US bombs won’t bring liberation in Syria

A banner held by a Syrian protester in Aleppo last week read, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, Albert Einstein”. Below were the words, “Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Syria 2014.”

Islamic State, Jabhat al Nusra and similar organisations can’t be defeated with the same tools that created them. They are the consequences of criminal authoritarian regimes and foreign interventions.

The US-led coalition’s objectives are not to assist Syrian revolutionaries or protect them from Islamic State or Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

They are to re-impose Western hegemony over the region.

Syria: Has the revolution been defeated? – Joseph Daher & Simon Assaf

Kobani, the Kurdish issue and the Syrian revolution, a common destiny

The city of Kobani, which is in its far majority inhabited by Kurdish people, in Syria has been under direct threat for several weeks of the Islamic State (IS). Since the beginning of the offensive of the IS on September 16 2014, more than 550 people died, including 298 militants of the IS, 236 Kurdish fighters and around twenty civilians. More than 12 000 civilians still remain in some sections of the city of Kobani, while the offensive of the IS on Kobani and its surrounding villages has led to the forced displacement of about 200,000 people.

The city would actually have fallen long ago if it was not for the resistance organized by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (YPD which is linked to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), and its military forces, units of protection people (YPG), and also the active participation of at least three battalions of Arab fighters in the city: the revolutionary battalion of Al Raqqa, the battalion of ” the northern Sun” and the battalion of “Jirablis”. On October 4 the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had also decided to send a thousand fighters to defend Kobani.

The city Kobani has a strategic location for the IS. First the city lies between the cities of Cerablus and Tell Abyad, which are both under the occupation of the IS, and its capture would allow a territorial continuity for the IS, and secondly the city is also a gateway to Turkey.

Syria and the International coalition intervention

In recent weeks we have seen the establishment of an USA led International coalition also composed of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Jordan to launch a joint military operation, on Syrian territory, with the tacit support of the Assad regime as we will see, against Daech (also known as the Islamic State (ISIL).

Several levels of analysis are needed to understand the dynamics of this intervention.

Syria, an analysis of the International coalition intervention led by the USA

“Who did not die from Assad planes, died from Al Saoud Planes, they are numerous planes and the bombing is one”

In recent weeks we have seen the establishment of an USA led International coalition also composed of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan to launch a joint military operation, on Syrian territory, with the tacit support of the Assad regime as we will see, against Daech (also known as the Islamic State (IS)).

Several levels of analysis are needed to understand the dynamics of this intervention.

Revolutionary Left Movement in Syria: position around the bombings of the International Coalition led by the USA

Today the American planes bombed positions of Daesh (also known as the Islamic State), Jabhat al Nusra ( al Qaeda branch in Syria) and Ahrar Sham. These bombings occurred, according to some sources, with the participation of the reactionary Arab governments allied to the USA government, which are leading the counter-revolution at the regional level

We do not welcome these bombings, even though we have called since the advent of these reactionary and fascist forces to oppose them because they are hostile to the popular revolt, unlike the positions of the various liberal opposition bodies linked the Syrian National Council and the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, which consider them by all their foolishness and immorality as components of the revolution. We oppose and strongly condemn the bombings and imperialist military intervention in Syria and call to confront it, in opposition to the Liberal bodies of the Syrian National Council and of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces that welcomed it

The reason why we oppose this imperialist intervention is that its objectives are not to support the Syrian people in their revolution, but to restore an imperialist domination of the countries of the region after the on-going popular revolts undermined it

Daech and jihadist forces are the result of the imperialist military intervention and of the brutality and corruption of despotic regimes

In the face of the multiplication of the enemies acting against the revolution of the Syrian people, we see that only the conscious and organized masses led by a truly revolutionary leadership are able to defeat these reactionary forces hostile to the revolution, to defeat the authoritarian regime, and also to defeat the imperialist intervention

No to Washington and its allies

No to Moscow and its allies

No to Daesh, no to the counter-revolutionary forces, and no the authoritarian regime

Long live the unity and struggle of the workers and oppressed everywhere

All the power and wealth to the people

Revolutionary Left Movement in Syria

September 23, 2014

Understanding imperialism as a global system

In several debates I recently conducted in which I condemned all forms of imperialisms, including Russian imperialism in Syria and Ukraine (not to mention the Russian repression against the Chechens and the Russian authoritarian, reactionary and economically neoliberal system, with a concentration of wealth in the country in the hands of a mafia business clique affiliated with Putin), several people claiming to be “leftists” answered that there was no Russian imperialism or that Russia was a power that opposed USA imperialism and should therefore be supported.

This kind of analysis is part of a completely distorted understanding of imperialism, which is reduced to one (United States) or few actors (Western states generally).

Several reasons can explain this reasoning, which I do not have time to discuss in details here in this article, but that is primarily rooted first in a misunderstanding of the capitalist system, and / or a legacy of the Cold War, which sees Russia and its allies (Iran and Syria in particular) as progressive and anti-imperialist states, against the United States.

This reasoning leads to hostile positions with regards to some popular uprisings, as it is currently the case with Syria and Ukraine or in the past with Iran in 2009.

Iraq, a humanitarian intervention?

The intervention of American military forces in Iraq was presented in Western and other medias as an intervention to protect religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq against the military progresses of the ultra reactionary jihadist group the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as the Islamic State Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)). This propaganda hides the imperialists political interests of the United States in their military intervention, which has no humanitarian purpose.

Statement of solidarity with the Kurdish masses against the attacks of the reactionary counter revolutionary forces

The attacks of the reactionary and takfirists armed forces did not cease against the Syrian civilian and revolutionary forces in each region it entered, including the kidnapping, murdering, arresting and slaughtering publicly activists. These reactionary counter revolutionary forces always worked to destroy the revolutionary popular movement and to impose their reactionary hegemony on the rest of the popular masses in the so called «liberated» areas, in which these reactionary forces were able to penetrate, especially Daech and similar type of organizations.  These continuous attacks on the popular revolutionary forces and masses that carry the original program of the popular revolution, demonstrated that these latter were facing a double threat : on one side the reactionary counter revolutionary forces and on the other hand the forces of the ruling authoritarian bourgeois regimeDaech and the rest of the reactionary forces as well did not stop to practice the ugliest forms of attacks on various Kurdish towns and regions, especially against the region of Kobani – 3ain al Arab, for nearly two years, characterized by the bombing, killing, destruction, abduction and displacement of the Kurdish people. These actions are rooted  in racist hatred in the most ugliest way. These actions remind us of the actions practiced by the regime against our people for more than the past three years now.  These actions constitute a threat to the areas in which the popular and civil movement are still alive and active and secular.

The suspicious silence of some sections of the opposition forces regarding the continuous barbaric attacks against the Kurdish masses, rather than referring to these interventions, is the result of national chauvinism and therefore of miserable complicity with these actions, which must be condemned and denounced without hesitation. In both cases, we have to remember, for anyone who needs a reminder, that the Kurdish masses in our country, which has suffered from discrimination, injustice and oppression, have carried very early on the banner of rebellion against the ruling authoritarian regime.  Their sons have participated, since long decades, in all the Syrian leftist and secular parties and in all their struggles. The Kurdish masses were the ones to lead the uprising of March 2004, in an atmosphere of inaction and silence of the majority of the political forces of the Syrian opposition

Just as we witnessed in the Kurdish cities of Afrin, Amouda, Qamishli and others great popular mobilisations. In addition they were one of the first cities to protest and participate in the popular revolt since March 2011

Therefore we do not only declare our full and firm solidarity with the Kurdish masses against the attacks of Daech and others in the areas in which they are present, but we would like to reaffirm our known position calling for the recognition of the national, cultural and political rights of the Kurdish people, not only in the Syrian region of “Rojava” but in all parts of Kurdistan

Our support for the above mentioned rights of the Kurdish people do not prevent us to wish and to invite the Kurdish people to be, as it is the case today to a large extent in Syria, to be a full partner with us and the rest of the Syrian revolutionary masses in our united struggle against the ruling bourgeois regime, because our victory depends on the unity and independence of all the popular class far from religious and ethnic divisions. We also want the Kurdish people to be a partner in building a free and democratic Syria that is based on social justice and secularism and full equality for all its citizens regardless of their ethnic or religious or confessional origins

For freedom, equality, and the triumph of the revolution and the current and upcoming popular struggles, Viva the unity of the popular masses in Syria

Viva the unity of struggle of our popular masses without the slightest discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or confession

Viva the revolution of the toilers and the oppressed

Viva the People’s Revolution

All power and wealth to the people

The revolutionary Left Current in Syria

Damascus July 13, 2014

The roots and grassroots of the Syrian revolution

In a series commemorating the uprising’s third anniversary, Syrian revolutionary activist Joseph Daher answers key questions still circulating in the western digital commons. In this first part he offers us a short history of the socio-economic causes behind the protests that sprang up across Syria in March 2011.

Graffiti in Douma, Syria.