by Franklin Dmitryev

The lightning ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad stunned the world, sparked ecstatic celebrations in Syria and Syrian diasporic communities, opened the floodgates for a return of the millions displaced—about half the population—and the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners, and transformed the face of the Middle East. The Syrian Revolution for freedom and dignity was written off as dead years ago—so much so that Assad made a triumphant return to the Arab League just last year and states from Turkey to Israel to the U.S. were normalizing relations with his regime, ready to look past the fact that the defining nature of the Assad regime was genocidal counterrevolution. And now the revolution has come roaring back to life.

KEY: THE MASSES AS REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECT

It is true that the masses, as revolutionary subject, were not the only force involved in Assad’s sudden overthrow. The political-military coalition Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was obviously key, along with its support from Turkey, as well as Russia’s preoccupation with its war on Ukraine and the severe weakening of Hezbollah and Iran by their conflict with Israel. But the masses have routinely been disregarded and written out of the story. Any analysis or narrative that downplays their role will be misleading. When Assad’s army—full of demoralized conscripts—simply melted away, it was not only due to the advancing HTS forces but the local people rising up. As Hagi Hassan wrote after Aleppo was liberated:

“Yes, Hayat Tahrir al-Cham is present, but the true liberators of the city are its inhabitants, its youth who, exiled children, returned today as adults to liberate their city from the yoke of oppression” (quoted by Michael Karadjis in “The Syrian revolution returns with a bang: Extraordinary collapse of the genocidal regime”).

What is urgent now is solidarity with these revolutionary masses, including to single them out, to make a category of them, to hear their voices and help them be heard, and to oppose any effort to subordinate them under those who would like to control Syria. That means not only the state powers that are already intervening—the U.S., Israel, and Turkey are exercising military force within Syria, while Russia and Iran are still maneuvering for influence, and we will no doubt soon see Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar maneuvering as well. It means also the forces within, whether they are the leaders of the HTS and other armed groups like the Turkish-aligned Syrian National Army and the U.S.-supported but Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or civilian politicians from the old regime or from the opposition.

These forces hunger for stability, as do the people who have lived through the last 13 years of genocidal destruction, but, unlike the population who for years fought for freedom, they have an interest in channeling the events into a transition to a normal capitalist state rather than allowing the revolution from below to self-develop. The HTS is preaching unity—and for a time that may prevail as we see videos of people in the streets chanting one of the revolution’s main slogans, “The Syrian people are one, one, one!” which was always in opposition to sectarian and ethnic divisions promoted by the Assad regime and some of the rebel groups. And it should be noted that the HTS changed its tune on this, partly due to the pressure from the revolutionary masses, who as recently as February were demonstrating in areas of Idlib controlled by the HTS to oppose the authoritarianism, human rights violations, and sectarianism that they had experienced there; and partly from the ranks of the HTS militia themselves, most of whom were drawn in not by the group’s ideology but by the need to defend their communities from assaults by Assad’s forces and Russian bombs.

But the inherent contradictions in the upheaval open the door to counterrevolution from within the revolution. The danger is underscored by the current counterrevolutionary state of the other countries that ousted dictators in the Arab Spring revolutions: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.

WORLD RAMIFICATIONS

U.S. commentators are largely preoccupied with how Assad’s fall will impact the interests of the U.S., its capitalists, and its ally Israel. Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its reign of terror and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank continue. The possibility of all-out war between Israel and Iran does not seem to be imminent but it is not off the table. What we can say for sure is that the U.S. and all these regional powers will continue to meddle in Syria and try to channel and undermine the revolution.

The consequences, however, are impossible to predict. Hamas launched its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, aiming to draw the Arab countries and Iran into a wider war with Israel that would transform the Middle East by wiping out Israel. So far it has succeeded in sapping the strength of two of the most powerful allies in the “axis of resistance,” Iran and Hezbollah, which helped topple a third, Assad. The illusion of an “axis of resistance” is more transparent than ever. Rather than an axis, it was always a network of regional forces with their own conflicting interests, and exactly what they were “resisting” (the U.S.? Israel? Saudi Arabia? the masses in Yemen?) varied from one force to the next. Assad’s Syria in reality offered more cooperation than resistance to the U.S. and Israel, notwithstanding all the rhetoric and threadbare ideological analyses of campist leftists.

Israel and the U.S.—or at least influential segments of their governments—in turn imagined that they could exploit the conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran to transform the Middle East to their liking. One thing holding them back is how poorly that worked out with the George W. Bush administration’s war against Iraq, which devastated Iraq, promoted violent sectarianism, and strengthened Iran. However, war, like fascism, is one of the “solutions” that capitalism in crisis keeps reaching for as it struggles always to throttle revolution.

Please share your thoughts, observations, and conversations with others as News and Letters Committees work out a statement to issue on these continuing events.

–December 10, 2024