Fall of the Assad regime in Syria: One butcher has fallen, others will bring more wars, massacres and chaos!

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Today's media are lavishing images of the horrors of Bashar al Assad's regime (such as those of the sinister Saydnaya prison), while rejoicing at the population's celebrations for the ‘end of the nightmare’. But the relief at the end of this regime of terror is nothing but a vain illusion. The truth is that the population (both in Syria and in the rest of the world) is the victim of a new and criminal deception, a new demonstration of the fraudulent hypocrisy of the ruling class: to make people believe that the terror, war and misery were the sole responsibility of Assad, a ‘madman’ who had to be stopped in order to restore peace and stability.

In reality, all the imperialists, from the smallest powers in the region to the major world powers, have been shamelessly involved in the regime's atrocities: Let's not forget how Obama, the ‘Nobel Peace Prize winner’, looked the other way in 2013 when Bashar Al Assad was bombing or using poison gas against his population; or how many of the ‘democratic’ powers, who are now congratulating themselves on the ‘fall of the tyrant’, have accommodated themselves to the Assad family for decades, or even been their patented accomplices, in order to defend their sordid interests in the region. These same major ‘democracies’ are once again shamelessly lying when they seek to whitewash the country's new leaders, who were described as ‘terrorists’ just a few years ago: these ‘moderates’, who are capable of finding a ‘peaceful’ way out, are nothing more than a collection of Islamists and cutthroats from the ranks of Al Qaeda or Daesh!

The inexorable chaos that awaits us

A year ago, when the conflict broke out in Gaza, we distributed a leaflet in which we denounced the extension of the barbarity that these massacres were already preparing:

“The Hamas attack and Israel's response have one thing in common: the scorched earth policy. Yesterday's terrorist massacre and today's carpet bombing can lead to no real and lasting victory. This war is plunging the Middle East into an era of destabilisation and confrontation. If Israel continues to raze Gaza to the ground and bury its inhabitants under the rubble, there is a risk that the West Bank will also catch fire, that Hezbollah will drag Lebanon into the war, and that Iran will end up getting involved….While the economic and warlike competition between China and the United States is increasingly brutal and oppressive, the other nations are not bowing to the orders of one or other of these two behemoths; they are playing their own game, in disorder, unpredictability and cacophony. Russia attacked Ukraine against Chinese advice. Israel is crushing Gaza against American advice. These two conflicts epitomise the danger that threatens all humanity with death: the multiplication of wars whose sole aim is to destabilise or destroy the adversary; an endless chain of irrational and nihilistic exactions; every man for himself, synonymous with uncontrollable chaos”[1].

The rebels' lightning offensive took advantage of the growing chaos in the region: Assad and his corrupt regime were hanging on by a thread since the Russian army, bogged down in Ukraine, was no longer in a position to support him, and Hezbollah, embroiled in its war with Israel, had abandoned its positions in Syria. In the chaos of the civil war, this coalition of disparate militias was able to rush into Damascus without encountering much resistance. What we are witnessing today in Syria, as yesterday in Lebanon and Ukraine, is the spread and amplification of these scorched-earth wars in which none of the adversaries gains a solid position, lasting influence or a stable alliance, but instead fuels an inexorable headlong rush into chaos.

Who can claim to have won a solid victory? The new Syrian regime is already facing a situation of fragmentation and dislocation reminiscent of post-Gaddafi Libya. The fall of the Assad regime is also a major setback for Iran, which is losing a precious ally at a time when Hamas and Hezbollah are drained. Meanwhile Russia could see its precious military bases in the Mediterranean disappear at the same time as its credibility in defending its allies... Even those who, like Israel or the United States, might be delighted to see the arrival of new, more conciliatory masters in Damascus, have no more than a relative confidence in them, as shown by the Israeli bombardments to destroy the arsenals and prevent them from falling into the hands of the new regime. Turkey, which appears to be the main beneficiary of the fall of Assad, also knows that it will have to contend with increased US support for the Kurds and an even more chaotic situation on its borders. The ‘fall of the tyrant’ promises nothing but more war and chaos!

Capitalist decomposition is leading humanity towards barbarism and destruction.

If the chaos, terror and massacres are indeed the work of the rulers of this world, of the bourgeoisie, both authoritarian and democratic, they are above all the result of the logic of decadent capitalism. Capitalism is all-out competition, plunder and war. The fact that this war is now spreading to more and more parts of the world, causing senseless devastation and mass slaughter, is an expression of the historical impasse in which the capitalist system finds itself. On the occasion of the war in Gaza we wrote: ”Whatever action is taken, the dynamic towards destabilisation is inescapable. Basically, then, this is a significant new stage in the acceleration of global chaos. This conflict shows the extent to which each state is increasingly applying a "scorched earth" policy to defend its interests, seeking not to gain influence or conquer interests, but to sow chaos and destruction among its rivals. This tendency towards strategic irrationality, short-sightedness, unstable alliances and "every man for himself" is not an arbitrary policy of this or that state, nor the product of the sheer stupidity of this or that bourgeois faction in power. It is the consequence of the historical conditions, those of the decomposition of capitalism, in which all states confront each other. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, this historical tendency and the weight of militarism on society have been profoundly aggravated. The war in Gaza confirms the extent to which imperialist war is now the main destabilising factor in capitalist society. The product of the contradictions of capitalism, the breath of war in turn feeds the fire of these same contradictions, increasing, through the weight of militarism, the economic crisis, the environmental disaster and the dismemberment of society”[2]. This dynamic tends to rot every part of society, to weaken every nation, starting with the foremost among them: the United States.

As a consequence of this decomposition of capitalist society, we have seen the emergence of phenomena such as massive exoduses of refugees, like the one triggered by the civil war in Syria in 2015, with almost 15 million displaced people (7 million in Syria itself, 3 million in Turkey, and around 1 million between Germany and Sweden). At the time, we denounced the hypocritical ‘refugees are welcome’ of the bourgeoisie[3], which did not mean that the exploiters were now advocates of solidarity, but rather was an attempt to contain the explosion of chaos by taking advantage of cheap labour. These same benefactors are now pushing refugees to return to the hell that is Syria, because ‘the oppressive regime no longer exists’ and ‘the country is moving towards the restoration of democratic normality’. This is the disgusting cynicism of these ‘democracies’, which are putting into practice the policies advocated by the populist parties and the far right from which they claim to distance themselves. The alternative to the destruction of humanity that the survival of capitalism implies is international class solidarity, a solidarity of struggle against global capitalism.

Valerio, 13 December

 

Rubric: 

War in the Middle East