Oppose All NATO/Australia Diplomatic, Military & Political Intervention in Syria!
No to Neo-Colonialism: Defend Syria against the Pro-Imperialist “Rebels”
July 27 – It was disturbing footage. Picked up by Reuters and then shown on SBS and ABC News, the video which they noted on the side, “could not be independently verified,” claimed to show supposed Syriansoldiers beating captured anti-government protesters. There was a problem, however! An email to the ABC program Media Watch noted that the accents of the troops shown in the footage were Lebanese not Syrian, that the car shown in the background had a Lebanese number plate and that the soldiers were not even wearing Syrian army uniforms. After some research Media Watch independently verified that this was indeed not footage from Syria but from Lebanon (http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3218415.htm). The clip that had claimed to show Syrian Army brutality turned out to be taken from a YouTube posting of a couple of Lebanese militias bragging about their actions. What is more, the original posting to YouTube took place several years earlier in August 2008! Such is the deception being spread by the pro-Western Syrian Opposition forces.
This false story was emblazoned all over the mainstream Western media on May 8 last year. Yet over a year later, the likes of BBC, CNN, ABC, SBS, all the commercial channels and all the Australian mainstream newspapers continue to spread lie after lie about events in Syria. They retail accounts from the Syrian Opposition which they know may well be false and (as they throw their hands up in the air and any responsibility to check facts out the window in a disengenuous surrender to the so-called realities of the new social media) they then try to cover themselves with the disclaimer that the accounts “could not be independently verified.” These media outlets know that if they constantly feed in reports hammering the same line – that the Syrian government forces are brutally attacking “peaceful protesters” fighting for “democracy” – people will ignore the disclaimers and buy the “could not be independently verified” claims. They know that even when they are caught out lying red-handed, people will have already formed their views based on their false stories long before the quiet apologies that they sneak in would be announced. Of course, the mainstream Western media do not issue any accounts that “cannot be independently verified” when those accounts happen to come from the Syrian government. No way – after all that may make people doubt the story that they, the mainstream media, are trying to sell them. Nor do they report on some things that are patently verifiable. Like the fact that demonstrations siding with the government of Bashar Al-Assad against the pro-Western and Al-Qaeda Opposition have brought out hundreds of thousands of people in Syria’s two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.
Or the fact that Opposition forces are murdering countless numbers of people both in chilling massacres of pro-government civilians and in indiscriminate terrorist attacks like the May 10 car bombing in Damascus that killed at least 55 people.
The mainstream Western media are deceiving their audience for a reason. These media outlets, which are either owned by Western governments (like the BBC, SBS and ABC) or by the billionaire elites whom these governments serve (like CNN, Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and Kerry Stokes’ Channel 7) want to establish a regime in Syria slavishly loyal to Western imperialism. The media’s demonization of the Syrian government and lionisation of its Opposition are aimed at mobilising public support behind the NATO powers’ – and their allies’ like Australia – growing intervention in Syria.
This intervention has many facets. Firstly, the imperialist powers have placed crippling economic sanctions on Syria. These sanctions alongside the war in the country have brought great hardship to the Syrian people – hardships which have added further fuel to anti-government discontent. Secondly, they have organised to diplomatically isolate Syria. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, the imperialists are funnelling massive amounts of money, supplies, communication equipment, arms and military intelligence to Syrian Opposition forces. They do this both directly and via their allies in the Middle East – in particular via the repressive Turkish regime and via the brutal monarchs that rule Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain. A June 21 article in The New York Times, a well-known mouthpiece of U.S. imperialism, admitted that CIA officers in Southern Turkey are directly organising the transfer of arms to the Syrian Opposition. Quoting American officials, the article stated that:
The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
NATO powers are also organising volunteers – mainly religious extremist elements from the likes of Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – and mercenaries to go to Syria to spearhead the “Free Syrian Army” guerrilla forces. China’s official newsagency, Xinhua, referred to reports that the CIA alone has recruited and trained 6,000 of these foreign fighters (Xinhua, June 17.) Saudi Arabia and Qatar, for their part, are paying the salaries of the “Free Syrian Army” while Turkey is hosting the Opposition’s military bases. In the meantime, as was the case in Libya long before NATO began its “official” intervention, British SAS special forces and MI6 intelligence operatives along with their American, French and Turkish counterparts are actually on the ground in Syria playing a major role in organising, advising and directing the Opposition’s war – including in battles in the city of Homs. In short, as we go to press, the Western imperialist regimes and their allies are doing everything possible to overthrow the Syrian government short of an open invasion.
Yet, increasingly some Western imperialists are preparing the public for open military intervention of the kind they used in Libya last year. At the forefront of this charge are the British imperialists. Asked if his government had ruled out the use of force in Syria, British foreign secretary William Hague stated that Syria was “on the edge of collapse or of a sectarian civil war so I don’t think we can rule anything out.” Meanwhile, the new, fake-Socialist administration of France is singing the same tune as the right wing, conservative British government. French president, Francois Hollande, had barely learned his way around the Élysée Palace (official residence for France’s presidents) when he threatened the possibility of open military intervention in Syria (Wall Street Journal, 29 May). Although the U.S., weighed down by its lead role in NATO’s failing war on Afghanistan and aware that Syria has more armed strength and more allies than Libya, is more cautious about an open intervention, sections of the U.S. ruling class have been calling for a full-scale military assault too.
Stop Syria Being Turned into another Libya!
To see what direct NATO intervention in Syria would bring we only have to look at what it brought to Libya. NATO intervention caused the death of between fifty and eighty thousand Libyan people as NATO aircraft and missiles rained destruction upon Libyan cities. The Western imperialists deliberately targeted Libya’s civilian infrastructure when they found that the Libyan people would not submit. NATO attacks destroyed power plants and water supply networks. They also committed the most horrific killings of civilians in air strikes upon areas of Libya that refused to submit to NATO’s “rebel” allies. Today, Libya is a hellhole for many. The gangs of militias that the American, British and French ruling classes (supported by Australian imperialism) installed into power are roaming the streets murdering their opponents – and often that means each other too. This once relatively peaceful country is today wracked by frequent outbreaks of violence and intensified tribal conflicts. Particularly victimised today are Libya’s black African population who have been subjected to barbaric massacres and forced relocation by NATO’s allies. Black Libyans are also among the worst treated of the thousands of prisoners unofficially held and tortured by the pro-NATO militias. In the meantime, the new NATO-puppet regime is allowing its imperialist masters to grab larger chunks of Libya’s oil wealth and greater access to its economy, all the while looting their share of the country’s wealth with a level of corruption greater than in the Gaddafi days.
We cannot allow Syria to meet the same fate. Syrian migrants opposed to the imperialist campaign have organised a rally for 12 noon on August 5 at Sydney’s Town Hall under the slogans: “We demand no Western Intervention in Syria! Stop the US-NATO proxy war! Question the fabrication and misinformation being spread by Western media! Condemn the real terrorists, who are… being funded, trained and armed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, NATO with the support of the US and Israel! Peace in Secular Syria!” Trotskyist Platform (TP) urges all readers of our publications to support this important action. And we say that while you are at the rally be sure to advocate to fellow participants a strategy of mobilising the working class against the Australian regime’s participation in the imperialist drive. TP will be organising a contingent for the rally that, while calling to defend Syria against the pro-imperialist “Rebels,” will also promote opposition to imperialist intervention everywhere. Thus we will call for support to the ongoing Libyan resistance against the NATO-puppet regime in that country and will demand that all NATO/Australian troops get out of Afghanistan and all Australian troops get out of East Timor.
The struggle over Syria has enormous implications for the entire world. If the capitalist rulers of the U.S., Britain, France, Australia etc get away with imposing regime change in Syria they will be emboldened to target other governments that do not submit enough to their diktats (just like how NATO’s success in overthrowing Libya’s Gaddafi government has in its turn encouraged their drive to establish a puppet regime in Syria.) Everyone knows that if the imperialists succeed in toppling Assad then Syria’s Iranian ally will be next on the chopping block. And what then? Perhaps the left-wing governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and other parts of Latin America will be targeted. And one of the ultimate foreign policy goals for the capitalist powers is also, of course, the destruction of the socialistic states in Cuba, China, North Korea and anywhere else where a workers state so hated and feared by the imperialists has dared to raise its head ever since the Russian Revolution of 1917 first led the workers of the world by its bright example.
Why NATO Powers Are Desperate for Regime Change in Syria
So why do the Western capitalists want regime change in Syria? After all, unlike in say Cuba and China, the Baath Party rulers of Syria, despite some pretensions of “socialism,” pretty much run a capitalist system anyway. And the Baathists are hardly consistent anti-imperialists, either. So it was that in 1991, the government of Bashar Al-Assad’s father, Hafeez Al-Assad, supported the first U.S.-led Gulf War against Iraq. Yet all this is not enough for the imperialists. They want total puppets – like the regimes currently ruling Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain and Turkey. And this Assad’s Baathists are not. For one, domestically, the Assad government, while overseeing a system based on capitalist exploitation, still maintains a degree of nationalized industry. This makes it harder for corporations from the richer countries to exploit Syria to the extent that they would like to. However, unlike Libya, Syria is not spectacularly resource rich. Thus the imperialists’ main reasons for wanting to depose the Assad government are not about Syrian domestic issues per se but rather to do with Syria’s regional role.
This is because the current Damascus government sometimes obstructs imperialist plans. Thus, while the Baathists supported the 1991 Gulf war, in 2003 they opposed the invasion of Iraq by the US-led “coalition of the willing.” And while the Damascus government has generally maintained an uneasy status quo with Israel, at the same time it has provided sanctuary for various Palestinian liberation groups and has helped to arm Israel’s Lebanese foe, Hezbollah. Indeed, today alongside its Iranian ally, Syria is the last remaining Middle Eastern country with any significant military strength that is not part of the NATO fold. There had been one other such country until last year … Libya. But we all know what happened there!
If Washington and Co. can now bring Syria and Iran under their control that would shore up the position of their key regional attack dogs, Saudi Arabia and Israel. More importantly for them, it would bring the whole oil-rich Middle East under their domination. That would allow their corporate elites to plunder yet more billions in petrodollars. It would also help them to isolate and undermine the world’s only non-imperialist power, the Peoples Republic of China. A good part of the West’s regime change agenda in Libya and now Syria and Iran is about depriving China of allies in the oil-rich Middle East and upsetting the flow of energy resources to China’s booming socialistic economy.
Put in a nutshell, if the imperialists succeed in getting their way in Syria it would be a very bad thing for the masses in the Middle East and for all the downtrodden peoples of the globe. That is why the working class, all leftists and all opponents of the subjugation of the “Third World” must stand against imperialism’s schemes to impose regime change on the people of Syria. We must strongly take the side of the pro-government forces against the pro-imperialist Opposition in the military conflict that is now wracking Syria. That means we must not only oppose direct NATO intervention but must also oppose the massive support that the imperialists are giving to their servants within Syria – in particular, the Free Syrian Army and Syrian National Council opposition groups. Down with all sanctions and diplomatic measures against Syria! Down with all imperialist funding of armed groups and political organisations!
We should take this clear stand without giving political support to Assad and his Baathists. In other words, communists in Syria should in this period continue to recruit to their own banner. They should prove in action that they are the best anti-imperialists and in this way increase their strength relative to the Baathists. Communists should be saying: first we will unite with Assad’s supporters to defeat the imperialists and their puppets and then we will be able to prove to the victorious masses that they also do not need to be ruled by those who sometimes ally with imperialism – like the Baathists have done in the past. Instead, we will show the masses that they need a consistently anti-imperialist government – a workers’ and toiling peoples’ government. For only the working class in power can truly free Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Tunisia, Libya, Iran, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and others not only from imperialist political meddling but from economic plunder by the corporate bigwigs of the richer capitalist powers.
However, there is no getting around the need right now to support the pro-Assad forces in the current conflict. Yet most of the avowed Left groups in Australia are badly shirking that responsibility. These groups – such as Socialist Alternative, the Solidarity group and Socialist Alliance – say that they are opposed to imperialist intervention in Syria, yet they are at the same time, to different degrees, backing the pro-imperialist Opposition movement. Often they do this by making proclamations supporting the “Syrian Revolution.” But this current “Syrian Revolution” is no progressive social revolution – it is a “revolution” supported, armed, funded and proclaimed by imperialism. To be sure, many in Syria who have dived in behind the Opposition are partly motivated by legitimate grievances. Chief among these grievances is unbearably high unemployment as well as high prices for basic items resulting from the neo-liberal slashing of subsidies and cutbacks in public infrastructure. Yet the victory of the imperialist-backed “Revolution” will only lead to the rich Western business elite increasing their grip over Syria. That will lead to still worse exploitation of the masses as well as to privatisations and imperialist-dictated austerity. That in turn will cause even more unemployment and erosion of public services. Look at the poverty and chaos that the imperialist-backed “Revolution” has brought to the Libyan masses!
Now all this does not mean that any opposition to a government that is disliked by imperialists, like the Assad government, will always be reactionary and pro-imperialist. Far from it! From early on in the Middle East uprisings, Trotskyist Platform has insisted that an opposition movement in any Middle Eastern country cannot be worth supporting in any way unless it is fighting for a government that will bemore hostile to imperialism than the current regimethat it is opposing. This is doubly true for movements in countries whose governments currently have frosty relations with the imperialists, like Syria and Iran. Yet from the start of the recent upheaval in Syria, the Syrian Opposition did not meet this criterion. The movement quickly became dominated by both Western liberals and more decisively by pro-imperialist politico-religious forces, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood – an organisation with a long history of co-operation with Washington despite its rhetoric against the U.S.’s Israeli ally. Indeed, an article in The New Yorker by American journalist Seymour Hersh back in 2007 revealed that the U.S. was already then financing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood via its Saudi allies. It was also providing other technical assistance to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies with Washington using its servants in Lebanon – it particular the clique around the billionaire Hariri family – as go betweens.
It is true that at the start of the current upheaval the Opposition movement was very diverse. It brought together all those opposed to Assad from many directions. That included some leftists, liberal secularists and others who did not want to become allies of imperialism. Yet those who may have intended to form a progressive opposition have by choosing to remain allied, however loosely, with the dominant pro-imperialist opposition groupings are in practice helping imperialism’s agenda to establish a puppet government in Damascus.
Early on in the Syrian upheaval, while we were especially suspicious of the Opposition, we did not take a definite side in the clashes between the imperialist-encouraged Opposition and the repressive government. For at that time, while it was clear that the NATO powers were sympathetic to the Opposition, it was not then assured that the Opposition had been decisively brought under their wing. Yet increasingly this is what happened. The bloody victory of imperialist-imposed regime change in Libya helped to further subordinate the Syrian Opposition to Washington, London, Paris and Co. Meanwhile, the Western regimes and their Saudi, Qatari and Turkish partners ensured that arms, supplies and money were funnelled only to the most compliant groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. This further increased the relative weight of the most pro-imperialist factions of the Opposition. Eventually, it became clear that the Syrian armed Opposition were definitely acting, whether consciously or not, as servants of imperialism. From that time on, Trotskyist Platform has taken the position of supporting those siding with the Damascus government in their resistance against the pro-imperialist Opposition. We are not alone in taking this course. There are Syrian activists who call themselves the “Patriotic Opposition” who like us are not political supporters of the Baathists but who are also, rightly, mobilizing in a united-front with the pro-Assad forces against the pro-imperialist “Rebels.”
Over the last few months, Trotskyist Platform, uniquely among Australian socialist groups, has joined in demonstrations in Sydney held by the many Syrian migrants that are against the Syrian Opposition. We also participated in a March 31 protest initiated by the Social Justice Network that among other demands called to oppose foreign intervention in Syria. At these rallies, Trotskyist Platform has been promoting the need to combine opposition to Canberra’s support for imperialist actions against Syria with opposition to Australian capitalism’s attacks here at home on the rights of the working class, poor, “ethnic” people and Aboriginal people. Thus, a sign we have been carrying at the demonstrations reads:
Australian Government Demands for Pro-Imperialist, Regime Change in Syria Is Only Good for Australia’s Rich, Capitalist Class. Australian Working Class: Fight against All Neo-Colonial Meddling in the Middle East!
Syrian Masses Mobilise against Pro-Imperialist Opposition
Demonstrations in both Syria and by Syrian communities abroad against the Western-backed Opposition have been massive. Many Syrian people are horrified at the death, violence and chaos that the “Rebels” have brought to their once relatively peaceful country. Revulsion at the prospect of Syria being turned into a totally subservient neocolony of imperialism has brought hundreds of thousands of people who are not Baath Party sympathisers to join with Baathist supporters in huge demonstrations within Syria.
Yet it is not only legitimate hatred of the imperialists that is energizing the Syrian masses against the Opposition. The dominant elements of the Opposition – including the Muslim Brotherhood, “independent” jihadists, the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb-al-Tahrir) and the still more fanatical Salafists – are strongly politically religious outfits who want to curtail the rights of women and restrict social freedoms. By contrast, the Baathist government is a relatively secular government. For all the anti-working class and repressive character of the Assad dynasty, the fact remains that women in Syria have the most rights of any country in the Arab world. Women are, of course, far from being completely liberated in Syria and this becomes especially evident when Syria is compared with those ex-colonial, developing countries that are luckily under socialistic rule. Thus, female illiteracy in Syria is 22% while it is only 9% in socialistic China where over 99% of young women (those aged between 15 and 24) are literate (World Bank Report 2010.) Nevertheless, in Assad’s Syria, women have far greater rights when compared with those terribly oppressive societies whose rulers are fronting the imperialist campaign against Syria. For example, in Saudi Arabia the ruling monarchy has ensured that nearly all women are excluded from many basic activities – like playing sport and driving a car! Indeed, some reactionary elements are joining the Syrian “Rebels”, in part, because they think that this is indeed where a woman’s place should be. They are angry that women have too much freedom in secular Syria! On the other hand, large numbers of Syrian women and youth are flocking in behind pro-government rallies because they don’t want to see the position of Syrian women thrown back to the hell that Saudi women face. They also don’t want to see their social freedoms crushed in a fundamentalist “new” order. This has been evident too in the Australian rallies supporting the Damascus government organized by parts of the Syrian expatriate community. It has been refreshing to see the prominent role women have played in these rallies. These demonstrations have also been notable for the fact that women and men have stood side by side with one another at the events and that most of the women participants have been wearing secular dress. In contrast, several other recent public actions in Australia related to the Middle East upheavals have been characterized by women playing a subordinate role in the events and/or by men and women being segregated by rally organizers.
Closely related to the struggle over the position of women is the issue of secularism. The biggest players in the Syrian Opposition want to replace Assad’s secular government with a government that is not only specifically Islamic but specifically Sunni Islamic. They have been appealing to and whipping up Sunni sectarianism against the 30% of Syrians who are from non-Sunni backgrounds – Christians, Alawis, other Shias (Alawis practice a strand of Islam related to Shia Islam), Druze etc.
This has even had its reflection here with supporters of the Syrian Opposition disgustingly establishing a Facebook site, labeled “Boycott Tyranny,” which calls on people to boycott Sydney shops that the site identifies as being owned by Shias and Alawis in Sydney. ABC Radio(World Today program, June 26) reported that people have even gone into the shops to tell customers not to buy from the stores. The same program also refers to reports that the Australian Alawite community have been targeted even more directly with a shooting in Sydney attributed to sectarian tensions, as well as an attack on a prayer room in Melbourne.
In Syria, itself, Sunni sectarian “Rebel” forces have been responsible for terrible massacres against non-Sunni communities as well as desecration of Christian and Alawi religious sites. Not surprisingly then, most of Syria’s minority communities are on the side of the Baathist government in the conflict with the Opposition. So are a great many from the Sunni community who want to restore the country’s decades-old, relative, inter-communal peace. That relative peace between the communities – which was always fragile because capitalist rule could not solve the problems of poverty and inequality that breed ethnic/communal tensions – is in danger of being totally shattered. Sectarian killings against ethnic minority communities by Sunni Opposition fighters has, in turn, led to revenge attacks against Sunni people.
Meanwhile, not satisfied with setting off communal killings in Syria, pro-imperialist forces have also been inciting communal tensions in Lebanon between Sunnis and Shias/Alawis. Indeed, some observers have suggested that the NATO imperialists may in the end seize on an act of communal slaughter in Lebanon rather than in Syria as their excuse to directly unleash their military might upon both these countries.
Massacres by Imperialist-Backed Forces Used to Justify More Massacres
There is an eerie resemblance between the direction parts of Syria are headed in and what happened to Iraq. There too, at least on a personal and social level, there was once relative peace between Sunnis and Shias. Then the U.S.-led invading forces appealed first to Shia sectarianism to back their invasion and then later to Sunni sectarianism to undercut the anti-occupation insurgency and to justify the continuation of the occupation on the grounds that the invaders would protect minority communities. The result of these divide and conquer tactics was that it set off a horrific explosion of mutual violence and bombings between Shias and Sunnis that has killed tens of thousands of people. Even though most of the occupying forces have now left the country, their actions have destroyed Iraq’s inter-communal peace for many generations to come.
The ongoing imperialist meddling in Syria is not only starting to take Syria down the same path but, as in Iraq, the Western capitalist powers are, with the height of cynicism, using the need to stop sectarian killings as a rationale for further intervention. In many cases the massacres that they are pointing to have been actually committed by their proxies within Syria. A case in point is the heinous massacre that took place in the plains of Houla in the town of Taldou, not far from Syria’s border with northern Lebanon. That massacre saw 108 people murdered in cold blood including 49 children. Immediately, the NATO powers and their Australian imperialist allies blamed the Syrian government for the atrocity.
Of course, the mainstream Western media were quick to blame the Syrian Army too. UN officials, for their part, led by that resolute imperialist puppet who serves as Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, also strongly implied that the Assad government was responsible even while admitting that they had no proof. Yet before long the real facts started to emerge. For starters, it became clear that even the supporters of the Opposition in the town where the massacre occurred were not blaming the Syrian Army itself. Rather they blamed a pro-government civilian militia group called the Shabiha. That was also convenient as it is easier to frame a civilian force for responsibility for a massacre than to frame an actual army. Yet despite all the highly charged denunciation of Assad’s supposed responsibility for war crimes, more and more holes emerged in the Al Jazeera/CNN/BBC/Fox/ABC/SBS story. For one, it became clear that everyone killed was from three extended families who lived in different parts of the town of Taldou. Yet no neighbours were even injured. So why did those responsible for the massacre only target these particular families who were dispersed throughout the town and not attack the many staunchly and openly anti-government people who lived in the town – including those who later spoke to the Western media? And why would a force with the military strength in the area to carry out a horrific but highly selective massacre of people in different parts of the town then leave the area to their enemies immediately afterwards, allowing their enemies to use the dead bodies as propaganda? Especially when they knew that U.N. monitors would soon be on their way! As the Chinese state-run newspaper, Peoples Daily, expressed it in an article titled “Humanitarian Intervention” May Cause Bigger Disaster:
Without truth, there can be no justice. The top priority right now is to find out the truth behind the massacre. As Syria’s opposing parties are all shifting the blame, we can guess that whoever benefits the most from the massacre is the mastermind.
…The massacre occurred at a time when the United Nations was sending more monitors to Syria, and during Annan’s visit to the country. It would not make any sense for the Syrian government to cause trouble for itself and to offer Western powers an excuse to intervene. Therefore, the Syrian government is the most unlikely suspect for the massacre.
Those who want to oust Assad and fish in troubled waters are more likely suspects.
Peoples Daily Online, 1 June 2012
The detailed truth of what happened in Houla was actually published by various freelance journalists that investigated the facts. However, this truth was not widely known until a major mainstream Western newspaper, the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) went to Houla and performed its own serious investigation. The FAZ found that the Houla massacre was indeed committed by Syrian Opposition forces, in particular by forces driven by a fanatical Sunni jihadism. Although the FAZ does do its best to protect the “reputation” of its fellow mainstream Western media outlets (and allied Arab media like Al-Jazeera) who gave a completely wrong account of what happened at Houla, the FAZ account nevertheless does provide conclusive proof that Syrian Opposition forces were the perpetrators of this horrific crime. The newspaper’s findings were published in two articles: an initial article on 7 June (see: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/neue-erkenntnisse-zu-getoeteten-von-hula-abermals-massaker-in-syrien-11776496.html) and a more detailed follow-up piece on 13 June (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/arabische-welt/syrien-eine-ausloeschung-11784434.html for a translation see http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/06/new-faz-piece-on-houla-massacre-the-extermination/comments/page/2/#comments).
Based on eyewitness accounts, the conservative FAZ was able to explain the twisted “motivation” behind why the perpetrators singled out the three extended families for extermination
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Of the names of civilians killed, 84 are known. These are the fathers, mothers and 49 children of the family Al Sayyid and two branches of the family Abdarrazzaq. Residents of the city state that these were Alawites and Muslims who had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. A few kilometers away from the border with Lebanon, this made them suspect of being sympathizers of Hezbollah, detested among Sunnis [it would be more accurate to say detested by sectarian-minded supporters of the “Rebels” – TP]. Additionally killed in Taldou were relatives of the government loyal member of parliament Abdalmuti Mashlab.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 June (translation)
Only one member of the family Al Sayyid, the eleven year old Ali, survived the massacre. This is because he had pretended to be dead and smeared himself with the blood of his mother. Ali is quoted by AP (Associated Press) as saying that: “The perpetrators were shaved bald and had long beards.” FAZ noted that this is the look of fanatical jihadists, not of the (secular, pro-government) Shabiha militia.
It turned out that some residents in the town, a mainly Sunni town loyal to the Opposition, took part in the massacre. That is why they joined in telling the pro-Opposition media and UN inspectors that later arrived (and who both wanted to believe this in any case) that the pro-government militia were the perpetrators.
The FAZ also quoted eyewitnesses about how this was hardly the first time that the Opposition has committed an atrocity and then blamed the Syrian authorities for it:
On April 1 the nun Agnès-Maryam, from the monastery of Jacob (“Deir Mar Yakub”) which lies south of Homs in the village of Qara, described in a long open letter the climate of violence and fear in the region. She comes to the conclusion that the Sunni insurgents operate a stepwise liquidation of all minorities. She describes the expulsion of Christians and Alawites from their homes, which are then occupied by the rebels, and the rape of young girls, who the rebels pass off as “war booty”; she was an eye witness when the rebels killed a businessman in the street of Wadi Sajjeh with a car bomb after he refused to close his shop and then said in front of a camera from Al Jazeera that the regime had committed the crime. Finally she describes how Sunni insurgents in the Khalidijah district of Homs locked Alawite and Christian hostages into a house and blew it up only to then explain that this was an atrocity of the regime.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 June (translation)
The second FAZ article concludes with a summary of the horrific events that took place in the Houla town of Taldou:
The following sequence of events can be reconstructed: After the Friday prayers on May 25th more than 700 gunmen under the leadership of Abdurrazzaq Tlass and Yahya Yusuf came in three groups from Rastan, Kafr Laha and Akraba and attacked three army checkpoints around Taldou. The numerically superior rebels and the (mostly also Sunni) soldiers fought bloody battles in which two dozen soldiers, mostly conscripts, were killed. During and after the fighting the rebels, supported by residents of Taldou, snuffed out the families of Sayyid and Abdarrazzaq. They had refused to join the opposition.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 June (translation)
Australian Imperialism’s Aggressive Stance on Syria
The imperialists followed their false accusations against Damascus over Houla by seizing on the understandable world outrage at the massacre to justify escalating their intervention in Syria. They also harnessed the outrage to intensify pressure on Russia and China to accept further moves to topple the Assad government. In late May, various Western countries also expelled Syrian diplomatic personnel. As usual the ambitious Australian imperialists could not wait to get in first. New ALP foreign minister, Bob Carr, was the first to announce the expulsion of Syrian consular staff. Carr even slipped in ahead of his hawkish counterparts in Britain and France. This follows a definite pattern. As the imperialists ratcheted up towards their direct intervention in Libya last year, it was previous foreign minister Kevin Rudd who first spearheaded the calls for that “No Fly Zone” that became the cover for the wholesale NATO assault upon Libya.
Many who oppose the Australian rulers’ actions over Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan etc see it as being the result of Canberra being subservient to Washington. In reality, the Australian ruling class’ stance has an even more sinister motivation. For, while Australia’s capitalist rulers do back their Washington counterparts on international questions, it is not simply because they are not independent enough to stand up to the U.S. imperialists but rather because their alliance with Washington serves Australian imperialism’s own predatory goals. The rich corporate bosses of Australia, who exploit Australian workers, exploit in an even more aggressive way the peoples of the South Pacific and parts of Asia. Australian-owned resource giant likes BHP and Woodside Petroleum loot the mineral and oil wealth of Papua New Guinea and East Timor. For a long time Australian business elites have also dominated the economies of countries like Fiji and the Solomon Islands and Australian bosses in various sectors are making a killing out of their operations in Indonesia and the Philippines.
All this exploitation is ultimately enforced by the use or threat of military action. In 1989, the Australian regime organised its puppets in Papua New Guinea to orchestrate a brutal war and blockade of the island of Bougainville which had risen up against the devastating destruction of its people’s livelihoods by Australian-owned mining corporation CRA (which was later merged with a British company to form Rio Tinto.) Australian ex-special forces mercenaries strafed the Bougainville people from helicopter gun ships. By the end of the war, 20,000 Bougainville people had died as a result of gunfire or from the lack of medicine and food caused by the blockade. Then in 1999, after strongly backing Indonesia’s brutal occupation of East Timor for 24 years, the Australian rulers seized on bloodshed in East Timor to militarily occupy the country and turn this oil-rich area into its own direct neocolony. In 2006, hundreds of Australian troops again occupied East Timor. This military re-occupation formed a key part of a defacto coup that Canberra orchestrated to depose the then Fretilin party government in East Timor. The Australian rulers considered that this Fretilin government, led by then prime minister Mari Alkatiri, was not subservient enough and was too persistent in questioning Australia’s theft of Timor’s huge seabed oil resources. Even today, there are still 390 Australian troops in tiny East Timor. They lead a so-called “International Stabilisation Force.” Meanwhile, in between their first and second interventions in East Timor, the Australian Defence Forces led yet another military occupation of a South Pacific country. This time they took over the Solomon Islands. The Australian military remains in the Solomons to this day, albeit in reduced numbers, alongside Australian Federal Police and high-level bureaucrats busy establishing a puppet regime there. Then just after their 2006 re-occupation of East Timor, Australian troops and cops and their New Zealand allies were at it again. This time they intervened into Tonga in order to shore up the monarchy there. The Tongan monarchy had been rocked by mass protests against the domination of Tonga’s parliament by un-elected officials appointed by the king. And after doing all this, the Australian regime has the hide to today claim that it is trying to win “democracy” for Syria!
Today, the Australian ruling class plan even more aggressive interventions in this region. There was uproar in Fiji and other countries in this region when The Australian newspaper recently revealed that a secret chapter of Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper prepared detailed plans for a possible invasion of Fiji and military intervention in Papua New Guinea (Pacific Media Centre, June 9.) The plans specified the use of amphibious ships in the invasion of Fiji and detailed the amount of Australian troops that would be needed. The plans also spoke about how the Australian military could “secure the government” during an intervention in PNG.
However, in order to bully and exploit the peoples of this region in such a stampeding manner, the Australian capitalists need the protection of more powerful bullies. And that’s the biggest gang of bullies around – the imperialist rulers of the United States of America. So when Bob Carr leapt to get in behind Washington’s campaign against Syria, he was doing it in the way that a lower-level mafia boss always supports the adventures of The Godfather. The less powerful crime boss always knows that his ability to maraud over his own turf depends on the ongoing power of that top criminal. That is why all the parties bidding to run Australian capitalism are supporting the NATO drive against Syria. That means not only the right-wing Liberals and the ALP sellouts of the working class but also the small-l liberal Greens. The Greens, who opposed the sending of troops to Iraq and Afghanstan, have a pacifist reputation. However, their strident support of NATO intervention in Libya and Syria proves that they see the world from the standpoint of the Australian imperialists no less than do the Liberals and the ALP tops. Indeed, the Greens are the most aggressive of all the parliamentary parties in supporting the drive for imperialist-imposed regime change in Syria. When the Gillard government announced their order demanding that Syrian diplomatic personnel leave Australia, Greens parliamentarian Adam Bandt not only boasted that, “It is something we called for quite some time ago” but called for additional sanctions against Syria (The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May.)
Yet while supporting NATO’s proxy war against Syria makes sense to all wings of Australia’s ruling class, this attack on Syria is truly bad news for the Australian masses. If the imperial ruling classes succeed in imposing bloody regime change in Syria then all of them, including the rulers here, will become even more arrogant and even more aggressive in their dealings with the exploited and oppressed in their own countries. That is why all the downtrodden in Australia should struggle so that imperialism’s schemes for Syria be thoroughly defeated. NSW workers whose rights to compensation when injured at work are being viciously attacked, public sector workers in Queensland, NSW and Victoria facing major job cuts by state Liberal governments, single mothers whose payments have been drastically slashed by the federal ALP/Greens government and Aboriginal people facing racist police violence would all see their struggles receive a bit of a boost if the ruling class of this country suffered blows to its prestige from setbacks to its “plans” for Syria.
Furthermore, there is a more long-term, yet more critical, reason why working class people must oppose the imperialist campaign against Syria. For the fearsome storm that is raging against Syria today is in some ways but the early winds of a much more cataclysmic cyclone that is threatening to engulf all of humanity. And that threat is not just the threat of another war pitting the imperial powers against a small developing country, or a war against NATO’s likely next target, Iran. It is the threat of a war between the predatory world powers themselves. For while all of NATO wants to get a more pliant regime in Damascus, each of the powers involved truly only wants a new regime to be their own exclusive puppet. Thus in Libya, while the British, French and U.S. imperialists united to forcibly overthrow the former Gaddafi government, the blood had hardly dried on all the people they had killed from their terror bombing when the competing oil corporations that these powers respectively serve started being at odds over who should get the biggest share of oil projects. Today, the German imperialist rulers are, as they were over Libya, more cautious about military intervention in Syria than their British and American counterparts. Why? Because they know that part of the reason why Washington wants to be able to control the Middle East – and with it the flow of oil – is so that it will have the ability to, in the future, blackmail the U.S.’s German and Japanese competitors. Meanwhile, part of the reason why the French imperialists have been so gung-ho about intervening in Libya and Syria is because they don’t want their American and British rivals to secure all the loot for themselves!
The extent to which such a falling out between thieves already exists was seen in the June 18-19 G20 summit which focussed on the European economic crisis. At the start of the summit, European Commission head Jose Mauel Barroso launched an angry public attack on the Americans and Canadians for lecturing Europe and then blamed them (with some justification) for starting the whole global financial crisis. To be sure, a war between the U.S. and European powers is not yet an immediate threat. But the ongoing capitalist economic crisis hastens the day when such a conflict is, indeed, posed. For the only method that the capitalist rulers have left to clog up the expanding holes in their system is to try and fill it up with newly seized raw materials, markets and cheap labour from the “Third World.” Yet the amount of bounty that can be plundered from the “Third World” is finite and all the thieving capitalist powers want to get the biggest share of the loot. As they did in World Wars I and II, these competing robbers are quite capable of dragging humanity into a new global war. If working class people do not want to see their children conscripted to go and kill and be killed for the sake of their own countries’ capitalist exploiters then we must stop the drive towards a new world horror. We must stop the nuclear-armed NATO powers from becoming even more unhindered by restraining their push for regime change in Syria.
There is also another type of – perhaps more imminent – war that the NATO powers are brewing out of all the poison that they are pouring into Syria. Part of the reason why the NATO powers are targeting Syria is because alongside Iran it is a country in the oil-rich Middle East that has good relations with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC.) The big capitalist powers want to isolate the PRC in order to destroy socialistic rule in China. They want to foment a right-wing rebellion inside China that can implement a pro-capitalist regime change. Washington and Co. know that putting the diplomatic and military squeeze on the PRC helps to encourage pro-imperialist forces within China. And if all this does not work, the imperial powers are preparing for the possibility of, some time in the future, unleashing direct military action against the PRC. That is why the U.S. military is expanding its forces in the Western Pacific as part of its “Pivot to Asia” agenda. The Australian ruling class has already signed up to this, barely disguised, anti-China push with the Gillard government agreeing to allow U.S. military aircraft and 2,500 U.S. troops to station in Darwin. The secret chapter of the 2009 Defence White Paper referred to above also spoke of plans to use submarines in conjunction with the U.S. military to blockade Chinese ports and sea routes (The Australian, 2 June.)
The workers movement in this country and internationally must stop this threatening drive against the socialistic PRC. If the capitalist powers succeed in defeating socialistic rule in the PRC, that will lead to mass privatisations of China’s dominant state-owned enterprises. That would turn all of China into a huge sweatshop for the exploitation of labour, unlike today, where such conditions exist only in parts of China and to a lesser and lesser degree. If the 1.3 billion Chinese people were reduced to being a slave labour force for Western corporations, that would in turn allow the capitalist bosses in Australia and everywhere to wield the prospect of using “cheap Chinese labour” to drastically drive down workers’ wages and conditions at home – something that we have already seen a partial taste of as a result of the partial inroads of capitalism into China. Meanwhile, if the world’s only non-capitalist power was taken out of the way, the imperialists would feel little constraint to further raping the people of the developing countries. That is another reason why working class activists, leftists and opponents of exploitation of the “Third World” must oppose the imperialist drive to establish a pro-NATO – and thus anti-PRC – puppet regime in Syria.
China Must Do Its Socialistic Duty and Stand More Strongly against the Imperialist Drive against Syria
Given these imperialist plans for China, it is not surprising that China has been obstructing NATO’s schemes against Syria. Supporters of socialism can be proud that the PRC has vetoed some of the UN Security Council motions aimed at preparing the way for imperialist-imposed regime change in Syria. Russia too has opposed some of the moves against Syria. On July 19, for the third time, the PRC and Russia made a double veto of a Western resolution in the Security Council that would have imposed further measures supporting the pro-imperialist “Rebels.”
Now, Russia’s reasons for currently opposing NATO’s designs upon Syria are different to China’s. Russia, unlike the PRC, is administered by a capitalist state. The Russian rulers are military powerful but not currently economically strong enough to as yet be a full-blown, independent imperialist power like any of the main NATO states. But they would like to be one – Russia certainly ain’t the socialistic Soviet Union! Russia objects to Western intervention in Syria because Syria is its ally and Russia takes offence at its power being challenged. Furthermore, the Russian bourgeoise would like to draw a line in nearby Syria to try and reduce NATO encroachment into the affairs of its ex-Soviet neighbours which Russia would like to be within its own sphere of influence. Nevertheless, despite Russia’s intentions, opponents of imperialism can only welcome any Russian arms going to the Syrian government at a time when it is battling a takeover by imperialist proxies.
Both Russia and the PRC are under tremendous pressure to withdraw their opposition to still greater imperialist intervention in Syria. A sustained diplomatic offensive led by U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has seen both countries condemned for refusing to allow the more overt NATO plans for regime change. Unfortunately, there are signs that both countries have, to a small degree, yielded to this pressure. At an end of June meeting on Syria, Russia, China and the NATO powers all agreed to a plan put forward by the UN “mediator” for a transitional government in Syria including both government and opposition figures to be selected by “mutual consent.” To be sure, Russia and China sharply differed with the Western powers on what the agreement actually meant – with the NATO powers saying there was no scope for Assad in such a government and Russia and China insisting that Assad should be part of the transition. Nevertheless, the acceptance that members of the pro-imperialist Opposition should be brought into the government to play a major role in it is a backward step that will only encourage the imperialist-backed forces.
Opponents of the imperialist takeover of Syria should be aware that Russia and the PRC acquiesced, albeit reluctantly, to the NATO assault on Libya by abstaining on the U.N. Security Council Resolution authorising that notorious, “No Fly Zone.” Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that one or both of Russia and the PRC will not betray, to an equal or lesser degree, Syria in the same way. There are different reasons why Russia and the PRC could do this. Russia as an ambitious, wanna-be imperialist power is susceptible to being enticed by other imperialist powers with promises that they can be part of the spoils in any deal. Indeed, the Western powers have been none too subtle in offering Russia “a major role” in Syria should it agree to booting out Assad.
The PRC, on the other hand, is a workers state and as such, however deformed it may be from the ideal, is genetically prohibited from becoming an imperial power. However, its leadership pursues a weak foreign policy of trying, at almost all costs, to avoid antagonising the imperial powers on all issues not directly pertaining to China itself. Thus, while it was hostile to the NATO takeover of Libya and is very worried about the moves towards imperialist-imposed regime change in Syria, Beijing only reluctantly takes a stand on this issue. Furthermore, within the PRC leadership there are conflicting forces arguing over policies on Syria and other international questions. Those arguing for more accommodation to the Western imperialists are generally those on the right-wing of China’s establishment. For these layers, greater acceptance of the capitalist powers on the international stage is part of their push on the domestic front for greater capitalist penetration of China’s, still public sector-dominated, economy. The most high-ranking of the right-leaning elements within China is the number three man in the ruling Communist Party (CPC), premier Wen Jiaobao. At a press conference following the March sitting of China’s parliament, in which he also made a thinly veiled attack on some of the leftists within the CPC, Wen gave some legitimacy to the Syrian Opposition (see Xinhua article, 14 March, “China has no self-interests in Syrian Issue, respects Arab people’s democracy appeal”) in a unilateral move that went beyond the bounds of the official PRC position on Syria. Opposing the likes of Wen Jiabao are leftists within the CPC. Among them are elements within the CPC leadership itself like CPC Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, the political leader of the PRC’s domestic security apparatus. These leftist elements are adamant on the need to strengthen the PRC’s socialistic foundations and as part of that struggle want a firmer line against the capitalist powers. In an article written in the CPC theoretical journal, Qiushi, Zhou Yongkang was emphatic:
We will never change in our endeavour to defend the [Communist] party’s leading role and socialism with Chinese characteristics.
We will resolutely resist the attacks of hostile forces on our nation’s political and judicial systems, and we will resolutely resist the influence of mistaken Western political and legal views.
China Leader Urges Resistance Against Western Forces,” AFP, 5 July 2012
Ultimately, the factional tensions within the Chinese leadership and the CPC are a watered down version of the basic conflict within China: a conflict between, on the one hand, the working class whose interests lie in preserving the workers state and ensuring that China moves on to a more consistently, pro-socialist path and, on the other hand, the budding layer of private business bosses within China, their more powerful counterparts in Hong Kong and Taiwan and the godfathers of all these capitalist exploiters – the ruling classes in the West. The state of this battle will not only have a tremendous impact on the well-being of the Chinese masses but on the fate of the entire world – and most immediately on the fate of Syria.
Unfortunately, even the more staunchly pro-socialist wing of the CPC leadership, while hostile to the capitalist powers, has no perspective of actually encouraging the class struggle of the working class masses withinthe imperialist countries against their own rulers. Thus the left-wing of the CPC leadership, while arguing for a firmer stance, also has a policy of seeking coexistence with the imperialist powers. This policy is based on a mantra that countries can agree to mutually not interfere in the affairs of other countries. This policy is a failure and must be abandoned. For while Beijing genuinely does try to not interfere in the internal affairs of the imperialist countries, the rulers of these capitalist powers are for their part doing everything possible to interfere in the internal affairs of the PRC. Interfere, that is, with the purpose of trying to undermine socialistic rule in China. What is needed for the PRC is a policy of standing in a firm, principled way against imperialism and capitalism. Today, the PRC should vote down at the UN and other forums all forms of imperialist meddling in Syria. This includes opposing calls for the Assad government to submit to having elements of the pro-imperialist forces brought in to the government. Furthermore, the PRC should be sending all required supplies – including arms – to the Syrian government to ensure that the NATO proxies are defeated. Above all, the PRC should seek to encourage the struggle for socialism in the imperialist countries themselves. For starters, they could win support for socialism by loudly proclaiming in international forums that the sole reason for China’s stunning successes in the midst of the global economic crisis is that its system is based on socialistic, public ownership of the commanding heights of its economy. Most crucially, the PRC must support major worker struggles in the capitalist world, like the brave struggles of Spanish mineworkers, while never missing a chance to attack the inequalities and injustice of capitalist rule in the West.
Have No Faith in the UN! Trust Only in the International Workers Movement to Resist Imperialism
Although Russia and China have been able to veto at the U.N. several Western-sponsored resolutions against Syria, we should have zero trust in the United Nations. The U.N. is dominated by the imperialist powers who by and large still rule the world. To be sure there are exceptions. The world’s most populous country, China, is a workers state, albeit one threatened by capitalist restorationist forces. There are also four other worker states in the world: Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Laos. Then there are a small number of rulers of developing countries that are currently taking a firm line against imperialism, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Russia, meanwhile, is a would-be imperialist rival of the NATO powers and thus does not always go along with the Western imperialists. Yet the U.N. remains a tool for U.S. imperialism in particular. For although most of the UN member countries are “Third World” countries suffering exploitation by the ruling classes of the richer nations, the rulers of these Developing Countries are subservient to the imperial powers. These local rulers are exploiters of their own masses and rely on the imperialist powers to help keep their own toiling classes subjugated even while baulking at the lion’s share that the imperialists plunder for themselves.
Thus the U.N. has a long history of being used as an “international” cover to help the U.S. and allied imperialists establish puppet regimes. In 1960, despite strong opposition from the then USSR and the likes of the then socialistic Yugoslavia, U.N. troops were highly complicit in a military coup against the newly elected independence leader of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. This coup, organised by the CIA and the Congo’s Belgian “former” colonial rulers, saw the left-leaning Lumumba not only executed but his body gruesomely cut up into pieces and dissolved in acid by Belgian police trying to cover up their responsibility for this horrific crime. The terrible suffering and violence that has plagued this mineral-rich region of the world ever since is in good part due to the criminal acts of the American and Belgian rulers and their U.N. tools in the early 1960s.
During the 1990s, sanctions imposed by the UN on Iraq led to the death of over one million Iraqis – mostly children – from a lack of medicine and sometimes food itself. Then UN so-called “weapons inspections” helped provide the pretext for the U.S.-led charge towards war on Iraq. In the end, with the UN having served its purpose on the issue, the U.S., Britain and Australia simply bypassed the UN and invaded Iraq in March 2003.
And of course last year, it was under the cover of a UN resolution that NATO devastated Libya and installed a puppet regime there. In Syria today, the UN continues to play a pro-imperialist role. Although the PRC and Russia have vetoed those UN resolutions that would have most blatantly backed the pro-imperialist forces, they have both acquiesced to the U.N. special envoy, Kofi Annan’s “mediation efforts” as well as to the presence of UN monitors in Syria. The effect of the UN monitors and Annan’s diplomatic pressure has been to impede the military efforts of the Syrian government while allowing the “Rebels” to attack the Syrian people unhindered. It has been this UN intervention alongside the massive imperialist backing that has allowed the “Rebels” to make advances over the last couple of months.
That is why we must oppose all forms of UN intervention in Syria. Instead of having any illusions in the UN our efforts must be directed into two connected paths. Firstly, we must appeal to the PRC to do its socialistic duty and stand more strongly against imperialist intervention in Syria. Secondly, and most crucially, we must mobilise opposition to imperialism’s attacks upon Syria within the imperialist countries themselves. However, in demonstrating against Canberra’s participation in the campaign against Syria, we should not see our protests as appeals to the Australian rulers to break ranks with their NATO counterparts. For as we have explained above, the Australian capitalist class is backing their U.S. counterparts because this is in their own interests. Thus any appeals to the Australian imperialists will be futile and will demoralise the movement. The struggle here must be instead seen as an action aimed at deterring an enemy. We need to mobilise a movement strong enough to make the Australian exploiting class fear that their continued participation in the regime-change drive against Syria will cost them at home – cost them in terms of stirring up opposition to their own rule here. That is why the movement against the Australian rulers’ actions over Syria must appeal to the working class – the class whose interests lie with standing against the capitalist ruling class that exploits them. For one this means that the Union Jack Australian flag must not be carried at demonstrations against the proxy war on Syria. For that flag is rightly hated by the most politically conscious trade union activists in this country. They know that this flag is the flag of the institutions and monarchy that upholds the tyranny of the greedy capitalist bosses. Furthermore, the current Australian flag is downright offensive to many Aboriginal people for it is the flag under which their ancestors were massacred and it is the flag under which, today, they continue to be dispossessed and subjected to continuing violence and racist discrimination by the authorities. It is those who are at the bottom of this unfair society who will be most receptive to a campaign against the Australian rulers’ neo-colonial drive against Syria.
Of course, we must understand that when the movement against imperialist intervention appeals to the class interests of the working class that will necessarily turn off any capitalist elements – for example, say, any wealthy businessmen from Australia’s Syrian community. But so be it! It is the working class through its collective industrial muscle that has the power to resist the imperialist ruling class. During the Vietnam War, we saw this in action. It was then that, in order to undermine the imperialist war against the Vietnamese revolutionaries, Australian seamen and waterfront workers refused to transport supplies to the Australian military. Today we need to build towards workers’ industrial action to protest against the imperialist campaign for regime change in Syria. This will, of course, not be easy. For our trade unions are currently, for the most part, led by pro-ALP officials who thus support the imperialist drive against Syria. Therefore, we need an intense political struggle within the workers movement to convince the most politically aware trade union members and win them to participating in the demonstrations against Western intervention. This energised layer of workers can then be the force to win broader sections of the union movement to solidarity with Syria against imperialism.
Trotskyist Platform (TP) vows to do all we can to win the most politically advanced layers of the working class to the defence of Syria. We will continue in the tradition the struggle that we waged last year to defend Libya against NATO and its puppets. On March 27, TP and Supporters of the Iranian Peoples Fadaee Guerillas led the first action in Australia against the bombing of Libya. This rally in Sydney’s Town Hall Square which demanded “NATO War Criminals – Hands Off Libya!” and called to “Defeat the NATO air strikes on Libya” was also supported by the Revolutionary Socialist Party and by particular activists within the Stop the War Coalition (that are more anti-imperialist than others in the coalition.) On April 10, we joined with courageous Libyan international students in a protest in Wollongong against the NATO attack. Later, as people in Libya continued to resist the NATO proxies following the imperialist capture of Tripoli, TP initiated a second united-front demonstration in Sydney in solidarity with the Libyan resistance. This September 10 speakout was held under the slogans: “Down with Canberra’s Diplomatic and Financial Support to Pro-NATO Forces Rampaging Through Libya! Smash’s NATO’s Drive to Conquer Libya!”
Stand Firm against Imperialist-Imposed Regime Change
To mobilise the masses of the imperialist countries against their own rulers’ drive against Syria requires first of all that leftists take a firm line against any bending to imperialist demands. Unfortunately, other than TP, most Left groups are currently failing to do this. Some figures on the Left are taking a harder line against the NATO “Rebels” but still accommodate to imperialist aims. Take, for instance, British left-leaning politician George Galloway. Galloway eloquently attacks Western intervention in Syria and criticises the Muslim Brotherhood and other “Rebel” groups. Yet Galloway then states that: “I hope that the Syrian people can find their way to a peaceful and negotiated solution to this conflict. Assad must go. This is the end of the era of dictatorship in Syria” (see Youtube of his speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQNbW6sSiQU&sns=em). However, any “negotiated solution” that allows the imperialist-backed forces a greater say in government is a concession to imperialism. And if Assad were to “go” as a result of a blatantly imperialist-backed movement then that too is a victory for the imperialists that will encourage them to pursue further regime-change operations around the globe. We must not allow the colonising powers such victories! Those leftists that understand this must fight to win broader sections of the Left to take a strong stand against any degree of imperialist-imposed regime change in Syria.
It is true that, in the future, the Baathist rulers of Syria will have to be swept away because the capitalist system that they administer cannot provide secure jobs and economic security to the masses and what’s more their continued rule is fuelling support for reactionary fundamentalist and pro-Western forces. However, such a progressive change could only come about as a result of an explicitly pro-working class movement that is avowedly more anti-imperialist and more secular than the current government. For such a movement to be builtdemands that the openly pro-imperialist forces that are trying to seize power today – the “Rebels” – are defeated. Only through the triumph of this anti-imperialist struggle can a truly progressive revolution be posed.
Where we do need to fight for regime change right now is in the imperialist countries themselves! We need to advance the struggle to depose the capitalist ruling classes in the West – the greatest force for oppression in the world. Let us not allow the torturers of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the ones who have killed hundreds of thousands of people in their brutal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the ones whose forces here kill Aboriginal people in custody and who use draconian repression against construction union activists, to continue killing and maiming people the world over in the name of “human rights.”
Right now, in certain NATO countries like Spain and Greece the capitalist establishment is deeply hated and the masses are truly restive. Workers in these countries have mobilised in wave after wave of general strikes against the ruling class that wants to make the masses pay for their failing capitalist economic system. A defeat for NATO’s regime change plans in Syria would further weaken the authority of the Spanish, Greek and Italian rulers and that could be just the spark that ignites the flame of revolutionary workers’ struggle in these countries. A defeat for the imperial powers in Syria would also be a blow against the ruling class establishment in the likes of the U.S. and Australia and would encourage the masses here to understand that those who oppress them are not invincible.
Today the world is at a crossroads. The major world capitalist economies are crumbling before our very eyes. Yet these dying beasts are still dangerous. They try to survive by the only way they know how – by devouring ever more of the wealth from the ex-colonial countries. However, if we can repulse their efforts to drive their tentacles deeper into the hearts of the ex-colonies, these monsters will lose confidence. And, meanwhile, the hundreds of millions suffering in the belly of these beasts will feel emboldened at the setbacks for their oppressors. They will start to organise to stab the beast to death with collective blows. And out of the slain carcasses of the capitalist beast we can feed the growth of a new society, a socialist society of peace and secularism where everyone is guaranteed decent jobs and a secure standard of living, a world where the subjugation of the ex-colonies by imperial powers will simply no longer exist. This is the future that we must work towards. The capitalist regimes in the U.S, Britain, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia must go!