On The Fall of Assad
It is inevitable that the people of the middle east will tend towards their own liberation. An important part of this liberation is armed struggle. The people who have carried out this armed struggle thus far, whatever their defects and past mistakes, are the people who are going to continue to do it. Regardless of what anyone involved considers themselves to be doing, this is the inevitable outcome.
The War for the Levant continues to expose the faultlines of not only the prevailing world order but also the weakness in the Communist movement, such that it currently is, in responding to and analysing it.
The Communist movement, such that it currently is, has made two major analytical errors. The first is overestimating the strength of American imperialism, and the second is excessive emphasis on a perceived alliance with the Russian Federation.
The events of the past few days have asked the question: is the current war for the Levant one to drive the United States out of the Middle East, or is it a war of liberation for a sovereign Levant?
The sudden fall of Assad has exposed the error of over-emphasis on the alliance with Russia and Iran. Russia and Iran are at conflict with the United States, and the Communist movement, such that it is, correctly senses that the destruction of the United States is an urgent necessity for the entire human race. But the Communists, such that they are, obscure the nature of this conflict as an inter-imperialist one.
Russia and Iran are not allies of the Levantine peoples. They have spent over half a century propping up an inert puppet state in Syria which was not just unpopular but also brutal and terrible, and thus necessarily an obstacle to the freedom and sovereignty of the people. They have worked hard to spread religious sectarianism and ideological reaction throughout the region in service of their own ends which align with those of the Palestinians only insofar as the United States is uniquely rapacious and amoral as world powers go — a claim which is difficult to defend in light of the historical precedent of other capitalist states. Russia and Iran have not exposed the reactionary nature of the United States and its regional puppets Saudi Arabia and Turkey, so much as they have competed with them within the obfuscatory bourgeois ideological climate permitted to them by their own character. This has maintained a status quo of sectarian religious conflict rather than class and national struggle.
Thus, the war for a free Levant has taken a step forward, even if, as some are saying (I believe prematurely, but not without basis,) the war against the Zionist entity has taken a step back.
The US has been lulled into a sense of security (be it true or be it false) by rebellion spokespeople, and aims to seize what influence it can over what is sure to be a delicate and rapidly evolving process of consolidating and defining political power in Syria. There is no guarantee it will actually be able to do so. The smoothness of the transition of power and the high degree of cohesion that the rebel groups are acting with shows that in the past years the rebellion has become mature and capable. It does not currently appear that ideological (which is to say, sectarian) concerns are a driving force of these developments, and all parties seem to have sidelined them in favour of the pragmatic concerns which all rulers have.
This is a plausible natural development — most of the groups involved have made terrible ideological mistakes in the past and it is practically impossible that they should fail to see now what an error returning to them would be. It would jeopardise their hard-won political power. But in making these mistakes to begin with, they were observing the norms which foreign powers had long established in their region — a norm of sectarian obfuscation of class and national struggle held in place by war crime after war crime. This moribund order is dying its natural and inevitable death at the hands of the only ones from which it can come.
Let us say that this development, that is, the fall of Assad, is as clear a gain for the United States and the Zionist entity as many (including, to be fair, at least a small number of representatives of groups involved in the rebellion) are saying. (Those representatives, incidentally, have the time right now to appear on CNN — are they as important to the front-line struggle as they are saying, or are they being foregrounded by western media in an attempt to establish their credibility at this sensitive time?)
Assad was weak and neither the Palestinian struggle nor the Levantine struggle rise or fall by him. The Zionist occupation is in its death spiral. It is diplomatically, economically, and politically ruined. Can it be salvaged by deposing Assad? No. The United States is also in its own death spiral. Can it be salvaged by deposing Assad? No. Twenty five years ago, American intervention in the Levant looked like invading wherever they wanted to overthrow a government. Now it looks like deciding who gets to go on CNN. The decline of American power is dramatic and permanent.
The Levant is embroiled in a struggle for national sovereignty. It doesn’t matter if it understands itself to be this or not. Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was framed as a struggle to conquer a holy site, but this only exposed the hypocrisy of so-called “Muslim leaders”. Its true character of national liberation is what remains of it. And part of the character of a struggle for national sovereignty entails, sometimes, the coming-to-power of those trained and armed by the chauvanist powers that have dominated the subject peoples, on terms that the chauvanist powers work to make as advantageous to themselves as possible. This does not mean that the situation hasn’t overall improved and won’t improve further.
And the existence of Assad’s placeholder Syria as an outpost of Russian power does not change the overall character of the Levant as a region of American dominance any more than the existence of Goa makes India not a former British colony. In truth, the shift to greater American influence, even if real, does not change the essential character of the situation. The situation remains, as it always was, a struggle between the people of the Levant against American imperialism — not a struggle between Russian imperialism and American imperialism. Russia is a fair-weather friend to whom a back should not be turned, and a reduction in its influence is not a negative development.
In even the medium term, what does a democratic or coalition Syria mean for Palestine? It means that not one man but all significant elements of the ruling coalition must acquiesce to a rampaging Zionist occupation which recognises no border and no Arab nation, which has already made clear its intention to wipe Syria from the Earth as a part of its still-unstated yet now obvious endgame objective to make another Australia out of the Levant. It is implausible that any Arab country possessed of itself will not understand the conflict here, and understand it better than Assad did.
Assad is spilled milk, and there is no use crying over him. Nobody can ask the people of Syria to endure his rule any longer now that they are free of it. And good riddance to it. The elimination of foreign-backed autocrats in the Levant is an immediately necessary historical development, and the days of the others are now numbered.
History resumed with the commencement of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and it’s not going to stop again.
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