Six years after Syria’s revolution, we must not turn away

Six years ago, thousands of Syrians took to the streets to protest the brutal Assad regime. The Assad family had kept power for four decades through repression, imprisonment, torture, and mass killing. The people who protested knew what they were up against, remembering how the regime had slaughtered tens of thousands in Hama in 1982. In 2011 the regime even tortured children who dared write anti-regime graffiti on a wall in Daraa.

People knew, and still they took their lives in their hands, marching, singing, dancing in the streets. Videos of those first protests look incredible now, the buildings intact, the streets filled with humanity. Today’s images are the reverse. Humanity driven out. Cities, towns, homes crushed.

The slogan of regime thugs was ‘Assad or we burn the country.’ They have. In the past, the regime had sponsored terrorism to destabilise neighbouring countries. From 2011 it turned the same strategy against the opposition. Peaceful protesters were jailed while jihadist veterans of the Assad-sponsored terror campaign in Iraq were released, and pro regime ‘Shabiha’ gangs carried out sectarian massacres to deliberately drive communities apart.

Al Qaeda in Iraq had been a longtime client of Assad’s. In 2013-2014, it rebranded as ISIS and moved against the Syrian opposition, aided by Assad’s air force which targeted the opposition but not ISIS.

The scale of Bashar al-Assad’s brutality outstripped that of his father, bombing and shelling city after city, killing hundreds of civilians with nerve agent and chlorine. But this was not enough to defeat the revolution. To survive, Assad invited in Hezbollah, then Iranian military forces, sectarian militia from Iraq, and even Afghans recruited by Iran. By 2015 Assad teetered on the edge of collapse.

It took direct intervention by Putin to keep Assad in place. Russia’s air force bombed not only the armed opposition but systematically targeted hospitals, schools, bakeries, water facilities. Now in 2017 Assad is in hock to Shabiha warlords, to Iran, and to Russia. He rules from a position of weakness over a patchwork of competing interests that between them control the biggest population centres, but only a minority of the territory of Syria.

Opposition-held territory is still under daily attack, despite a ceasefire announced by Russia and Turkey in December. In regime-controlled territory detentions continue, and thousands upon thousands remain hidden in Assad’s torture prisons. For Syrians who have fled, return to either bombing or torture is not an option.

The UK Government has never backed any serious proposal to protect civilians in Syria. Even the abortive proposal for action after the Ghouta chemical massacre focused not on protecting civilians but on punishing the use of just one category of weapon. Calls for a no-fly zone or no-bomb zone were locked by Western leaders who didn’t want any responsibility for what would come after. In the name of ‘stability’ the regime was given license to murder.

When the House of Commons voted against action in 2013, too many people here saw that as the end of the story and turned away. Then the number of Syrian refugees registered in the region was 1.84 million. Today it is close to five million. The various counts of numbers killed outstrip the capacity of our imagination. Half a million or more people are estimated killed, but the fracturing of control makes a reliable total impossible. The Syrian Network for Human Rights has counted a minimum of 206,932 confirmed violent civilian deaths.

Throughout 2016, Syria Solidarity UK and others campaigned for humanitarian air drops to besieged civilians. Behind the scenes at least some in the Foreign Office and elsewhere tried to make this happen. Serious proposals were developed to use existing drone technology at relatively low cost and at no risk to UK personnel, but these ideas were blocked. It seems the Ministry of Defence is more interested in spending money on developing new drones to kill rather than on drones to save lives.

In 2017, UK diplomats are still saying the right things, still supporting the Syrian opposition in negotiations that are supposed to lead to inclusive representative legitimate government. And DFID continues to provide humanitarian support in the region to victims of the war. But in Syria now it is military action that determines political and humanitarian outcomes. Current negotiations seem even more of a sideshow than previous efforts, and the UK’s humanitarian effort continues to be a costly attempt to contain the damage while doing nothing to bring it to an end.

While the Foreign Office and DFID present the best face of UK policy, the Ministry of Defence falls in line with a US policy that targets only ISIS and seems happy to hand territory over to Assad, Hezbollah, and Russia, with no regard for the consequences. Unless there is now a serious plan to achieve legitimate inclusive government in areas liberated from ISIS, unless the Assad regime is prevented from regaining more territory, unless there is a serious plan to protect civilians, the result will be to entrench the misery of the refugee crisis and to strengthen extremism.

This year we must not turn away.

Save Aleppo—How to take action

People around the world are demonstrating for Aleppo, Tweeting for Aleppo, posting on Facebook for Aleppo, or in the case of some politicians ‘expressing deep concern’ for Aleppo.

Worldwide protests for the weekend are listed here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/314393802256887/

In London tomorrow Saturday 1 October, protesters are gathering at Marble Arch at 12:30.

If we want action on Aleppo, we need to send a clear message, and just saying ‘Save Aleppo’ is not enough.

So if you are going on a protest, make a sign with a clear demand. Make your own sign so people can see you’ve thought about it.

If you can’t go on a protest, write to your MP. Writing to politicians sometimes feels hopeless, but a letter with a clear demand can count for a lot more than chanting on the street.

You can email your MP here:

https://www.writetothem.com/

You may feel your MP is not sympathetic. You can also write to the Foreign Secretary, the Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson MP, here:

fcocorrespondence@fco.gov.uk

You can write to Prime Minister Theresa May here:

https://email.number10.gov.uk/

What will you write on your protest sign? What will you say in the letter to your MP, or to the Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister?

Say exactly what you want to happen.

You could call for a No-Bombing Zone:
That means governments forcing an end to bombing by threatening the use of force against Assad’s military if it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t mean risking ground troops or fighting Russia; it means striking back only against Assad’s military, against runways and aircraft on the ground.

You could call for airdrops:
The UN only airdrops aid to Assad regime territory, and the regime won’t give them permission to airdrop aid to other areas. The UK, France, or US could do this. Call on the RAF to drop aid to people in Aleppo and other besieged areas.

You could call for aircraft tracking:
Use radar to track the aircraft bombing civilians, and name those responsible for each hospital bombing and each war crime. UK RAF and Royal Navy radar could do this. The US already tracks aircraft but keeps the data secret. Call on the UK to track aircraft and name and shame war criminals.

You could call for sanctions against Putin’s Russia:
Putin is bombing hospitals and schools. Putin’s bombs have killed more Syrian civilians than ISIS. Russian bombs are driving refugees out of Syria. So call for new sanctions. Call for Russia to be shut out of the SWIFT international bank payments system. The UK can do this with the EU.

You could call for sanctions against Iran:
The Guardian reports that Iran has massed 5,000 sectarian foreign militia fighters in Aleppo. Iran uses its airline companies Iran Air and Mahan Air to transport fighters to Syria. The UK and EU should block these airlines from using UK and EU airports.


For a more detailed look at these policy demands, please read our briefing, Aleppo Bombing: How to respond

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8F_plxTZSOKX3lNbnNQOTVlWEk/view

Khiyana: Daesh, the Left, and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution

Khiyana: Daesh, the Left, and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution, ed. Jules Alford and Andy Wilson, published by Unkant, London.

Review by Clara Connolly

This book should be required reading for every leftist, as an antidote to the growing mountain of ignorant comment on the subject of Syria. The title Khiyana (betrayal) is an accusing cry; the book is a trenchant denunciation of the Western Left for its abandonment of the principles of internationalism and solidarity in favour of an alignment with the ‘anti imperialist’ camp, a hangover from the geo-politics of the Cold War.

Assad An-Nar, like most of the authors, situates himself on the Marxist left, and his prefatory chapter could be considered a direct response to Tariq Ali’s infamous dismissal of the Arab Spring in What is a Revolution? (Guernica, Sept. 2013). He sets his critique in the context of the changing nature of revolution in an age of global neoliberalism, where post colonial states are collapsing because neoliberal policies have slashed the limited social protections they used to offer. In this world, he says, the principles of self emancipation and of collective and democratic struggle are ‘ideas in search of a subject.’ Ideas about democracy, socialism, and anti-imperialism used to run in the same direction, but now they are counterposed.

With the collapse of the progressive moment of secular Arab nationalism, Islamist organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood can rise beyond identity/sectarian politics in resistance to tyranny. Though not necessarily opposed to neoliberalism, they are the voice of those who are excluded from its benefits. Hezbollah’s current role in Syria shows that such movements can swing between revolution and counter revolution without moving in a socialist direction.

The role of socialists is not to counterpose themselves to democratic revolutions, which gave rise (in Egypt) to the first democratic government, and (in Syria) to emancipatory projects such as networks of local councils against the existing state, but to take the democratic side against tyranny. Instead the left has responded by either supporting their favourite dictatorships (the neo Stalinists) or by re-hashing theories of ‘permanent revolution,’ i.e. insisting that revolutions can only end in socialism or defeat (the Trotskyists). Yes, he says, a democratic revolution is possible in these countries, but the outcomes are uncertain; the socialist left, while recognising its marginal role, should not condemn itself to irrelevance by denouncing the struggles for democracy because they are not socialist. Instead he urges the left to make the ‘democratic wager,’ in hope that the outcomes lead to more collective forms of struggle. There is little to lose for socialists, he believes, since neoliberalism has led worldwide to the fatal weakening of working class self-organisation.

The subsequent chapters examine and demolish the standard left myths about the Syrian revolution: the ‘jihadist’ nature of the ‘rebels’; the selective anti imperialism which admires Rojava but has no time for similar experiments in local democracy elsewhere in Syria; the role of regional imperialisms like Iran and Russia in propping up a monstrous regime; and above all the lies and distortions peddled by the institutional left (Stop the War Coalition, and the éminence grise of left journalism like Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, and Seymour Hersh) who place the national interests of states they consider to be in the ‘axis of resistance’ above solidarity with the struggles of the oppressed in those countries.

In a short review I can refer only to two further articles in the core of the book; but I cannot resist a passing mention of the glorious satirical piece by M Idrees Ahmad, The Anti-Imperialist Guide to Inaction in Syria. Anyone familiar with debate on Syria will recognise the strategies he lists: ‘Don’t defend Assad, attack his opponents; sympathise selectively; functional doubt where straight denial is risky; defend peace and sovereignty; champion the minorities; talk about ISIS, not Assad; talk about refugees but not the cause of flight,’ etc. Most of these strategies are shared with the establishment and the extreme Right.



Mark Boothroyd describes the responses of Stop the War Coalition (STWC) to Syria, in a case study that echoes the critique in the preface. It has consistently viewed developments through its relation to the US and the UK. In a multi polar world system with competing imperialisms, it persists in viewing events through the prism of the Cold War. The agency of Syrians is erased altogether.

In 2013, STWC opposed the proposed intervention of the UK and when this proposal was defeated in Parliament, it claimed victory; but Boothroyd claims that if the West had really wanted to intervene in Syria it would have done so—its actual strategy is to let the country bleed. I think he underestimates the power of popular protest in democratic countries, and the degree to which STWC was able to tap into post Iraq war weariness. But he is right in pointing out that STWC has missed a trick in failing to expose the real cruelties of the Western role.

In its weaker response to the 2015 intervention against ISIS, STWC has consistently refused to allow oppositional Syrians on its platforms—who have opposed the Coalition campaign against ISIS as useless and counter-productive, but have also proposed more positive measures for the protection of Syrian civilians. Once again, its failure to listen to Syrians has weakened its moral stance even in its own terms—in opposing its own Government.

It could have been different, he believes: the anti war movement could have risen beyond its current ethnocentric, isolationist positions to meet the challenge of changing times, and been a movement to build solidarity with the revolutions in the Middle East.



In The Rise of Daesh in Syria, Sam Charles Hamad attacks the myth of Saudi funding and support for Daesh; instead, in a detailed study, he convincingly shows their deadly rivalry despite their similar ideologies. He demonstrates the origins of Daesh in post invasion Iraq, and its nurture by the sectarian regimes in Iraq and Syria. He shows, by tracing its sources of income, how it is self sustaining. Finally he argues that the current tactics of the west, in fighting Daesh from the air but hampering the oppositions in their fight against the sectarian regimes of Assad and Maliki, are counter-productive. And the left’s narrative is complicit in this.

The book, and particularly its opening chapter, is weakened by a failure to examine more closely such terms as ‘democracy’ and ‘emancipation,’ given their ambivalent history among Marxists; and to analyse the demands of the revolution—Freedom Justice and Dignity—in more detail. This is particularly the case since there is little discussion of class, and no accounts of the role of women in the Syrian revolution, nor of the role of Western women’s peace groups or feminists in relation to Syria. My own recent experience of organising solidarity events with Syrian women suggests that the hostility to, and silencing of, Syrian voices is much less prevalent among feminist organisations than in the left as a whole. The ‘democratic wager’ which is urged upon us might be weighted more favourably with the inclusion of women activists, within Syria and in the West.



Videos via Al-Hamra’s Syrian Democratic Revolution blog.

Five years on

A post by Dr Peshang Abdulhannan and Dr Mohammad Tammo of Kurds House—one in a series of reflections to mark the 5th anniversary of the Syrian Revolution.

Five years on since it was first said in the southern city of Daraa, “the people want the regime to fall.” A sentence that led to the arrest and torture of Hamza Al-Khateeb and his teenager friends and subsequently the eruption of nationwide anti-government protests that turned to a full-scale civil war.

A war that witnessed the killing of Ghiath Matar, Ibrahim Qashoush and Mashaal Tammo, and has ripped the country apart, killing more than 250,000 Syrians and forcing more than 11 million others from their homes. A conflict that is now more than just a battle between the Assad’s regime and the rebels. Violence, war crimes and the use of chemical weapons have been familiar news while the rise of so-called Islamic State has added another dimension to it. This in turn opened the door for UK, Russian and US-led strikes in Syria, and the fleeing of more than 5 million people, mostly women and children, across the borders to become one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history.

Reflection on the anniversary

A post by Yasmine Nahlawi of Rethink Rebuild Society UK—one in a series of reflections to mark the 5th anniversary of the Syrian Revolution.

It has been five long years for the Syrian people. They have endured the worst humanitarian crisis of modern times and have been failed by world powers who have claimed to be their friends. Their neighbourhoods and villages have been reduced to rubble, and their loved ones have been brutally snatched from them in what continues to be a struggle for freedom and dignity against a brutal Assad dictatorship.

As the fifth anniversary of the Syrian revolution approaches us, Syria is in a period of relative calm. A recently announced ceasefire is helping to mitigate civilian casualties, although it has proven extremely shaky with multiple violations recorded by Assad and Russia. However, this period of military calm has been accompanied by a frenzy of activity by Syrian civil society. Spectators would expect that Syrians, war-weary and struggling for basic survival, would use this chance to attend to their immediate needs. Instead, Syrians have displayed immense resilience and have seized this opportunity to resume the same non-violent protests against the Assad regime that they began in 2011. Syrians are in effect showing to the world that the spirit of revolution is very much alive, and that their quest for freedom and dignity will not be forsaken.

Why should we celebrate the Syrian Revolution?

A post by Mark Boothroyd of Syria Solidarity UK—one in a series of reflections to mark the 5th anniversary of the Syrian Revolution.

As the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian Revolution approaches, it may seem strange that the revolution should be something to celebrate. With the revolutionary struggle and ensuing war having claimed the lives of half a million people, injured another two million and displaced or made refugees over half of Syria's population, while laying waste to the country, there seems little to celebrate.

Yet as someone committed to social change and social justice, the mere fact the revolution began at all points to the strength and courage of millions of people, and their ability and potential to effect social change through mass political action. This is an example which we must not allowed to be buried in the reports of bloodshed, regime brutality and ISIS tyranny which dominate most news stories about Syria.

Syria… Five years on

A post by Dr Sharif K al-Ghazal of the Syrian Association of Yorkshire—one in a series of reflections to mark the 5th anniversary of the Syrian Revolution.

Five years, five long years and still the Syrian people demand their freedom. They have been resisting a tyrannical regime; one ruled by a family of corrupt autocrats for 46 years. But the recent entry of Daesh into the fray has muddied the waters within the media narrative. Unlike back in 2011, Syria is increasingly being seen through the lens of counter-terrorism as opposed to a people’s revolt as it should be. Realities on the ground dictate that until the very recent ceasefire, widespread protests were impossible; that should not however mask the reality of the situation on the ground and the Syrian people’s hatred of both the Assad regime and Daesh and their yearning for freedom.

The international community has failed the Syrian people. Syria has been abandoned, its people forgotten; left to starve and fend for themselves. When the international community had the opportunity to assist the Syrian people in the early days of the revolution they made the wrong choice and failed to help. Furthermore, the humanitarian aid that has been offered has been meagre and has contributed very little within the greater scheme of things. Moreover, the failure of the international community to stand beside the Syrian people against the brutal Assad regime and its Iranian allies opened up a vacuum for extremists to exploit; one that spawned the death cult that is Daesh. To make matters even more grave, Russia has intervened on the side of the Assad regime under the pretext of attacking Daesh though it has just brought with it more death and destruction, killing civilians in rebel held areas and making the situation even more bleak.

5 years – #TheRevolutionContinues

Taking advantage of the reduction in bombing, however temporary, Syrians held demonstrations across Syria today in support of the revolution.

Despite the years of killing, despite the mass murder of civilians by the Assad regime, despite the mass imprisonment, torture, and execution, of adults and children, despite the ongoing sieges, despite the bombing of hospitals and schools, Syrians still came to the street to demand freedom, democracy, and the end of the dictatorship.

On Saturday the 12th of March, Syrians from across the UK, along with friends and supporters, will come to march in London to mark the 5th anniversary of the Syrian revolution.

The march will assemble at 12 noon at Paddington Green, London W2.

Join us – #TheRevolutionContinues