Syria: In the shadow of war and revolution

Author Anne Alexander answers your questions on the the fall of the Assad regime, its implications for the Middle East and the prospects for resistance

Protests in 2023 in the city Sweida in Syria

SOCIALIST WORKER 
Tuesday 17 December 2024

 Issue 2936

What’s the impact of Assad’s fall on the wider Middle East?

The dust from the Assad regime’s collapse will not settle for a long time. There are some immediate winners and losers.

But the long term effect will further intensify competition between the key regional imperialist powers—Turkey, Iran, the Gulf States and Israel.

Turkey’s ruling class is poised to reap significant benefits in the short term—increased influence over Syria and the potential return of millions of Syrian refugees from Turkey. And Turkish companies will look to profit from the rebuilding of Syrian cities such as Aleppo.

Only a few weeks ago, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to be desperately searching for ways out of the dead end his policies had reached in northern Syria. He wanted to increase Turkish influence and repress Kurdish forces.


But Assad was rebuffing his requests for dialogue. Kurdish forces, which control a large area of north east, had made alliances with both the United States and Russia. That gave them partial ­protection from Turkish pressure.

But as a result of Assad’s fall, Russia’s position inside Syria is now significantly weakened. And incoming president Donald Trump has made clear his desire for the US to “stay out” of the country.

Militias allied to Turkey, such as the Syrian National Army, have launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

The Kurdish autonomous administration in the north east has raised the flag of the new Syrian regime. But tensions still remain high with the new authorities.

Gains for the Turkish ruling class are losses for Iran’s rulers who long treated Syria as a key part of their sphere of influence. Assad’s fall is a blow to the Iranian regime’s decades-long effort to escape the impact of its defeat by Iraq—supported by the US—in 1988.

But these shifts among the regional and global powers aren’t the only impact. Scenes of Syrians rushing to rescue relatives from the regime’s prisons and tearing down statues of the dictator live on TV have had a powerful echo around the region.

The Islamist character of the forces leading this new regime is also important as for years Islamist movements have faced catastrophic defeat.
Is Assad’s fall a defeat for anti-imperialism?  

Support for the “Axis of ­Resistance”—the coalition of Iranian supported forces—was always an insufficient strategy for defeating Western ­imperialism. And it connected together contradictory elements. It helped to transform Hezbollah from a resistance movement against Israel’s occupation of Lebanon into a force in regional politics.

But Hezbollah helped Assad’s counter-revolution. This came at a terrible cost not only to the Syrian people, but also to Hezbollah itself. Israeli forces were able to gather intelligence on Hezbollah’s commanders which they used to plan the deadly bombing raids against leading figures in October.

Assad’s fall reveals the faults of relying on dictators for liberation instead of popular mass movements. Assad’s conscript troops abandoned him—his regime turned out to be completely hollow.

Compare this with the fierce resistance put up by Hezbollah and Hamas—and the Palestinian armed factions that are increasingly active in the West Bank.

But it’s wrong to weigh up the possibilities solely in military terms. Assad’s fall has reawakened memories of the revolutionary wave that shows the struggle for Palestinian liberation from a completely different perspective.

Israel’s siege on Gaza could not endure without the active cooperation of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s regime in Egypt. Former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed by Israel this year, backed the Syrian popular uprising back in 2012 from Cairo.

The wave of revolutions that had shaken the Middle East the year before had loosened the grip of dictatorship over Egypt.
What were the Arab revolutions?  

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 was part of a wave of popular uprisings which swept across the Middle East. It started in Tunisia, but quickly triggered the downfall of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, before moving into Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.

Initial uprisings mobilised millions of people in street protests and mass strikes to demand “bread, freedom and social justice”. Although the iconic image of the revolutions was the street protests and massive encampments in city squares, strikes played a central role in the revolutionary wave.

In Tunisia, regional general strikes by the powerful trade union movement transformed what was a rebellion by unemployed youth in provincial towns into a revolution.

Mubarak fell amid a strike wave supported by transport workers, health workers, civil servants, rail workers and telecoms workers. The military factories run by Mubarak’s own generals had been shut down by striking workers. Even journalists on the state-run newspapers had locked the editors out of the newsrooms and taken over news production.

Syria’s uprising in 2011 was an explosion of anger that mobilised millions in creative forms of resistance to the regime. That included mass street protests and local coordinating committees which took over some aspects of government when regime forces withdrew.

But Syria’s revolution lacked a strike wave at its heart. This meant the Assad regime could continue “business as usual” in the capital.

The success of Assad’s counter-revolution was a catastrophe for the Syrian people. Millions were displaced in the war or fled the country altogether, while hundreds of thousands were killed. Syrians also had to endure more years of repression and torture at the hands of the regime.
Why did the Arab revolutions fail?  

There is no one single cause of failure for the uprisings—each followed a distinctive trajectory. But there are common themes. Some popular movements toppled at least the key figureheads and forced discussion of political reforms.

But activists in general sought to preserve, rather than break up, the coercive apparatus of the old regimes. They adopted a “democratic transition model” urged by Western diplomats.

Secondly, they did not take bold steps to address the demands in the streets and workplaces for social justice. Again following “advice” from Western governments, they tried to show that they would act “prudently” by continuing with neoliberal policies. But this alienated workers and the poor who had come onto the streets for the revolution.

In other cases, such as Syria and Libya, the popular uprisings did not make early breakthroughs in the capital cities, allowing the dictators time to organise a fightback.

Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was eventually defeated by the rebel side in the civil war. But Assad clung on to power in Syria with the help of external forces including Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.

The question of Palestinian liberation contributed to the defeat in complex ways. Imagine if the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus had not been crushed, and instead intensified revolutionary energy. Haniyeh made Hamas’s public declaration of solidarity with the Syrian revolution nearly a year after the uprising had started. He didn’t want to interfere in the affairs of states hosting Palestinian refugees.

But those states threatened by the popular revolution relied on imperialist and regional powers. The Egyptian army and security forces hold shut the gates of Gaza from the outside. They have received billions in direct aid from the US, which depended on signing the peace treaty with Israel.

This is the crux of the shared interests of Palestinians and Egyptians in revolution, both against the apartheid Israeli state but also against the Egyptian state. The streets of Egypt firmly stood with the Palestinian struggle in 2011.

But larger political forces in Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood, refused to call for the dismantling of the treaty with Israel—this would have involved a head-on clash with the army and security forces.

The reformist leaders’ desire to leave the state intact only left weapons in the hands of the counter-revolution.
Is there a potential for mass resistance today?

The Assad regime’s swift collapse showed it had lost its social base. But the new regime has yet to build one.

Many Syrians will support HTS for its role in bringing down Assad. But others will be wary of its track record as an authoritarian and elitist Islamist movement, and fearful of the sectarian past of some of its leaders.

The struggle on the social terrain will be crucial. Will the impoverished majority of Syrians at least have the chance now to organise themselves? Will they be able to force the new government to redistribute wealth as it reconstructs Syria, or will the rebuilding benefit a narrow wealthy layer?

It’s likely that popular organising will revive around several points at once. Firstly, around the question of justice for the disappeared and the martyrs. Secondly, over issues of social justice. Thirdly around resisting Israel’s aggression and solidarity with Palestine. Finally, over the questions of Kurdish autonomy and liberation from all kinds of oppression.
How will the fall of the Assad regime affect Palestine?

Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has not slackened while much of the world’s attention has been focused on events in Syria. Israeli forces took advantage of the collapse of Assad to seize more territory inside Syria.

Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced plans to double the Israeli population of the occupied Golan Heights as HTS approached Damascus. And hundreds of Israeli airstrikes have crippled military bases and facilities across Syria.

Yet there is no guarantee that the new regime in Damascus will be friendly to Israel, even if HTS’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has said he is not looking for “new confrontations”.

Al-Jolani emphasised the need for “reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction”.

But the expansion of Israel’s settlements are a reminder that there can be no real peace or security for Syrians while Palestine is occupied. The fall of Assad means a Syria where Palestinians can organise more freely—no longer do they face the regime’s brutality. This may create a new dynamic.

Hamas was quick to welcome the collapse of Assad’s regime, congratulating Syrians on achieving their “aspirations for freedom and justice”. It is nearly 13 years since Hamas’s leadership publicly backed the uprising against Assad. Hamas condemned him for “killing his own people”.

Indeed, Palestinians within Syria paid a terrible price for the regime’s revenge—Assad’s forces devastated the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus.