Syria: The Balkan scenario
First published at NLR Sidecar.
Syria’s future is uncertain following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in a rebel blitzkrieg earlier this month. While millions are rightly celebrating the dictator’s fall, larger powers — most notably the US, Turkey and Israel — are vying to influence the new political settlement. The Salafist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has captured the central government, prompting tens of thousands of Shiites and other religious minorities to flee the country; Alawites in coastal regions are fearing retribution from the incoming regime; and Kurdish groups in the northeast are facing an onslaught from Turkish-backed militias. In this fraught landscape, one of the most plausible scenarios is a 21st-century version of the fate that befell the former Yugoslavia. There, state collapse paved the way for inter-ethnic conflict, which culminated in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosniaks and the ultimate division of the erstwhile socialist federation along ethnic lines. Neoliberal structural reforms meanwhile drove economic stagnation, unemployment and depopulation, to the benefit of local and international elites.
Yugoslav historian Andrej Grubačić rejects the simple use of the term ‘balkanization’ to describe this process, since it implies an essentialist nativism which renders the peoples of the Balkan peninsula incapable of peaceful co-existence. Instead, he insists that this was a matter of ‘balkanization from above’: a Western-sponsored programme of population transfers and ‘humanitarian interventions’ which deepened regional enmities by creating a cluster of ethnic statelets. This gave rise to a model of ‘stabilitocracy’, in which Balkan strongmen achieved relative peace by ruling with an iron fist, while opening their economies to trade from both East and West. The EU helped to prop up these repressive governments, keeping them in perpetual subservience while denying them any real prospect of accession to the bloc.
Although the contexts vary, there is nothing uniquely Balkan about this model. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, which this year celebrated a quarter-century on the waiting-list for EU membership, is similarly allowed to repress the Kurdish minority within and beyond its borders as a quid pro quo for keeping the lid on millions of Syrian refugees and other migrants. Without stretching the analogy too far, one could view Azerbaijan or Saudi Arabia as other paragons of ‘stability’, whose close ties to the West are used to whitewash their exclusionary identitarian regimes.
Today, that same buzzword is on the lips of Syria’s leaders. To safeguard the country’s putative stability, they are pursuing a policy of non-aggression toward the Israeli troops who are occupying fresh swathes of the south. They are pivoting away from Russia — suggesting it should withdraw troops formerly stationed in Syria in support of al-Assad — and towards Western powers, reestablishing diplomatic ties with the latter and lobbying effectively for sanctions relief. When the transitional Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir ran the HTS quasi-state in Idlib, between January and December 2024, he introduced a package of ‘modernizing’ measures including e-governance technologies and liberal planning laws. Now, his government is touting a shift away from protectionism towards a free-market model: ending restrictive import controls and legalizing dollar trading, to the delight of international investors, who are predicting years-long double-digit GDP growth. The regime is also promising to respect religious minorities, although it is taken for granted that they will still to be treated as second-class citizens.
As in the Balkans, though, dreams of neoliberal utopia are likely to be deflated. Under HTS, Idlib was a textbook case of crony capitalism: a monopoly system in which the political elite dominated oil imports, currency exchanges, the food market and even shopping malls, while cracking down on rival profiteers or political dissidents. The likelihood is that this system will now be scaled up to Syria at large, with the coterie around Jolani profiting from reconstruction funds while the state’s privatization agenda lines the pockets of regime-affiliated businessmen (as we saw during the fire-sale of public assets under Assad).
In this sense, HTS demonstrates the accommodation that has been forged between militant Islam and neoliberal economics. As Asef Bayat has argued, the socially-committed Islamism of the 1960s and 70s, which evolved in elective affinity with the communist movement, could not survive the transition to the post-Cold War era. It was gradually supplanted by a more identitarian strain which combined conservativism and sectarianism on the one hand with neoliberalism and globalism on the other. In the Western Balkans, ethnic or religious identity similarly served as a cover for the lack of meaningful social provision by the state. Autocrats often fanned populist anti-Western sentiment to distract their base from economic hardship, while at the same time implementing Western-backed neoliberal reforms.
Of course, there are clear discontinuities between US policy in the triumphalist 1990s and its approach to the present conjuncture. Following a period of maximalist interventionism, the hegemon’s appetite for bombing campaigns directly targeting its state rivals began to wane. The ‘shock and awe’ air wars under Clinton and Bush were replaced by an increasing reliance on diverse constellations of state and non-state proxies, from the Balkans to the Middle East. Under Obama, the Timber Sycamore and Train and Equip operations funneled resources to Syria’s so-called ‘moderate rebels’ but achieved few significant blows against Assad, with US-backed fighters rapidly overrun by HTS’s predecessor organization, Jabhat al-Nusra. Meanwhile, a US-led coalition lent support to the military wing of the Kurdish-led federation known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) in the course of their war against ISIS. As ISIS was defeated, the number of declared US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria dwindled from tens of thousands to a mere 20 in 2022, and the US grew more reliant on Turkey and Israel to enforce its regional interests. It was therefore not the US air campaign, but rather the punishing blows inflicted by Israel on Assad’s key allies — Iran and Hezbollah — which paved the way for HTS to storm Damascus.
How will the US respond to the new situation on the ground? Its presence in the north of the country was always justified by citing the ISIS threat, but it had the additional function of preventing Iran from establishing a zone of contiguous influence from Tehran to the Mediterranean. Assad’s fall may have changed that calculus. Over the past two weeks, pro-Iranian forces have scattered, while Turkish-backed militias have advanced through DAANES territory west of the Euphrates and are hoping to finish the job in those eastern regions where the US is still stationed. Whether or not the incoming US administration will grant Turkey permission to extend its occupation throughout DAANES territory remains to be seen. The US had long reassured Ankara that its collaboration with the militant Kurdish movement was ‘temporary, transactional and tactical’. Trump tried to withdraw US troops in 2019, opening the door to a devastating Turkish invasion which killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands. He has recently asserted that the US should have ‘nothing to do’ with Syria, although the neocons in his cabinet may beg to differ.
On its own, a US withdrawal would not allow Syrians to determine their fate. It is more likely to open up a new phase of the conflict, with US boots on the ground giving way to balkanization from above. As part of this process, larger powers may rely on regional stabilitocrats to do their dirty work for them — liquidating the Kurdish-led federation and dividing Syria between Israel, HTS, Turkey. With Russia reportedly hoping to maintain military bases on the Alawite Mediterranean seaboard and perhaps welcome the new Syria into the BRICs, Jolani might even be able to repeat the Western Balkan trick of playing Moscow and Brussels against one another. As in the Western Balkans, however, the outcome of this approach will likely be further inter-ethnic bloodshed. There will be calls to resolve it through population transfers, breaking up mixed communities which have survived the past thirteen years of civil war – and playing into the hands of sectarians like Jolani.
The trauma that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia meant that there was no realistic prospect for ‘balkanisation from below’, drawing on the region’s history of inter-ethnic cooperation to establish a new, pluralist federation. In Syria, however, DAANES’s inter-ethnic federation of some four million people — in which left-wing Kurdish militants and conservative Arab groupings peacefully coexist — may point to a possible way forward. HTS and DAANES have for the most part avoided conflict during the past fortnight of dynamic territorial changes. Might popular pressure forge some division of power between them? The chances are slim, and HTS’s neoliberal pragmatism likely means that it will choose the path of least resistance: allowing the West’s authoritarian regional partners to become the overlords of a carved-up Syria, and putting the very survival of the Kurdish statelet in question. But at this point, nothing is predestined.
After the Fall of Assad: The Struggle for a Free Syria
Syrians have overthrown Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship, liberated cities, freed political prisoners, and opened space to struggle for an inclusive, democratic, egalitarian country. But imperial, regional, and internal forces are angling to contain the revolution. Join this Spectre Live! webinar led by Joseph Daher, Leila al-Shami, Yasser Munif, and Spectre’s Shireen Akram-Boshar to learn about the revolution’s results and prospects.
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Speakers:
Joseph Daher is a Swiss-Syrian socialist and scholar and author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Lebanon’s Party of God (2016) and Syria after the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience (2019).
Leila Al-Shami is co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War and co-founder of From the Periphery media collective.
Yasser Munif is an associate professor at Emerson College and author of The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death.
Shireen Akram-Boshar is a graduate student at the University of Houston, member of the editorial board of Spectre Journal, member of the Tempest Collective, writer at Truthout, and contributor to Palestine: A Socialist Introduction.
Endorsed by CounterPunch, New Politics, People Before Profit, Tempest Collective.
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This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Spectre Journal. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.
The Syrian People Have Freed Themselves, Who Will Wake the Amnesiacs?
Thousands and thousands of Syrians of all ages dancing and embracing, weeping and singing, waving the country’s new flag and celebrating the end of tyranny, in the center of Syrian cities but also in Paris, Istanbul and Moscow, in Berlin or Stockholm, everywhere in the world where the almost 7 million Syrians driven from their country since 2011 have taken refuge. And thousands of Syrians who cross borders, even on foot, and return to their country after a very long forced exile. But also, thousands of Syrians searching for their loved ones imprisoned, tortured or missing in the jails and in the countless mass graves of the regime!
These terrible scenes of joy, but also of unspeakable human suffering, which can only deeply upset and move any human being with even the slightest sensitivity, nevertheless leave unmoved those around the world – on the right, the far right and the left – who fear and hate popular revolts, and see in them only the “plots” of more or less occult powers. Showing total insensitivity, they prefer to say nothing about these scenes of joy and pain of the Syrian people in flesh and blood. Not a word. Nothing but conspiracy theories that lead them to invent a Syria without Syrians, where only… foreign geostrategic interests clash. Exactly as they invented and defended yesterday a dream Syria where the Assad clan did not massacre its subjects, but enjoyed their enthusiastic support! And in so doing, they are posing as negationists, worthy successors and clones of their infamous ancestors who saw nothing, some of them of the Nazi extermination camps, others of the Stalinist gulags!…
Obviously, they don’t see anything because they don’t want to see what invalidates their vision of the world. So they replace the class struggle with the struggle of the opposing imperialist camps, even going so far as to discover progressive and…anti-imperialist virtues in one of these camps which is no less barbaric and imperialist than the other! And since they want their actions to conform to their theories, they become the worshippers and propagandists of these barbaric and obscurantist “anti-imperialist” dictators, and don’t hesitate to put themselves at their service by defending their reactionary rantings and crimes!
So it’s not at all surprising that at the root of their drift, which makes them auxiliaries to bloodthirsty, reactionary dictators, lies the fact that they don’t believe in the ability of those below to revolt and make revolutions. That’s why they see popular uprisings as nothing more than “plots” and manipulations of the ignorant masses by the powerful! As in the case of the popular uprisings of the “Arab Spring”, which they reduce to a… “conspiracy” of the American services. This leads them to proclaim that the masses of the oppressed are, and can only be, mere extras in history. And, above all, that only the all-powerful imperialist secret services are capable of making history! Clearly, such a conspiratorial profession of faith is the antithesis of Marx’s assertion that “men make their own history”…
So it’s no coincidence that what characterizes the way they think about the world today, and act accordingly, is their police-style conception of history. That’s why their first reaction to any popular movement is to ask… “who’s behind it?“. Because it’s impossible for them to admit that those from below- workers, women, young people or oppressed peoples – could rise up to take their fate into their own hands, without being manipulated by anyone. This, moreover, explains – at least in part – their aversion to social and alterglobalization movements, which they always regard with suspicion, being unable to detect… “who’s behind them”…
However, it has to be said that their police-style conception of history and their insensitivity are quite selective. For example, those who usually claim to be anti-fascist and don’t hesitate to label those who don’t like it as “fascist” (e.g. Ukrainian President Zelensky), “forget” and pass over in silence the – by no means insignificant – fact that the organizer of the Assad regime’s terrible repressive apparatus was Alois Brunner, the most wanted Nazi leader after the fall of the Third Reich. Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man and rightly described as the “Butcher of Salonika” by the very few survivors (only 4% of the total!) of the large Jewish community in this city, also known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans”, Brunner, who found asylum in Damascus with Hafez Assad, who protected him tooth and nail until his death in 2010, was a sadistic monster who loved to torture with his hands, and personally “taught” the worst tortures to Syrian torturers…
And now, all those conspiracy “amnesiacs” and fellow travelers of the bloodthirsty and corrupt Assad regime, whose horrors they systematically “forgot”, are turning a deaf ear to the celebrations of the Syrian people finally freed from their torturers. Without doubt, this is the height of hypocrisy.(1) Yes, the martyred people of Syria will have an ordeal to overcome. But who would dare to claim that those, Putin’s Russia in the lead, who have kept this regime alive by razing Syrian cities to the ground and massacring their inhabitants by the hundreds of thousands, are not the first and greatest responsible for its misfortunes, past and present?
Note
1. It was enough for Deutsche Welle to denounce, with supporting evidence, the broadcasting by Tik Tok of a few doctored photos and videos of Syrian regime prisons, for most of the major Greek media to headline that everything said and shown about the Assad “butchery” jails is a lie. Obviously, these Greek media, which have long been sympathetic to Trump, Netanyahu and above all Mr. Putin, “forgot” to quote the conclusion of DW’s investigation. The attentive reader will understand the reason for this “oversight” by reading this highly instructive conclusion: “”Spreading false information about atrocities not only undermines efforts to document and investigate them but also hinders accountability for perpetrators. Such misinformation can lead to a phenomenon known as atrocity denial, where the credibility of genuine human rights abuses is questioned, ultimately weakening justice efforts and obscuring the truth”.
A more than eloquent detail which shows that this “disinformation” is, unfortunately, a hit in Greece: according to the latest poll, the most popular foreign leaders in Greece are first Mr. Putin and then Mr. Trump…
Israelis Invade Syria: Who Will Stop Israel?
Image by Alex Shuper.
The United States, Turkey and Israel all responded to the fall of the Assad government in Damascus by launching bombing campaigns on Syria. Israel also attacked and destroyed most of the Syrian Navy in port at Latakia, and invaded Syria from the long-occupied Golan Heights, advancing to within 16 miles of the capital, Damascus.
The United States said that its bombing campaign targeted remnants of Islamic State in the east of the country, hitting 75 targets with 140 bombs and missiles, according to Air Force Times.
A long-standing force of 900 U.S. troops illegally occupy that part of Syria, partly to divert Syria’s meagre oil revenues to the U.S.’s Kurdish allies and prevent the Syrian government regaining that source of revenue. U.S. bombing badly damaged Syria’s oil infrastructure during the war with the Islamic State, but Russia has been ready to help Syria restore full output whenever it recovers control of that area. U.S. forces in Syria have been under attack by various Syrian militia forces, not just the Islamic State, with at least 127 attacks since October 2023.
Meanwhile, Turkiyë is conducting airstrikes, drone strikes and artillery fire as part of a new offensive by a militia it formed in 2017 under the Orwellian guise of the “Syrian National Army” to invade and occupy parts of Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northeast Syria.
Israel, however, launched a much broader bombing campaign than Turkey or the U.S., with about 600 airstrikes on post-Assad Syria in the first eight days of its existence. Without waiting to see what form of government the political transition in Syria leads to, Israel set about methodically destroying its entire military infrastructure, to ensure that whatever government comes to power will be as defenseless as possible.
Israel claims its new occupation of Syrian territory is a temporary move to ensure its own security. But while Israel bombed Syria 220 times over the past year, killing about 300 people, Syria showed restraint and did not retaliate for those attacks.
The pattern of Israeli history has been that land grabs like this usually turn into long-term illegal Israeli annexations, as in the Golan Heights and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. That will surely be the case with Israel’s new strategic base on top of Mount Hermon, overlooking Damascus and the surrounding area, unless a new Syrian government or international diplomacy can force Israel to withdraw.
Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Russia and the UN have all joined the global condemnation of the new Israeli assault on Syria. Geir Pedersen, the UN Special Envoy to Syria, called Israel’s military actions “highly irresponsible,” and UN peacekeepers have removed Israeli flags from newly-occupied Syrian territory.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry called Israel’s actions “a dangerous development and a blatant attack on Syria’s sovereignty and unity as well as a flagrant violation of international law… that will lead the region to further violence and tension.”
The Saudi Foreign Ministry reiterated that the Golan Heights is an occupied Arab territory, and said that Israel’s actions confirmed “Israel’s continued violation of the rules of international law and its determination to sabotage Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability and territorial integrity.”
The only country in the world that has ever recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights is the United States, under the first Trump administration, and it is part of Biden’s disastrous legacy in the Middle East that that he failed to stand up for international law and reverse Trump’s recognition of that illegal Israeli annexation.
As people all over the world watch Israel ignore the rules of international law that every country in the world is committed to live by, we are confronted by the age-old question of how to respond to a country that systematically ignores and violates these rules. The foundation of the UN Charter is the agreement by all countries to settle their differences diplomatically and peacefully, instead of by the threat or use of military force.
As Americans, we should start by admitting that our own country has led the way down this path of war and militarism, perpetuating the scourge of war that the UN Charter was intended to provide a peaceful alternative to.
As the United States became the leading economic power in the world in the 20th century, it also built up dominant military power. Despite its leading role in creating the United Nations and the rules of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, it came to see strict compliance with those rules as an obstacle to its own ambitions, from the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force to the Geneva Conventions’ universal protections for prisoners of war and civilians.
In its “war on terror,” including its wars on Iraq and other countries, the United States flagrantly and systematically violated these bedrock foundations of world order. It is a fundamental principle of all legal systems that the powerful must be held accountable as well as the weak and the vulnerable. A system of laws that the wealthy and powerful can ignore cannot claim to be universal or just, and is unlikely to stand the test of time.
Today, our system of international law faces exactly this problem. The U.S. presumption that its overwhelming military power permits it to violate international law with impunity has led other countries, especially U.S. allies but also Russia, to apply the same opportunistic standards to their own behavior.
In 2010, an Amnesty International report on European countries that hosted CIA “black site” torture chambers called on U.S. allies in Europe not to join the United States as another “accountability-free zone” for war crimes. But now the world is confronting a U.S. ally that has not just embraced, but doubled down on, the U.S. presumption that dominant military power can trump the rule of law.
The Israeli government refuses to comply with international legal prohibitions against deliberately killing women and children, by military force and by deprivation; seizing foreign territory; and bombing other countries. Shielded from international accountability behind the U.S. Security Council veto, Israel thumbs its nose at the world’s impotence to enforce international law, confident that nobody will stop it from using its deadly and destructive war machine wherever and however it pleases.
So the world’s failure to hold the United States accountable for its war crimes has led Israel to believe that it too can escape accountability, and U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes, especially the genocide in Gaza, has inevitably reinforced that belief.
U.S. responsibility for Israel’s lawlessness is compounded by the conflict of interest in its dual role as both Israel’s military superpower ally and weapons supplier and the supposed mediator of the lopsided “peace process” between Israel and Palestine, whose inherent flaws led to Hamas’s election victory in 2006 and now to the current crisis.
Instead of recognizing its own conflict of interest and deferring to intervention by the UN or other neutral parties, the U.S. has jealously guarded its monopoly as the sole mediator between Israel and Palestine, using this position to grant Israel total freedom of action to commit systematic war crimes. If this crisis is ever to end, the world cannot allow the U.S. to continue in this role.
While the United States bears a great deal of responsibility for this crisis, U.S. officials remain in collective denial over the criminal nature of Israel’s actions and their instrumental role in Israel’s crimes. The systemic corruption of U.S. politics severely limits the influence of the majority of Americans who support a ceasefire in Gaza, as pro-Israel lobbying groups buy the unconditional support of American politicians and attack the few who stand up to them.
Despite America’s undemocratic political system, its people have a responsibility to end U.S. complicity in genocide, which is arguably the worst crime in the world, and people are finding ways to bring pressure to bear on the U.S. government:
Members of CODEPINK, Jewish Voice For Peace and Palestinian-, Arab-American and other activist groups are in Congressional offices and hearings every day; constituents in California are suing two members of Congress for funding genocide; students are calling on their universities to divest from Israel and U.S. arms makers; activists and union members are identifying and picketing companies and blocking ports to stop weapons shipments to Israel; journalists are rebelling against censorship; U.S. officials are resigning; people are on hunger strike; others have committed suicide.
It is also up to the UN and other governments around the world to intervene, and to hold Israel and the United States accountable for their actions. A growing international movement for an end to the genocide and decades of illegal occupation is making progress. But it is excruciatingly slow given the appalling human cost and the millions of Palestinian lives at stake.
Israel’s international propaganda campaign to equate criticism of its war crimes with antisemitism poisons political discussion of Israeli war crimes in the United States and some other countries.
But many countries are making significant changes in their relations with Israel, and are increasingly willing to resist political pressures and propaganda tropes that have successfully muted international calls for justice in the past. A good example is Ireland, whose growing trade relations with Israel, mainly in the high-tech sector, formerly made it the fourth largest importer of Israeli products in the world in 2022.
Ireland is now one of 14 countries who have officially intervened to support South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the others are Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Libya, the Maldives, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain and Turkiyë. Israel reacted to Ireland’s intervention in the case by closing its embassy in Dublin, and now Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has smeared Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris as “antisemitic.”
The Taoiseach’s spokesperson replied that Harris “will not be responding to personalized and false attacks, and remains focused on the horrific war crimes being perpetrated in Gaza, standing up for human rights and international law and reflecting the views of so many people across Ireland who are so concerned at the loss of innocent, civilian lives.”
If the people of Palestine can stand up to bombs, missiles and bullets day after day for over a year, the very least that political leaders around the world can do is stand up to Israeli name-calling, as Simon Harris is doing.
Spain is setting an example on international efforts to halt the supply of weapons to Israel, with an arms embargo and a ban on weapons shipments transiting Spanish ports, including the U.S. naval base at Rota, which the U.S. has leased since it formed a military alliance with Spain’s Franco dictatorship in 1953.
Spain has already refused entry to two Maersk-owned ships transporting weapons from North Carolina to Israel, while dockworkers in Spain, Belgium, Greece, India and other countries have refused to load weapons and ammunition onto ships bound for Israel.
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has passed resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza; an end to the post-1967 Israeli occupation; and for Palestinian statehood. The General Assembly’s 10th Emergency Special Session on the Israel-Palestine conflict under the Uniting for Peace process has been ongoing since 1997.
The General Assembly should urgently use these Uniting For Peace powers to turn up the pressure on Israel and the United States. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has provided the legal basis for stronger action, ruling that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories Israel invaded in 1967 is illegal and must be ended, and that the massacre in Gaza appears to violate the Genocide Convention.
Inaction is inexcusable. By the time the ICJ issues a final verdict on its genocide case, millions may be dead. The Genocide Convention is an international commitment to prevent genocide, not just to pass judgment after the fact. The UN General Assembly has the power to impose an arms embargo, a trade boycott, economic sanctions, a peacekeeping force, or to do whatever it takes to end the genocide.
When the UN General Assembly first launched its boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa in 1962, not a single Western country took part. Many of those same countries will be the last to do so against Israel today. But the world cannot wait to act for the blessing of complacent wealthy countries who are themselves complicit in genocide.
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