it doesn't mean that it is a class movement.

Devrim

Ain al-Arab/Kobanî (60.000 inhabitants) has been taken over by its population (or by the PKK/PYD)

- http://www.timesofisrael.com/syrian-kurdish-town-declares-independence-from-damascus/

- http://supportkurds.org/news/thursday-19-july-2012/

according to http://de.indymedia.org/2012/07/332797.shtml (in German), a form of "direct democracy" has been installed in Ain al-Arab/Kobanî, whose inhabitants seem to be not to keen on either the regime nor the FSA

Devrim:

I didn't say there wa a lot of workers'struggle either. i suggesed there might have been some.

On student struggles: I just mentioned what I mention, not for polemical reasons but because I found it interesting.
I remember reports about strike efforts and civil disobedience, though indeed, not in mainstream media. I cannot remember where I read it, unfortunately.

On foreign intervntion: after the quote which suggests that it has been rather limited, Devrim says:

No we are not expected to believe them. That is why I said,

. Just like Devrim, I think the extent of intervention is bigger that Syria Freedom Forever allows for.

By the way, there can be several reasons for the reports in the Turkish press. They may be true. They may be part of propaganda: look how much we are helping the rebels... Just like other reports, they cannot be taken at face value, just like I do not the Syria Freedom Forever artice at face value. No for nothing, I ask: what to mak of this? bfore giving tghose quotes... I was just wondering, and I learn from Devrims and other comrades' resplies.

And no, I do not call the revolt as it is a "class movement" as such. I think there are elementsof class movement within the revolt which are neither (yet) totally snuffed out by US , Saudi, Turkish, Qatari etc. intervention, nor totally exterminated by the regime.

- Sovereignty is important when you're talking about former colonies, at least it is to the people who live there.

- There are human rights abuses in Libya today. No doubt. But there are also protests, strikes, demonstrations, newspapers, and tons of political parties. Big step forward from the Ghadafi regime, no? And the ban you point to was overturned by the Libyan supreme court, which validates my point.

Nowhere in my article did I suggest "supporting imperialism." If that's not true, you should be able to quote where I said it.

Here's a follow-up piece I did since my former organization, the ISO, tried to attack me over the issue:
http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=1263

Entdinglichung, isn't the red flag in your picture that of the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) ?

All states are dependant on others to a greater or lesser extent, whether for trade relations, political support, aid, military backing, tourism, access to resources or whatever else. And with some states having more power internationally than others, the relationship between more and less powerful states is inevitably unequal. The idea of a state being "sovereign" is at the very least rather vague.

Obviously there's a spectrum there, and countries that are officially colonies are going to have less ability to decide their own affairs than those who are formally independent, which in turn have less ability than more powerful colonialist countries, etc., etc. But still.

That depends. One other point I noticed in your original article is that you didn't actually take the time to explain how things were while Gaddafi was in power as regards protests and all the rest of it, and instead simply asserted that these things had improved significantly following his overthrow. If you are going to claim that Libya has made a "big step forward" in this regard then I think the onus is on you to provide analysis of how things were when he was in power and how that differs from today.

For what it's worth, though, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with your point - Gaddafi's government does seem to have clamped down on dissent quite brutally, and if (though that does remain an if) the replacement is more open in that regard then it may at least provide some more space for organising. However, I do find it a bit troublesome that you're seemingly asserting this as true without much in the way of evidence.

More to the point though, using the above alone as grounds for why folks in the West should have supported the intervention would seem to leave two gaping holes: firstly, on the treatment of a range of political and ethnic groups - black Libyans, Gaddafi supporters and other dissidents most obviously - and second, the likely growth of privatisation with the welfare cuts, unemployment and other attacks that come with it.

(I would reiterate that as far as welfare provision while Gaddafi was in power I've yet to see much in the way of detailed analysis; however, my impression is that however inadequate things may have been then, they're only likely to get worse now. That said, I'll retract this point if it turns out to be inaccurate.)

For example, the National Forces Alliance, which won the recent elections, plans to implement special economic zones in a number of areas - meaning, in other words, creating regions where even basic workers rights and environmental protection are reduced or suspended altogether. While not a proponent of nationalisation, or even a welfare (or any other) state per se, I've yet to see an example of measures like this actually making life better for the working class. Quite the opposite really.

Well, maybe:

Perhaps not in so many words, no. However, you did suggest that folks in the West should support intervention from imperialist powers - intervention that is invariably for the benefit of the imperialist powers themselves - which basically amounts to the same thing IMO. Unless you buy into the idea of humanitarian intervention and NATO bombing countries for their own good, in which case we have far more problems than can necessarily be dealt with here.

Cheers.

of its (officially dissolved) umbrella group ERNK

http://supportkurds.org/news/friday-20-july-2012/

http://supportkurds.org/news/saturday-20-july-2012/

http://supportkurds.org/news/sunday-22-july-2012/

Couple of recent Syria-related pieces by Bob Fisk:

Robert Fisk: Sectarianism bites into Syria's rebels

Robert Fisk: If Alawites are turning against Assad then his fate is sealed