Idlib, Syria, 2020

The Middle East appears today as a zone of desolation, continuous massacres and the brutal repression of populations, an immense field of ruins. Whole countries like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine or Libya are totally devastated by military confrontations, civil wars and the most brutal massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians, while millions more are forced to join the masses of refugees in the camps. In Iran for 40 years the population has suffered a backward regime which plunges it into a disastrous economic situation, a permanent state of war and repression. Egypt has been a boiling pot since the fall of Mubarak and the seizure of power by General Sisi. Lebanon is on the verge of economic bankruptcy and community tensions are intensifying again, just like in the Arabian Peninsula where tensions between states (Saudi Arabia with Qatar or the Sultanate of Oman), as well as within them (between cliques within the Saudi state), are intensifying. Popular revolts are crushed in blood while sinister militias impose their rule under the banner of religious fundamentalism (Al Qaida, Daesh, Hezbollah), nationalism (Kurdish militias) or tribalism (Libya, Yemen).

This dramatic picture is that of a region which vividly illustrates the descent of capitalism into a cycle of wars which constantly open up new areas of conflict:

• the military interventions of the big international vultures like the United States, Russia, China and the European powers, and regional scavengers (Turkey, Iran, Israel, etc.), transforms the region into an open-air cemetery;
• the daily reality of repression and massacres represents a nightmare for the populations and feeds an inexhaustible source of refugees trying to escape this hell;
• from Iran to Turkey, from Lebanon to Egypt, the states of the region are strangled by the war economy and many of them are in virtual bankruptcy. In the emirates or kingdoms of Arabia, the opulent skyscrapers of barbaric and backward regimes are erected by hired labour treated like convicts;
• the incessant barbarism reigning in the region constitutes a fertile ground for all the ideologies of despair such as jihadism;
• the development of all-out tensions also increases the risk of a generalised conflagration which could have dramatic consequences for the entire planet.

Of course, from the conquests of Alexander the Great to the Crusades, from the struggle between the Roman consuls Marc Antony and Augustus to the digging of the Suez Canal, since Antiquity the region has often been at the centre of economic, political and military appetites and the wars that ensued.

This text does not aim to develop a history of recent conflicts in the Middle East but to show how the understanding of the decadence and decomposition of capitalism is an essential framework for understanding the explosion of contradictions which plunge this region of the world today into warlike bestiality and chaos. This barbarism has a history, and it reflects the rotting of the system.

30 years ago, in our orientation text on “Militarism and Decomposition” [1] the ICC already underlined the importance for revolutionaries of being discerning on this essential question of the role of war and militarism:

“it is important that revolutionaries should be capable of distinguishing between those analyses which have been overtaken by events and those which still remain valid, in order to avoid a double trap: either succumbing to sclerosis, or ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. More precisely, it is necessary to highlight what in our analyses is essential and fundamental, and remains entirely valid in different historical circumstances, and what is secondary and circumstantial - in short, to know how to make the difference between the essence of a reality and its various specific manifestations.”

It is by applying these principles and in continuity with this method that we will situate and analyse the last thirty years of wars and conflicts in the Middle East.

Militarism, imperialist blocs and declining state capitalism

The question of wars and militarism is obviously not a new problem. It has always been a central issue within the workers’ movement. The attitude of the working class towards bourgeois wars has evolved in history, ranging from support for some of them to a categorical rejection of any participation. If, during the 19th century, revolutionaries could call on the workers to lend their support to this or that belligerent nation (for the North against the South during the Civil War in the United States, for the attempts at national insurrection by the Poles in 1846, 1848 and 1856 against Czarist Russia), the basic revolutionary position during the First World War was precisely the rejection and denunciation of any support for either side.

The modification of the position of the working class with regard to wars was precisely in 1914 the crucial point of cleavage in the Socialist parties (and particularly in the German social democracy) between those who rejected any participation in the war, the internationalists, and those who referred to the old positions of the workers' movement in order to better support their national bourgeoisie. This change corresponded to the modification of the very nature of military conflicts linked to the fundamental transformation capitalism underwent between its periods of ascendancy and decline.

In particular the Communist International based itself on this analysis to affirm the necessity for the proletarian revolution. Since its founding, the ICC has adhered to this analysis and more specifically to its elaboration by the Gauche Communiste de France which, in 1945, spoke without ambiguity about the nature and characteristics of war in the period of capitalist decadence:

“In the era of ascending capitalism, wars (national, colonial and imperialist conquest) expressed the upward march of fermentation, strengthening and expansion of the capitalist economic system. Capitalist production found in war the continuation of its economic policy by other means. Each war was justified and paid its costs by opening a new field of greater expansion, ensuring the development of greater capitalist production. […]

War was the indispensable means for capitalism to open up possibilities for further development, at a time when these possibilities existed and could only be opened up by means of violence. Likewise, the collapse of the capitalist world having historically exhausted all the possibilities of development, finds in modern war, imperialist war, the expression of this collapse which, without opening up any possibility of further development for production, does nothing but to plunge the productive forces into the abyss and to accumulate ruins after ruins at an accelerated rate. […]

If in the first phase, the function of war is to ensure an enlargement of the market, with a view to greater production of consumer goods, in the second phase, production is essentially focused on the production of means of destruction, that is, with a view to war. The decadence of capitalist society finds its striking expression in the fact that from wars for economic development (ascending period), economic activity becomes restricted mainly with a view to war (decadent period).

This does not mean that war has become the goal of capitalist production, the goal for capitalism always remaining to produce surplus value, but it does mean that war, taking on a permanent character, has become the way of life of decadent capitalism”. [2]

What therefore characterises war in the period of capitalism's decadence is its increasingly irrational character. In the nineteenth century, despite the destruction and massacres they caused, wars were a means for the advance of the capitalist mode of production, promoting the conquest of the world market and stimulating the development of the productive forces of the world. For society as a whole, the wars of the 20th century are no more than the extreme expression of the barbarism into which capitalist decadence plunges society.

In this sense, military spending does not represent a field of accumulation for capitalism but constitutes a cancer eating away at the capitalist economy by pumping more and more technical, human and financial resources into unproductive sectors. Indeed, while the means of production or the means of consumption can be incorporated in the next productive cycle as constant capital or variable capital, armaments constitute a pure waste from the point of view of capital itself since their only purpose is to go up in smoke (including literally) when they are not responsible for massive destruction.

Faced with a situation where war is omnipresent in the life of society, decadent capitalism has developed two phenomena which constitute major characteristics of this period: state capitalism and imperialist blocs: [3]

• State capitalism, the first significant manifestation of which dates from the First World War, responds to the need for each country, in view of the confrontation with other nations, to obtain the maximum of discipline within it from the different sectors of society, to reduce as much as possible conflicts between the classes but also between rival factions of the dominant class, in order, in particular, to mobilise and control all of its economic potential.
• Likewise, the constitution of imperialist blocs corresponds to the need to impose a similar discipline between different national bourgeoisies in order to limit their reciprocal antagonisms and to bring them together for the confrontation between the two military camps.

Consequently, neither state capitalism, nor the imperialist blocs, nor a fortiori the combination of the two, means any “pacification” of relations between different sectors of capital, much less a “strengthening” of the latter. On the contrary, they are only the means that capitalist society secretes to try to resist the growing tendency towards its dislocation.

This omnipresence of war in the life of society and its irrational character were particularly confirmed during the two world wars which marked the 20th century, as during the Cold War and its mad arms race. This warlike rampage has been clearly materialised in the Middle East. [4]

Confrontations between the blocs in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s

The history of the Middle East vividly illustrates the development of militarism and military tensions in decadent capitalism.[5] For economic and strategic reasons (access to “warm seas”, trade routes to Asia, oil, etc.), the Middle East, like the Balkans for that matter, has always been an important stake in the confrontation between powers. Since the entry of capitalism into decadence and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in particular, the region has been at the centre of imperialist tensions. After the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, the implementation of the Sykes-Picot agreements divided the area between England and France. It was then the theatre of the Turkish civil war and the Greco-Turkish conflict, of the emergence of Arab nationalism and Zionism;[6] it was a major stake in the Second World War (German offensives in Russia towards the Caspian Sea and Iran and of Italian-German forces in North Africa and Libya towards Egypt).

After 1945 and the Yalta Agreements, the region constituted a central zone for the confrontation between the blocs of East and West. The period was marked by the establishment of the new state of Israel and the successive Israeli-Arab wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and above all, in this context, by the persistent attempts by Russia and its bloc to establish itself in the region through support for Mossadegh in Iran in the early 1950s, for Nasser in Egypt during the 1960s, for Hasan al-Bakr in Iraq around 1972, for the Palestinian Fedayeen and the PLO during the 1970s, for Hafez el-Hassad in Syria in 1980. These attempts were met with strong opposition from the United States and the Western bloc, which made the state of Israel one of the spearheads of their policy. At the end of the 1970s, although the American bloc gradually gained overall control of the Middle East and reduced the influence of the Russian bloc, the fall of the Shah and the “Iranian revolution” in 1979 not only deprived the American bloc of a key stronghold but announced, through the coming to power of the backward regime of the Mullahs, the growing decomposition of capitalism.

The 1980s opened under the auspices of the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran, resulting in the dismantling of the Western military system to the south of the USSR, and the invasion of Afghanistan by troops of the Red Army. This situation caused the American bloc, spurred on by the pressure of the economic crisis, to launch a large-scale imperialist offensive aimed at pulling recalcitrant small imperialisms (Iran, Libya, Syria) into line, at pushing Russian influence to the periphery of capitalism and at establishing a “cordon sanitaire” around the USSR:

“The growth of armaments in both blocs isn't the only thing which reveals the present scale and intensity of imperialist tensions. This intensity corresponds to what is at stake in all the local conflicts which ravage the planet. This scale corresponds to the breadth and objectives of the present offensive of the US bloc.

This offensive has the objective of completing the encirclement of the USSR, of depriving this country of all the positions it has been able to maintain outside its direct area of domination. It has as a priority the definitive expulsion of the USSR from the Middle East, through the disciplining of Iran and the re-insertion of this country into the US bloc as an important pawn in its global strategy. It has the ambition of going on to recuperate Indochina. In the final analysis, its aim is to completely strangle the USSR, to strip it of its status as a world power.

The present phase of this offensive, which began right after the invasion of Afghanistan by the armies of the USSR, (which was a major advance by the latter towards the ‘warm seas'), has already achieved some major successes:

- the winning of complete control over the Near East where Syria, previously linked to the Russian bloc and, along with the PLO, was the main loser from the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in ‘82, has now become one of the pawns of US strategy, sharing with Israel the role of ‘gendarme' in this region and where the resistance of recalcitrant bourgeois factions (PLO etc) has been progressively broken […]

- the growing exhaustion of Iran (which is the condition for its complete return to the US fold) due to the terrible war with Iraq, which is supported by the US bloc via France […]

One of the main characteristics of this offensive is the western bloc's more and more massive use of its military power, notably through the sending of expeditionary corps from the US or other central countries (France, UK, Italy) to the battle zones (as was particularly the case with the Lebanon, to ‘convince' Syria of the necessity to align itself with the US bloc, and in Chad in order to put an end to Libya's pretensions to independence). This corresponds to the fact that the economic card so abundantly used in the past to grab hold of the enemy's position is no longer sufficient:

- because of the present ambitions of the US bloc;

- because of the aggravation of the world crisis itself, which creates a situation of internal instability in the third world count­ries that the US bloc used to rely on.” [7]

Thus, despite the indiscipline and the upheavals in a whole series of Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Syria, Iraq or Libya, plunged into a catastrophic economic situation and with their imperialist ambitions perpetually frustrated, trying by permanent blackmail to sell themselves as dearly as possible, the last years of the decade marked a noticeable increase in pressure from the Western bloc and the United States to consolidate their control in the Middle East.

However, the “loss of control” of the situation in Iran from 1979, the destabilisation of Lebanon (the term “Lebanonisation” would become a concept designating the destabilisation and fragmentation of states), the occupation of Afghanistan by Russia and finally its defeat, as well as the murderous war between Iran and Iraq, were already warning signs of the initiation of the dynamics of decomposition and provided the ingredients which would generate the new imperialist configuration of the period of decomposition.[8]

1990: Decomposition exacerbates imperialist tensions

The implosion of the Eastern bloc marks the beginning of the period of decomposition of the system. It dramatically accelerates the stampede of the different components of the social body towards “every man for himself”, a descent into chaos. If there was one area where this trend was immediately confirmed, it was that of imperialist tensions: “The end of the ‘cold war’ and the disappearance of the blocs therefore only exacerbated the unleashing of the imperialist antagonisms inherent in capitalist decadence and aggravated in a qualitatively new way the bloody chaos into which the whole of society is sinking […]”.[9]

The disappearance of the blocs in no way calls into question the reality of imperialism and militarism. On the contrary, they become more barbaric and chaotic:

“The constitution of imperialist blocs is not the origin of militarism and imperialism. The oppo­site is true: the formation of these blocs is only the extreme consequence (which at certain moments can aggravate the causes), an expression (and not the only one), of decadent capitalism's plunge into militarism and war.  […] the end of the blocs only opens the door to a still more barbaric, aberrant, and chaotic form of imperialism.”[10]

The exacerbation of warlike barbarism that followed tended to be expressed more concretely through two major trends, which would prove to be crucial for the development of imperialism and militarism, particularly in the Middle East:

• the explosion of all-out imperialist appetites resulting in the multiplication of tensions and conflicts: “The difference, in the coming period, will be that these antagonisms, which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs, will now come to the fore. […] with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest"
• the development of “every man for himself” and corresponding attempts to contain the resulting chaos, both of which are aggravating factors in warlike barbarism: “the chaos which already reigns in a good part of the world and which now threatens the large big developed countries and their reciprocal relations, […] faced with the tendency towards generalised chaos which is specific to decomposition and which has been considerably accelerated by the Eastern bloc's collapse, capitalism has no other way out in its attempt to hold together its different components, than to impose the iron strait-jacket of military force. In this sense, the methods it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody state of chaos are themselves a factor in the aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging.”

This pressure of “every man for himself” and the multiplication of imperialist appetites which results from it in a period of decomposition are also major obstacles to the reconstitution of new blocs. The predominant historical tendency is therefore towards every man for himself, towards the weakening of the control of the United States over the world, in particular over its ex-allies, even if the first world power tried to thwart this tendency on the military level, where it had enormous superiority, and maintain its status by imposing its control over these same allies.

First Gulf War: the “world policeman” tries to thwart the tendency towards “every man for himself”

Operation “Desert Storm”, unleashed by the United States against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the early months of 1991, is a manifestation that fully corroborates the characteristics of imperialism and militarism in the period of decomposition, as identified in the orientation text on “Militarism and Decomposition”. Faced with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, President Bush Sr. mobilised a large international military coalition around the United States to “punish” Saddam Hussein.

The Gulf War highlighted the reality of a phenomenon which necessarily resulted from the disappearance of the Eastern bloc: the disintegration of its imperialist rival, the Western bloc. This phenomenon was already at the origin of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: it was because the world had ceased to be divided into two imperialist constellations that a country like Iraq believed it was possible to take control of an ex-ally of the same bloc. This same phenomenon manifested itself during the preparation phase of the war, with the various attempts by European countries (notably France and Germany) and Japan to torpedo, through separate negotiations carried out on behalf of the release of hostages, the central objective of US policy in the Gulf. The US therefore aimed to make the punishment of Iraq an “example” to discourage any future temptation to emulate the behaviour of that country.

But it was not limited to this objective. In reality, its fundamental goal was much more general: faced with a world increasingly dominated by chaos and “every man for himself”, it was a question of imposing a minimum of order and discipline, first of all among the most important countries of the former Western bloc.

In such a world, more and more marked by warlike chaos, by the “law of the jungle”, it fell to the only surviving superpower to play the role of world policeman, because this was the country that had the most to lose in the global disorder, and because it was the only one that could afford to do it. Paradoxically, it would only be able to fulfil this role by increasingly encasing the whole world in the steel corset of militarism and warlike barbarism.

“Desert Storm” reveals two basic characteristics of imperialist clashes in the period of decomposition:

- In the first place, there is the total irrationality of the conflicts, which is one of the hallmarks of war in a period of decomposition.

“While the Gulf war is an illustration of the irrationality of the whole of decadent capitalism, it also contains an extra and significant element of irrationality which is characteristic of the opening up of the phase of decomposition. The other wars of decadence could, despite their basic irrationality, still take on apparently 'rational' goals (such as the search for 'lebensraum' for the German economy or the defence of imperialist positions by the allies during the Second World War). This isn't at all the case with the Gulf war. The objectives of this war, on one side or the other, clearly express the total and desperate impasse that capitalism is in today:

- on the Iraqi side, the invasion of Kuwait undoubtedly had a clear economic objective: to grab hold of the considerable wealth of this country […] On the other hand, the objectives of the war with the 'allies' which was accepted by the Iraqi leaders as soon as they remained deaf to the ultimatum of 15 January 1991, were simply to 'save face' and inflict the maximum damage on the enemy, at the price of considerable and insurmountable damage to the national economy;

- on the 'allied' side, the economic advantages obtained, or even aimed for, were nothing, including for the main victor, the USA. The central objective of the war, for this power - to put a stop to the tendency towards generalised chaos, dressed up in grand phrases about the 'new world order' - did not contain any perspective for any amelioration of the economic situation, or even for preserving the present situation. In contrast to the time of the Second World War, the USA did not enter into this war to improve or even preserve its markets but simply to avoid a too-rapid amplification of the international political chaos which could only further exacerbate economic convulsions. In doing this, it could not avoid aggravating the instability of a zone of prime importance, while at the same time aggravating the difficulties of its own economy (especially its indebtedness) and of the world economy.” [11]

- In the second place, we must note the central role played by the dominant power in the extension of chaos across the whole planet:

“The difference is that today the initiative isn't being taken by a power that wants to overturn the imperialist balance but on the contrary the world's leading power, the one that for the moment has the best slice of the cake […] The fact that at the present time the maintenance of 'world order' […] doesn't imply a 'defensive' attitude […] on the part of the dominant power, but by an increasingly systematic use of the military offensive, and even of operations that will destabilise whole regions in order to ensure the submission of the other powers, expresses very clearly decadent capitalism's slide into the most unrestrained militarism. This is precisely one of the elements that distinguish the phase of decomposition from previous phase of capitalist decadence.”

Operation “Desert Storm” effectively suppressed the challenge to American leadership and the various imperialist appetites for a time. However, it exacerbated the polarisation of the mujahedin who fought the Russians in Afghanistan against the American “crusaders” (constitution of Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden in the 1990s). From the second half of the 1990s, European countries such as France or Germany exploited the desire for autonomy in countries such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, while, after its failure during the invasion of Southern Lebanon, the Israeli “hard” right came to power (the first Netanyahu government) against the will of the American government which supported Shimon Peres, and which would do anything from then on to sabotage the peace process with the Palestinians that was one of the greatest successes of American diplomacy in the region.

A more obvious expression of the challenge to American leadership was the dismal failure in February 1998 of Operation “Desert Thunder”, which aimed to inflict a new “punishment” on Iraq and, beyond that country, on the powers that secretly supported it, especially France and Russia.

In 1990-91, the United States trapped Iraq by pushing it to invade another Arab country, Kuwait. In the name of “respect for international law”, they succeeded in rallying behind them, willy-nilly, almost all the Arab states and all the great powers, including the most reluctant like France. “Desert Storm” thus made it possible to assert the role of American power as sole “world policeman”, which opened the door to the Oslo process (the Israeli-Palestinian agreements). In 1997-98, on the other hand, it was Iraq and its “allies” who trapped the United States: the obstacles posed by Saddam Hussein to the visits of “presidential sites” by international inspectors led the superpower to a new attempt to assert its authority by force of arms.

But this time around, it was forced to give up this enterprise in the face of staunch opposition from almost all of the Arab states, most of the great powers, and (timid) support from Britain alone. The contrast between “Storm” and “Thunder” highlighted the deepening crisis of United States leadership.

Of course, Washington didn't need anyone's permission to strike when and where it wanted (which it did in late 1998 with Operation “Desert Fox”). But by pursuing such a policy, the United States was placing itself at the head of precisely the tendency it wanted to counter, that of every man for himself, as it had momentarily succeeded in doing during the Gulf War. Worse yet: the political signal given by Washington during “Desert Fox” turned against the American cause. For the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, the American bourgeoisie had shown itself incapable of outwardly presenting a united front, despite being in a situation of war. On the contrary, the procedure of “impeachment” against Clinton intensified during the events: American politicians, engulfed in a real internal conflict on foreign policy, instead of disavowing the propaganda of the enemies of America according to which Clinton had made the decision to intervene militarily in Iraq because of personal motivations (“Monicagate”), gave credence to this propaganda.

The underlying foreign policy conflict between certain factions of the Republican and Democratic parties had proven to be very destructive, precisely because this “debate” revealed an intractable contradiction, which the resolution of the 12th ICC Congress formulated as follows:

“On the one hand, if it gives up using or extending the use of its military superiority, this will only encourage the countries contesting its authority to contest even more. On the other hand, when it does use brute force, even, and especially when this momentarily obliges its opponents to rein in their ambitions towards independence, this only pushes the latter to seize on the least occasion to get their revenge and squirm away from America's grasp.” [12]

On this point, the resolution of the 13th Congress of Révolution Internationale (section of the ICC in France) in 1998 was prescient:

“While the US has not recently had the opportunity to use its armed might and to participate directly in this ‘bloody chaos’, this can only be a temporary situation, especially because it cannot allow the diplomatic failure over Iraq to pass without a response.” [13]

Second Gulf War: decline of American leadership and the explosion of imperialist ambitions

The attacks of September 11 2001 led President Bush junior to unleash a “war on terror” against Afghanistan and especially Iraq (Operation “Iraqi Freedom” in 2003). Despite all the pressure and spread of “fake news” aimed at mobilising the “international community” against the “axis of evil”, Bush junior failed in his attempt to mobilise other imperialisms against Saddam's “rogue state” and was forced to invade Iraq with Tony Blair's UK as his only significant ally.

The resolution on the international situation at the 17th ICC Congress (2007) noted how much the failure of Operation “Iraqi Freedom” underlined the inability of the American policeman to impose its “world order”. On the contrary, the “war on terror” had reinforced imperialist tensions, the development of every man for himself, and the weakening of American leadership:

“The failure of the American bourgeoisie, throughout the 1990s, to impose its authority in any lasting sense, even after a series of military operations, led it to look for a new enemy of the ‘free world’ and of ‘democracy’, so that it could once again pull the world's powers into line, especially those which had been its allies: Islamic terrorism. […] Five years later, the failure of this policy is obvious. If the September 11 attacks allowed the US to draw countries like France and Germany into their intervention in Afghanistan, it didn't succeed in dragging them into its Iraqi adventure in 2003; in fact it even provoked the rise of a circumstantial alliance between these two countries and Russia against the intervention in Iraq. Later on, some of its main allies in the ‘coalition’ which intervened in Iraq, such as Spain and Italy, quit the sinking ship. The US bourgeoisie failed to achieve any of its official objectives in Iraq: the elimination of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, the establishment of peaceful ‘democracy’"; stability and a return to peace throughout the region under the aegis of America; the retreat of terrorism; the adherence of the American population to the military interventions of its government.

The question of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was soon settled: it became clear that the only ones to be found in Iraq were the ones that had been brought in by the coalition. This quickly exposed the lies concocted by the Bush administration to sell the invasion of Iraq.

As for the retreat of terrorism, we can see that the invasion of Iraq has in no way clipped its wings but on the contrary has been a powerful factor in its development, both in Iraq itself and in other countries of the world, as we saw in Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005.

The establishment of a peaceful democracy in Iraq took the form of the setting up of a puppet government which couldn't maintain the least control over the country without the massive support of American troops - a control which is in any case limited to a few ‘security zones’, leaving the rest of the country free for massacres between Shias and Sunnis and terrorist attacks which have claimed tens of thousands of victims since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Stabilisation and peace in the Middle East has never seemed so far away: in the 50 year conflict between Israel and Palestine, the last few years have seen a continuous aggravation of the situation, made even more dramatic by the inter-Palestinian clashes between Hamas and Fatah and by the growing discredit of the Israeli government. The loss of authority in the region by the US giant, following its shattering defeat in Iraq, is clearly not separate from this downward slide and the failure of the ‘peace process’ of which it was the main proponent.

This loss of authority is also partly responsible for the growing difficulties of the NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Karzai government's loss of control of the country in the face of the Taliban.

Furthermore, the increasing boldness of Iran over its preparations for obtaining nuclear weapons is a direct consequence of the US falling into a quagmire in Iraq, which for the moment prevents a similar massive use of troops elsewhere […]

Today in Iraq the US bourgeoisie is facing a real impasse. On the one hand, both from the strictly military standpoint and from the economic and political point of view, it doesn't have the means to recruit a force that would eventually allow it to ‘re-establish order’. On the other hand, it can't simply withdraw from Iraq without openly admitting the total failure of its policies and opening the door to the dislocation of Iraq and an even greater destabilisation of the entire region.” [14]

In fact, the occupation of Iraq resulting from the invasion led to a fiasco for the United States. Occupation troops suffered heavy losses in attacks and ambushes and Iran's rise to strength as a regional power defying the United States was by no means blocked, on the contrary, and the Baathist cadres of Saddam's regime joined the resistance and formed the backbone of extremist Sunni movements such as Islamic State.

More fundamentally, Bush junior's Iraqi adventure fully opened up the Pandora's box of decomposition in the Middle East. Indeed, it first vividly exposed the growing stalemate in US policy and the aberrant escape into warlike barbarism. It severely weakened the global leadership of the United States. Even though the American bourgeoisie under Obama tried to reduce the impact of the catastrophic policy pursued by Bush, and the commando action decided by Obama resulting in the execution of Bin Laden in 2011 expressed an attempt by the United States to arrest this decline in its leadership and underlined its absolute technological and military superiority, these reactions could not reverse the underlying trend, while leading the United States into a headlong rush into warlike barbarism.

In addition, the warlike adventure of Bush junior exacerbated the spread of every man for himself, which manifested itself in particular in an all-out growth of the imperialist ambitions of powers like Iran, which has developed its hold on the Shiite parties and militias not only dominating Iraq but also in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, even the Gulf Emirates and Qatar, which have increased their support for radical Sunni groups. These ambitions brought no peace to Iraq but only the exacerbation of tensions between imperialist sharks and an even deeper plunge of this country and its people into bloody carnage.

Part II to follow.

M. Havanais, July 22, 2020

The development of the situation in the Middle East between 1990 and 2010 has shown vividly that the imperialist confrontations, the militarism and barbarism, which are essential characteristics of the period of the decadence of capitalism, have not only intensified but, above all, in the phase of the widespread decomposition of capitalist society, their irrational and chaotic nature has become more and more evident.

This was powerfully demonstrated by the two Gulf Wars. They illustrate the fact that the abortive attempts of the American "world policeman" to keep control of the situation and counter the tendency of "every man for himself" at the imperialist level, not only led to the decline of its leadership but also opened a Pandora's box of exploding imperialist appetites everywhere. These tendencies have increased dramatically in the second decade of the 21st century.

1. The US withdrawal from Iraq and civil war in Syria: the explosion of chaos

The year 2011 was marked by two major events that symbolise the growing chaos in the imperialist relations in the Middle East and would decisively mark the present period: the US withdrawal from Iraq and the outbreak of civil war in Syria.
The planned withdrawal of the US and NATO troops from Iraq (and later Afghanistan) caused unprecedented instability in these countries and would contribute to the further destabilisation of the entire region. At the same time, this withdrawal also underlines the extent to which US imperialist power is declining. While in the 1990s it managed to fulfil its role as "world policeman", its central problem in the first decade of the 21st century is attempting to mask its impotence faced with the global chaos.
In that same year, the outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria confirmed the increasingly chaotic and uncontrollable nature of the imperialist conflicts. It came soon after the popular movements of the "Arab Spring" which affected Syria and many other Arab countries. By weakening the Assad regime, this opened up a Pandora's box with a multitude of contradictions and conflicts that had been kept under wraps for decades by the iron hand of this regime. Western countries called for Assad's removal, but were quite incapable of producing any suitable replacement when the opposition to him was totally divided and its predominant sector was made up of Islamists. At the same time, Russia has provided unfailing military support to the Assad regime and it is guaranteed a permanent presence for its war fleet in the port of Tartus in the Mediterranean.

It is not the only state that supports Assad's regime since Iran had seized the opportunity, along with the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias it controls, to establish a large Shi’ite front. In addition, we can't discount the role played by China. Hence Syria has become a new and bloody game involving multiple rivalries between first and second-rate imperialist powers which can only mean the threat of further conflagrations and increased destabilisation of the region for which the people of the Middle East will once again pay a heavy price.

The report on imperialist tensions of the 20th Congress of the ICC (in 2013) underlined how these two events gave rise to the spectacular growth of militarism, barbaric war and all-out confrontations between the imperialisms in the region, taking advantage of the increasingly conspicuous decline of US leadership:

"The Middle East is a terrible confirmation of our analyses about the impasse of the system and the flight into the 'every man for himself':
 - the region has become an enormous powder keg and arms purchases have multiplied in recent years (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman);
 - flocks of vultures of first, second and third-rate order confront each other in the region (…);
 - in this context, we should point to the destabilising role of Russia in the Middle East (since it wants to maintain its last points of support in the region) and China (which has a more offensive attitude in support of Iran, which is a crucial provider of oil (...)).
It is an explosive situation which is escaping the control of the big imperialisms; and the withdrawal of western forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will further accentuate this destabilisation, even if the United States has made attempts to limit the damage (...). Globally, however, throughout the ‘Arab Spring’, the US has shown its incapacity to protect regimes favourable to it (which has led to a loss of confidence, e.g. the attitude of Saudi Arabia which has distanced itself from the US) and it is becoming increasingly unpopular.

This multiplication of imperialist tensions can lead to major consequences at any moment: countries such as Israel or Iran could provoke terrible shocks and pull the entire region into turmoil because it's under no-one's control. We are thus in an extremely dangerous and unpredictable situation for the region, but also, because of the consequences that can arise from it, for the entire planet.)
 (Report on Imperialist Tensions, 20th Congress of the ICC, International Review 152, 2013).

This report also highlighted that these events were leading to growing instability in many states across the region with the spread of reactionary and barbaric ideologies and an endless series of massacres which caused floods of refugees in the region and towards Europe: "Since 1991, with the invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf war, the Sunni front put in place by the west to contain Iran has collapsed. The explosion of ‘every man for himself’ in the region has been breathtaking and Iran has been the main beneficiary from the two Gulf wars, with the strengthening of Hezbollah and some Shi'ite movements; as for the Kurds, their quasi-independence has been the collateral effect of the invasion of Iraq. The tendency towards each for themselves is again sharpened in the extension of the social movements of the ‘Arab Spring’, in particular where the proletariat is weakest, and this has led to the more and more marked destabilisation of numerous states in the region (...):

The aggravation of tensions between adverse factions is mixed up with diverse religious tensions. Thus, outside of Sunni/Shi'ite or Christian/Muslim opposition, oppositions within the Sunni world are also increasing with the coming to power in Turkey of the moderate Islamist Erdogan or recently the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Tunisia (Ennahda) and within the Moroccan government, supported today by Qatar, which opposes the Salafist/Wahhabi movement financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), which supported Mubarak and Ben Ali respectively (…).

But, in particular, this explosion of antagonisms and religious factionalism since the end of the 80s and the collapse of ‘modernising’, ‘socialist’ regimes (Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq...) above all expresses the weight of decomposition, of chaos and misery, the total absence of any perspective through a descent into totally reactionary and barbaric ideologies” (Ibid.)

These orientations highlighted in the report would tragically be confirmed in the following years.

2. From Syria to Yemen: the intensification of conflicts and the unpredictability of alliances

The major consequences of the US withdrawal from Iraq and the civil war in Syria for the exacerbation of imperialist tensions in the Middle East are clearly highlighted in the Resolution on the international situation of the 23rd International Congress of the ICC (2019): "The Middle East, where the weakening of American leadership is most evident and where the Americans’ inability to engage too directly on the military level in Syria has left the field open to other imperialisms, offers a concentration of these historical tendencies:

 - Russia has imposed itself as an essential power in the Syrian theatre thanks to its military force, in particular to preserve its naval bases in Tartus;

 - Iran, through its military victory to save its ally, the Assad regime, and by forging an Iraqi-Syrian land corridor directly linking Iran to the Mediterranean and the Lebanese Hezbollah, is the main beneficiary and has fulfilled its objective of taking the lead in this region (...).
 - Turkey, obsessed by the fear of the establishment of autonomous Kurdish zones that can only destabilise it, is operating militarily in Syria.” (International Review 164)

Since 2011, the evolution of the situation in the region is effectively characterised by a significant extension of 'every man for himself' and an explosion of instability: the interminable civil war in Syria, the war against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, the civil wars in Yemen and Libya, the regular flare-ups between the USA and Iran, the 'Kurdish question' which pushes Turkey to intervene continually in Iraq or Syria and the eternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict have all sharpened the appetites of an army of first, second or third order vultures, which confront each other in the region in the framework of often fluctuating alliances. The United States, Russia and China are of course at the forefront, but other gangsters are prepared to join in the fray too, such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and of course Israel bombing Hamas in Gaza, or Iran and its allies in Lebanon and Syria, and this is not to mention the militias and armed gangs in the service of these powers or the local warlords acting on their own behalf.

Russia consolidates its position in the region
In the Middle East, the demise of the "world policeman" has primarily benefited Russian imperialism, which has managed to establish itself as the dominant power in the Syrian conflict by rescuing Assad's regime. Thus it first of all secured its foothold in the region (in particular its naval base in Tartus) and tried to accentuate the divisions between Turkey and NATO. To underline its weight in the region, Russia has also organised joint naval manoeuvres with Iran and China, which imports oil from Iran and has supported the action of Russia and Iran in the region. It then tried to consolidate this position by establishing a strategic alliance with Iran and Turkey (Sochi Conference in February 2019), since it has an interest in promoting the current status quo, supported by China, which is also keen to stabilise the situation. Although China does not yet have the means to compete directly with the main sharks in this part of the world, it is nevertheless trying to act and defend in an underhanded way its own imperialist ambitions[1]. Turkey's ambiguous relations with both the US (and NATO) and also with Russia offers opportunities for Chinese imperialism (see below on Turkey's position).

Iran extends its domination from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea
Iran is a second major beneficiary of the weakening of the US presence in the Middle East: the dominant position of the Shi’ite fractions in Iraq has enabled it to considerably strengthen its hold on this country. The intervention on the ground of the Al-Quds force as well as the presence on the front lines of Hezbollah fighters and Iraqi Shi’ite militias have changed the balance of power in Syria and are in fact leading the Assad regime towards victory. Also, Iran controls a large part of Lebanon through its Hezbollah allies, which means that it dominates large territories from the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and has thus achieved a dominant imperialist position in the region.
However, its ambition to become a nuclear power has led it into a greater confrontation with the US. Moreover, both its nuclear objectives and its progress on the ground (Lebanon, Syria) collide head-on with Israel's interests, while support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen exacerbates tensions with Saudi Arabia. Originally, the state of the Ayatollahs was linked to India by a series of trade agreements (oil in exchange for Indian investment in the Iranian port of Chabahar), but the US embargo led to a 40% reduction in India's Iranian oil imports (see Le Monde Diplomatique, Sept. 2019), which has led India to turn to Saudi Arabia for its oil. As a result, Iran has now tended to move closer to Pakistan and thus to align itself with the China-Pakistan economic corridor.
For the Iranian theocratic state, there is fundamentally no other perspective than a policy of systematic search for conflict, since this alone allows the regime to mobilise the population and to get them to accept terrifying economic and social pressures: "For Tehran, the perpetuation of tension makes it possible to consolidate the domination of the hard-line wing of the regime, whose backbone comprises the military-economic complex of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran ('guardians')" (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2020, p.1 ). Hence the regular provocations, such as the recent boarding of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, the bombing of oil installations in Saudi Arabia or the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad (even if in the latter case it underestimated the symbolic impact of the attack on a US embassy, after the occupation of that in Tehran in 1979 and Benghazi in 2012). In short, Iran will not change its behaviour, even if it can calm things when the situation of 'asymmetrical warfare' becomes too explosive. It thus remains a powerful vector of destabilisation in the region.

Turkey: a complex game of alliances
Turkey's geographical position, occupying a key place in the region, is both critical in the evolution of future conflicts and also poses a threat to the very stability of the country, as any emergence of the seeds of a Kurdish state or independent entity is a nightmare for Ankara. Moreover, Turkey has important imperialist ambitions in the region, not only in Syria or Iraq, but also towards all the Muslim countries, from Libya to Qatar, from Turkmenistan to Egypt. Restricted in its imperialist ambitions at the time of the opposition between the Russian and US blocs, it is now playing its own imperialist card to the full: once one of the pillars of NATO, its status as a member of the Alliance has become largely 'unsettled', firstly because of its strained relations with the US and other Western European NATO members, secondly because of tensions with the European Union over refugees, and thirdly because of the conflicted relations with Greece. Also, it is trying to play a game of blackmail between the imperialist powers by getting closer in recent years to Russia and even Iran, which are a major imperialist competitors in the Middle East theatre.
Turkey had found itself in a difficult situation in the civil war in Syria, as the US was dependant on its Kurdish enemies in the fight against ISIS. In fact, the US believed that the Kurds were the most reliable cannon fodder in Iraq or Syria and, moreover, it distrusted the Turks who tolerated and exploited the actions of various jihadist groups in the areas they controlled, as illustrated by the fact that the "Caliph" of ISIS, El-Baghdadi, had taken refuge in an area under Turkish control. The rapprochement with Russia was also a form of blackmail against the US. Now, the Americans have withdrawn their support for the Kurds, allowing the Turks to launch an offensive against the Kurdish militias and drive them out of certain areas along the Syrian-Turkish border, with the consent of the Russians. As a result, the Sunni militias allied to the Turks and the Turkish army itself have increasingly come into confrontation, particularly in the Idlib pocket, with the Alawite Syrian government troops and the Iranian and Lebanese Shiite militias supported by the Russians.
Within the Sunni “community”, Turkey also opposes Saudi Arabia in its conflict with Qatar, and in Egypt, where Turkey (and Qatar) support the Muslim Brotherhood while Saudi Arabia supports and finances Sissi's military regime. Similarly, in the civil war in Libya, the former supports the government of Tripoli while the latter supports the army of the rebel leader Marshal Haftar. In conclusion, confrontations between the imperialist brigands are developing in all directions, and the instability of imperialist relations means predicting where tensions will break out next is difficult.

What Le Monde Diplomatique concludes about Russian-Turkish relations is fully valid for all the protagonists in the region: "More generally, the very concept of alliance or partnership, which would induce a certain number of reciprocal political duties and constraints, does not make it possible to grasp the essentially pragmatic nature of the Russian-Turkish relationship. One should not confuse ideological, political and economic cooperation made necessary by the geopolitical context with a strategic rapprochement in a bloc logic, nor should one forget the constant reassessment of its interests by each country" (LMD, October 2019, p.17)

3. From Bush to Trump: the Middle East is central to the tensions within the US bourgeoisie and to its decline in leadership

The development of the war and the occupation of Iraq underlined the decline of US leadership. It also highlighted strong tensions inside the US bourgeoisie on how to maintain its global supremacy. The coming to power of populist president, Donald Trump, would accentuate these tensions and bring out more clearly the role of the US as a major vector of destabilisation in the Middle East (and, to varying degrees, in other parts of the world).
An overview of the confrontations in the Middle East over the past 30 years shows the marked tensions unfolding within the US bourgeoisie on how to maintain US global supremacy in a world where the blocs had disappeared: on the one hand there were those advocating a "multilateral" approach based on mobilising a broad "coalition of allies" around the US to control the situation, as Bush senior did in 1991 and Obama tried to do again during his presidency (e.g. the Iranian nuclear treaty) but with increasingly mixed success; on the other hand, faced with of the rise of  "every man for himself", there were those advocating the "unilateral" approach, where the United States takes on the singular role of the world's sheriff. This approach was taken by Bush Junior after the attacks of 11 September 2001, but led to the bitter failure of the Iraqi adventure.
When Trump came to power, the various factions within the American bourgeoisie sought to “direct”  the populist president, whether it was the proponents of "multilateralism" like Secretary of State Tillerson and Defence Secretary Mattis, or the supporters of "unilateralism" like John Bolton. Instead, in accord with the decisions of the unpredictable populist president, an "America First" type policy at the imperialist level was adopted. This orientation is in fact the official recognition of the failure of US imperialist policy over the past 25 years:

"The Trump administration's formalisation of the principle of defending only their interests as a national state and the imposition of profitable power relations as the main basis for relations with other states, confirms and draws implications from the failure of the policy of the last 25 years of fighting against ‘every man for himself’ as a world policeman in defence of the world order inherited from 1945. (...)" (Resolution on the International Situation from the 23rd ICC International Congress, in International Review 164, point 13).
A common principle, aimed at overcoming the chaos in international relations, is summarised in the following Latin phrase: "pacta sunt servanda" – treaties, the agreements must be respected. If someone signs a global - or multilateral - agreement, they are supposed to respect it, at least in appearance. But the United States, under Trump, abolished this concept: "I can sign a treaty, but I can also abolish it tomorrow if it is in the interest of the United States". This was reflected in the termination of the Transpacific Pact (TPP), the free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and the Paris Treaty on Climate Change. The same is true in the Middle East with the cancellation of the nuclear treaty with Iran or the UN resolutions with regard to Israel and Palestine. According to Trump, the US will impose "bilateral" agreements on other countries, through economic, political and military blackmail,  that will serve their interests.
"Despite Trump's populism, despite disagreements within the American bourgeoisie on how to defend its leadership and divisions especially regarding Russia, the Trump administration adopts an imperialist policy in continuity and consistency with the fundamental imperialist interests of the American state..." (ibid). However, this policy, only exacerbates tensions within the US bourgeoisie, as is illustrated by the following two emblematic cases:

- the possible rapprochement with Russia:
The Trump faction has identified the profound change in geostrategic conditions which required a rethinking of relations with Russia: ("... the instability of power relations between powers gives the Russian Eurasian state-continent a new strategic importance in view of the place it can occupy in the containment of China") and is in favour of better relations with the Kremlin. On the other hand, "...the remaining American institutions [retain] great hostility towards Russia. This is notably the case with the American intelligence agencies which have demonstrated Russian interference but were publicly disavowed by the President during his meeting with V. Putin in Helsinki in July 2018. In line with Congress, most Republicans have maintained their traditional hostility towards Russia - which dates back to the Cold War - and are supported by the Democrats, who are increasingly anti-Russian because of Putin's anti-democratic stance". (Diplomacy, Major Topics No. 50, p50)[2].

- negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan:
Trump had gambled - and failed - to reach a quick agreement with the Taliban to achieve the US withdrawal by conceding "to the demands of the Taliban, despite the lack of guarantees for combatting the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. These negotiations established the Taliban as credible interlocutors for all countries in the region and beyond, which was a major objective of the insurgency. Moreover, as the entire process was conducted without the Kabul regime's involvement, the legal government had no say in the future of Afghanistan. But then, after paying the price of political recognition of the Taliban and alienating the Afghan government, President Trump cancelled the planned meeting with them at Camp David and declared (...) the negotiations dead. The precise reason for this last-minute about-face is not known, including by U.S. diplomats" (Le Monde 24/10/19).

Trump's policy of "unilateral" withdrawal from Afghanistan in defiance of the allies and the government in power has also aroused strong opposition within the diplomatic corps, the secret service and certain political factions of the American bourgeoisie: "The fact that Trump secretly planned a personal meeting with a murderous group classified by the United States as terrorists a few days before the eighteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which the group participated, would have raised a few eyebrows in Washington. A diplomatic way of expressing shock and horror," The Guardian Commentary (International Newsletter, 11/09/19).

Trump's policy will have two major consequences, which are clearly visible in the Middle East:
(a) it confirms the continued decline of US leadership.
This "bilateral" policy tends to undermine the reliability of the US as an ally: Trump's ranting, bluffing and abrupt changes of position - threatening Iran with military reprisals on the one hand and cancelling military strikes at the last moment on the other, or making use of the Kurdish militias only to abandon them later - not only undermines the credibility of the US but leads to the fact that fewer and fewer countries trust it.
Furthermore, Trump's unpredictable decisions and gambling with the future have the effect of undermining the basis of previous political strategies of the US administrations in the Middle East: by denouncing the nuclear agreement with Iran, the US is not only leaving the field open to China and Russia, but is opposing its EU "allies", even Great Britain. Its seemingly paradoxical alliance with the only countries prepared to support it in confronting Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia, can only lead to a growing rapprochement between Turkey, Russia and Iran.
Finally, in Iraq, the US has progressively lost the support of the Sunnis (after the fall of Saddam), the Kurds (after having abandoned them to their fate in Syria) and recently the Shi’ite militias (after the "elimination" of their leaders and Soleimani), which actually endangers the American forces retained in Iraq and can only increase distrust by Turkey, which Trump has threatened with economic and military pressure.
Therefore, this "Trump" strategy remains controversial, firstly because its results are far from being evident and it tends to accentuate the chaos and the loss of US control over the situation; and secondly because the interests of local imperialisms on which Trump claims to base his policy in the region, namely Israel or Saudi Arabia, will not necessarily always correspond with those of the US.
(b) it makes the US's "world policeman" a major factor of destabilisation and chaos.
In line with his promise to bring "the boys" home, Trump fears more than anything that he will be dragged into a military operation with "boots on the ground". That is why he is anxious to accelerate the withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan. On the other hand, in order to maintain the interests of US imperialism, he fully exploits the assets in which the US has an overwhelming superiority:

• economic pressure, like the economic blackmail against Turkey or the economic sanctions against Iran;
• technological warfare to take advantage of the overwhelming superiority of the US in this field. The knock-out operations against Al-Baghdadi in northern Syria and the drone operations against Iranian General Soleimani near Baghdad airport, in an area under the control of pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, demonstrate an unparalleled ability of the US to strike when and where it wants with terrifying precision.

Moreover, as mentioned above, the US strategy aims to rely on two of the most important military powers in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who they arm to the teeth and over whom they have close control, in carrying out the policy of containment of Iran. However, here too, Trump's unpredictable decisions are often contested not only within the political apparatus of the US bourgeoisie but even within the military hierarchy (e.g. the resignation of Defence Minister J. Mattis). Thus, several announcements of troop withdrawals from Syria or Iraq have been ignored or circumvented by Pentagon strategists. Similarly, the Pentagon and the intelligence services have expressed an adverse opinion regarding the drone attack on Qasem Soleimani.

US policy can therefore only lead to an increase in imperialist tensions and further destabilisation of the situation in the region. Moreover, the vandal-like behaviour of Trump, who can renounce US international commitments overnight in defiance of the established rules, represents a new and powerful factor of uncertainty and development of every man for himself. "It is a further indication of the new stage in which capitalism in sinking into the barbarism and the abyss of untrammelled militarism" (Resolution on the International Situation from the 23rd ICC International Congress, in International Review 164, point 13)

4. Growing barbarism and chaos in the region
The spread of conflicts and wars is leading to a dramatic expanse of chaos, barbarism and despair in the Middle East. This takes on several characteristics.

The destabilisation of many states in the region and the proliferation of terrorist groups
Entire parts of the Middle East, including whole states, are sliding into instability and chaos. This is clearly the case of countries such as Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and "liberated Kurdistan" or the Palestinian territories that are sinking into the horror of civil war or even into outright gang warfare. And in other countries, such as Egypt, Jordan (where the Muslim Brotherhood opposes King Abdullah II), Bahrain and even Iran or Turkey, social tensions and opposition between bourgeois factions make the situation unpredictable.
The exacerbation of tensions between opposing factions equally divides the various religious tendencies. Thus, in addition to the Sunni/Shi’ite or Christian/Muslim opposition, oppositions within the Sunni world have also multiplied with the coming to power in Turkey of the moderate Islamist Erdogan supporting the Muslim and associated Brotherhood in Egypt and in Tunisia (Ennahda) as well as the official Libyan government. The Muslim Brotherhood is also supported by Qatar and these factions oppose the Salafist/Wahhabi movement, financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which in turn supports the military regime of Sissi in Egypt or rebel leader General Haftar in Libya. In southern Iraq, Iraqi Shiites are increasingly opposed to the Iranian Shi’ite tutelage.
The increasingly bloody military confrontations and the destabilisation of various states have led to the emergence of numerous terrorist organisations, such as Al-Qaida, Islamic State (ISIS), the Al-Nusra Front, Hezbollah and various other Salafist groups, which are financed and used by various regional imperialisms (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, Turkey and Iran) and which sow terror and desolation not only in the region but also strike directly at Europe through terrorist attacks (Madrid, Paris, London, Brussels, ...). Of course, these religious tendencies, each one more barbaric than the next, are only there to hide the imperialist interests that govern the policies of the various ruling cliques. More than ever today, with the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, it is obvious that there is no "Muslim bloc" or "Arab bloc", but different bourgeois cliques defending their own imperialist interests by exploiting religious tensions (Christians, Jews, Muslims...). This is also apparent in the struggle between countries such as Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia or Qatar for control of mosques "abroad", particularly in Europe.

Impotent popular revolts crushed in blood
From the end of 2010 to the end of 2012, a series of popular protests engulfed many countries in the Arab world. People protested both against poverty and unemployment and against the tyranny and corruption of authoritarian governments that had been in power for decades. This movement, which began in Tunisia, later spread to other countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Syria. However, all of these social movements were either hijacked to benefit a bourgeois faction fighting against others, or crushed in blood.

“The fact that the manifestation of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Syria has resulted not in the least gain for the exploited and oppressed masses but in a war which has left over 100,000 dead is a sinister illustration of the weakness of the working class in this country – the only force which can form a barrier to the barbaric warfare. And this situation also applies, even if in less tragic forms, to the other Arab countries where the fall of the old dictators has resulted in the seizure of power by the most backward sectors of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Islamists in Egypt or Turkey, or in utter chaos, as in Libya". (Resolution on the International Situation, pt 7, 20th International Congress of the ICC, International Review 152, 2013)
A new wave of social revolts would break out in 2019 in those populations subjected to the dramatic consequences and traumatic experience of endless imperialist wars. In Iran, popular protest exploded once more with the rise in fuel prices in the autumn of 2019; in the autumn of 2019 and the winter of 2020, Iraqi Shi’ites rose up against corruption and to Iran's stranglehold on the country (around 500 were left dead and more than 20,000 wounded); in Lebanon the social revolt is spreading through the movements of the retired (especially ex-members of the army), civil servants and the youth, creating a broad movement, the "Hirak" ("movement") which has been occupying the streets since October 2019 in the face of economic collapse and the bankruptcy and impoverishment linked to the consequences of war and the corruption of the ruling cliques. Yet again, all these movements are successfully sidelined or crushed in blood, underlining the impotence of the population in the absence of a proletarian world perspective. These popular revolts against poverty, exploitation, violence and corruption express the desperate and hopeless rejection of imperialist barbarism by millions of people, victims of the region's plunge into bloody chaos. By accentuating the instability and potentially worsening the chaos, these revolts also affect the ability of the various imperialisms to achieve their objectives or to maintain their "established" positions.

The "displaced" and the refugees: the despair of whole populations
The continual barbarism of war means the number of dead continues to rise. In Syria, for example, it is estimated that 580,000 people will die between 2013 and early 2020, with the systematic destruction of homes or entire cities (such as Aleppo and Idlib in Syria or Mosul in Iraq) and the repeated bombing of hospitals under the pretext that they are serving as refuges for rebel forces. Not to mention the countless victims, now generally overlooked, of the food shortages that have plagued the disaster areas since 2013. In the current phase of capitalist decomposition this situation can only deteriorate further with the deportation or mass exodus of populations fleeing the war zones and surviving in the ruins of razed cities or crammed into insanitary camps or shanty towns. In the Middle East, this takes on cataclysmic proportions: more than 6 million Syrians have fled abroad, and there are more than 6 million internally "displaced persons", totalling about half of the country's population. And the situation is similar in the other countries of the region: there are 300,000 Iraqi refugees and more than 2.6 million internally displaced persons, 2.5 million Afghans, mainly refugees in neighbouring countries, 280,000 Yemeni refugees, with 2.1 million internally displaced persons, 500,000 Libyan internally displaced persons, more than 3 million Palestinian refugees and 2 million "internal" refugees.
Masses of poor victims flock to the richest states, desperately seeking a place of asylum, especially in Europe. Yet Europe has no real solution to the influx of migrants other than to seek at all costs to intercept them, to incarcerate them, to flatly reject them and send them back to die or to otherwise erect walls and barbed wire. The European governments constantly spread fear of the foreigner, even severely punishing those who reach out to migrants and try to help them.

Moreover, the cynicism of the European states has no limits. Turkey, in return for economic and financial aid from the EU, is made responsible for blocking the passage of migrants to Greece and placing them in refugee camps in inhuman conditions (currently almost three million refugees). Behind this agreement there has been a real bartering of human lives, with a 'drip-drip' processing of those who will be able to join a European country and those, the vast majority, who will remain in the camps.

5. The illusion of stabilising the region

The "victory" over ISIS, which materialised in the capture of Mosul, Rakka, Deir-Ez-Zor, the imprisonment and dispersal of the last jihadist fighters, as well as the "victory" of the Assad regime in the civil war in Syria, could have implied a stabilisation of positions and a reduction in confrontations. As the resolution of the 23rd International Congress points out, today the opposite is true: "The military ‘victories’ in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and the retention of Assad in power offer no prospect of stabilisation. In Iraq, the military defeat of the Islamic State did not eliminate the resentment of the former Sunni fraction around Saddam Hussein that gave birth to it: the exercise of power for the first time by Shi’ites only fuels it. In Syria, the regime's military victory does not mean the stabilisation or pacification of the shared Syrian space which is subjected to intervention of different imperialism with competing interests." (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164).

Victories as the precursors of new confrontations
The Islamic State was defeated by US planes and drones, but the "boots on the ground" were the Kurdish militias and Shi’ite legions trained by Iran. The 'betrayal' of the Kurds by Trump and the 'elimination' of the principal leader of the Shiite militias at the same time as General Soleimani, head of the 'Guardians of the Revolution', by a US drone shatters this circumstantial alliance and can only lead to further tensions:

• the confrontations between Kurdish militias and the Turkish army in Syria, between Kurdish units and the Iraqi army and pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias in Kirkuk, Iraq, are heralding new bloody battles in the region.
• the cessation of military collaboration has allowed the remnants of the ISIS forces to regroup in the desert at the Syrian-Iraqi border (Anbar province) or in the mountains around Kirkuk, which is already leading to a further intensification of ISIS guerrilla actions in Syria and Iraq.

The defeat of ISIS has thus in no way reduced the instability and chaos. All the more so since the various imperialists do not hesitate to provoke confrontation.
This is also true with regard to Syria. "Russia and Iran are deeply divided over the future of the Syrian state and the presence of their military on its territory." (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164). Russia and Iran do not have the same vision for the future of the Syrian state and a possible redirection of forces against Israel. Behind the scenes, Russia is trying to set up a project for rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus, but this looks difficult with the current ruling faction: Assad has described Erdogan as a "land grabber" and has reiterated "his total rejection of any occupation of Syrian lands by anyone under any pretext". His aim is to eventually restore his government's control over the whole of Syria; but to legitimise Syrian power on the international scene and also to begin the material reconstruction of the country (at least of certain vital infrastructures) he would require funds that his Russian and Iranian sponsors are not really in a position to provide. Moscow has resigned itself to the reintegration of Damascus into the "Arab family" (see "Syria: a muffled return to the Arab family", in Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2020). As a result, Syria is beginning to make appeals to Arab countries, particularly at this time to the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman, but this line of action can only fuel tensions with the Iranian godfather and exacerbate the factional struggle within the regime itself

There are some subtle indications of the growth of tensions with Iran: there is, for example, 'The distribution through the offices of Ayatollah Khamenei, the regime's 'Supreme leader' since 1989, of a poster representing a common prayer on the esplanade of the Jerusalem Mosques, the third holy place of Islam. (…). The place of honour of this virtual ceremony goes to Hassan Nasrallah, recognisable by the black turban of the alleged descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. Since 1992, he has been the leader of Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian ‘party of God’ in Lebanon, which recognises Khamenei as both a political and spiritual authority. On the other hand, Bashar al-Assad, (...), appears only in the third row on the left. This protocolary demotion has caused turmoil within the Syrian dictatorship, which has owed its survival since 2011 to the engagement on the ground of Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias, led by the Revolutionary Guards. Indeed, Assad has never ceased to present himself as the spearhead of the 'resistance' to Israel, thus discrediting the Syrian opposition as a 'Zionist plot’. Seeing the man who is officially the 'President of the Syrian Arab Republic' relegated behind militia leaders raises questions about the strength of Iranian support for his regime.
Such humiliation comes at a time when the Assad family is openly involved in settling scores. These leadership disputes are themselves amplified by the unprecedented criticism being voiced in Moscow against the Syrian dictatorship and its inability to emerge from a pure war rationale. Although very dependent on Russia at the military level, the Assad regime is even more dependent on Iran, whose representatives have claims to extra-territorial privileges in Syria". (Le Monde, 31.05.20).

The policies of Trump and his cronies in the region can only add fuel to the fire... 
The withdrawal of the vast majority of US troops from the region in no way means an end to all American interference in the Middle East: " ...the United States and the West cannot give up their ambitions in this strategic area of the world" (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164). The main objective of Trump's policy is imposing constant pressure on Iran, aimed at destabilising and overthrowing the Ayatollah-led regime by playing on its internal divisions.
To this end, in addition to economic blackmail and knock-out actions against that country, Trump is pursuing a policy of unconditional support for Saudi Arabia and Israel, in which the US provides each of these states and their respective leaders with unfailing support on all levels (with the supply of state-of-the-art military equipment; the support from Trump for Saudi Arabia as regards the brutal assassination of the regime's opponent Jamal Khashoggi; Trump's recognition of East Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights) in order to cement their alliance. In this way these states are caught in a trap, being tied to unconditional support for US policy with measures that isolate them from the rest of the world.

Prioritising Iran's containment also means the abandoning of the Oslo Accords, of the "two-state" solution (Israeli and Palestinian) in the "Holy Land". American aid to the Palestinians and the PLO has been terminated and there is the proposal for a "big deal" on the Palestinian question (the abandonment of any Palestinian claim to the creation of a Palestinian state and the annexation by Israel of large parts of Palestine in exchange for "giant" American economic aid). This is aimed in particular at facilitating the de facto rapprochement between the Saudis and Israel: "Israel is no longer the enemy of the Gulf monarchies. This great alliance began to take place long ago behind the scenes, but has not yet been played out. The only way for the Americans to advance in the desired direction is to obtain the green light from the Arab world, or rather from its new leaders, MBZ (The Emirates) and MBS (Saudi Arabia), who share the same strategic vision for the Gulf, for whom Iran and political Islam are the main threats. In this vision, Israel is no longer an enemy, but a potential regional partner with whom it will be easier to counter Iranian expansion in the region. (...) For Israel, which has been seeking to normalise its relations with the Sunni Arab countries for years, the equation is simple: it is a matter of seeking an Arab-Israeli peace, without necessarily obtaining peace with the Palestinians. The Gulf countries, for their part, have lowered their demands on the Palestinian question. This ‘ultimate plan’ (...) seems to aim to establish a new reality in the Middle East. A reality based on the Palestinians accepting their defeat, in exchange for a few billion dollars, and where Israelis and Arab countries, mainly from the Gulf, could finally form a new alliance, supported by the United States, to counter the threat of the expansion of a modern Persian empire." (L'Orient-Le Jour, Beirut, 18.06.19)

However, this plan, which is a pure provocation at the international level (it abandons the international agreements) as well as at the regional level, can only re-ignite fury over the Palestinian question, directed by all the regional imperialisms (Iran of course, but also Turkey and even Egypt), directed at the United States and its allies. Moreover, it can only embolden its Israeli and Saudi supporters in their own desire for confrontation. Thus, the tensions between these Trump cronies and the other imperialisms of the region are becoming more acute: "Neither Israel, hostile to the strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, nor Saudi Arabia can tolerate this Iranian advance" (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164):

- Israel bombs Hezbollah or the Iranian Al Quds Brigade facilities in Lebanon, Syria and even Iraq on a regular basis and is always ready to attack Iranian nuclear power plants. Thus, during the month of July, 'mysterious' explosions destroyed various sites linked to the Iranian nuclear programme, including a plant in Natanz building centrifuges, causing a significant delay to this programme: "These attacks represent a new escalation in the indirect confrontation between Iran and Israel which gives rise to fears of a regional explosion. (...). These outbreaks of violence demonstrate Israel's fierce determination to counter Iran's expansionist agenda in much of the Middle East." (New York Times 28.08.19). In addition, disputes with Turkey have also increased over the Palestinian question, as well as over plans to drill for Turkish oil off the coast of Libya.

- Saudi Arabia faces Iran in Iraq and Syria, but also in Yemen, where the presence of Iranian-backed Houthi troops on the ground also arouses the displeasure of the Sultanate of Oman. Its confrontation with Turkey is just as strong: "(...)  In July 2013, this opposition [between the Ankara-Doha axis and the Riyadh-Abou Dhabi axis]was already perceptible in the Egyptian theatre on the occasion of the coup d'état against President Mohamed Morsi, (...)" (Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2020, p.13) and it extends to many conflicts, such as in Syria, Sudan and even more acutely today in Libya.

As for the regime of the Ayatollahs, while it is put under strong pressure by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States, by the social tensions within Iranian society itself, suffering from poverty and shortages of vital goods, the result of 40 years of war economy, and by the increasingly explicit opposition of the Shi’ite population of Iraq against Iranian 'colonialism,' its only choice is to rush headlong into confrontations. It is this deterioration of the situation that would have pushed Soleimani to orchestrate increasingly stronger provocations against the United States: "Soleimani's plan (...) aimed to provoke a military response in order to deflect the rising anger against the United States" (“Inside the Iranian plan devised by Soleimani to attack US forces in Iraq”, Reuters, January 4, 2020). The objective was above all to strengthen the sacred union against the "Satans": "Certainly, Iran has lost in the person of Soleimani a military leader of great prestige and valuable experience. But his funeral, organised on a larger scale than that of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini in 1989, was the occasion of an enormous campaign to exalt Iranian nationalism. The leaders of the regime's internal opposition, and even the partisans of the monarchy which fell in 1979, joined in this sacred union" (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2020, p. 11).

Turkey's imperialist manoeuvres
The USA is using economic pressure against Turkish President Erdogan that is having an impact on the Turkish economy and the growing social discontent in the country; this has led to a sharp decline in the popularity of AKP (the government party) in the local elections, especially in the big cities. At the imperialist level, Erdogan sees his regional rivals making gains, Iran in Syria, Saudi Arabia in Egypt.

However, "(...) Turkey cannot accept the excessive regional ambitions of its two rivals" (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164). This situation pushes him to radicalise his rhetoric with regard to Europe, the Kurds, Egypt and Palestine in order to rally the population behind him and his nationalist message. At the same time, Turkey is intervening more and more actively in the regional conflict by sending in its troops. In Syria, the Sunni groups supported by Turkey are increasingly losing ground in the province of Idlib, which is likely to bring a new wave of refugees (1 million refugees are likely to head for Turkey, which already has 3 million). By sending its troops into the Idlib pocket, Ankara may come into serious confrontations with Syrian government troops, Kurdish militias and even Russian forces. In this context, Turkey is trying to improve relations with Europe and NATO, but finds itself confronted with the unpredictable policy of Trump, who first gave his approval to an operation against the Kurds and then, faced with  disagreements inside his own administration and an outcry among the allies, ordered it to limit the operation with threats to destroy its economy if Turkey did not comply.
After the failure of the Moscow conference on Libya, Erdogan also sent troops to "save" the government in Tripoli (which has the recognition of the EU), and was threatened by the advancing troops of rebel leader, Marshal Haftar, who is supported not only by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also by Russia (and France!), in return for drilling rights off the Libyan coast, which has provoked an outcry from Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. The latter, moreover, has now decided in turn to send troops to Libya.

Turkey's imperialist ambitions are even stiffening opposition within NATO and the EU: the Turkish navy prevented a Greek ship of the European control force in the Mediterranean from examining the cargo (probably Turkish arms) of a ship en route to the Libyan port of Misratah.
Hence it is clear that Ankara's policy is a major contributor to the spread of militarism and chaos and a major factor in extending instability and conflict to a region that stretches from the Sahel to Afghanistan. In short, the idea of stabilising the region, curbing imperialist ambitions across the board is a pure figment of the imagination and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, which is hitting the region hard, will only add fuel to the war, barbarism and chaos. Primarily, "(...) if militarism, imperialism, and war are identified to such an extent with the period of decadence, it is because the latter corresponds to the fact that capitalist relations of production have become a barrier to the development of the productive forces: the perfectly irrational nature, on the global economic level, of military spending and war only expresses the aberration of these production relations' continued existence" (“Orientation Text: Militarism and Decomposition”, International Review 64).

In this context, the last 30 years of the dramatic history of the Middle East fully reveals the devastating impact on the region of the growing tendency to putrefaction and disintegration of capitalism:

• first of all, the war there manifests itself more than ever as a totally irrational process, from which no country derives any economic benefit; on the contrary, it has become an almost permanent cancer that has been ravaging all the countries of the region for decades, with no light on the horizon; no clear victor can emerge from the rubble and, on the contrary, the defeated countries are quickly rearmed by other imperialist vultures to facilitate a further massacres; hence the war economy exerts an increasingly crushing weight on the whole region;
• despite its destructive bombardments and murderous military interventions, the US superpower has suffered its most resounding setbacks (Iraq, Afghanistan) and the decline of US leadership is clear to see; this has especially benefited Russia, which has made a "great comeback" among the imperialist sharks and fed the flames of the Syrian inferno in its military support for the embattled Assad;
• The number of regional sharks has mushroomed and it is more than ever 'every man for himself' that dominates the military conflicts in the Middle East. In this context, religious or ethnic divisions are continually utilised to justify the massacres, while the fundamentalist gangs that are on the increase terrorise the frightened populations;
• with the weakness of the working class in the region, desperate popular revolts get buried in blood while hundreds of thousands of helpless refugees are crammed into unsanitary refugee camps.

This apocalyptic description of the situation in the Middle East foreshadows what awaits us if we allow the decay of the capitalist mode of production to spread further. The growth of imperialist tensions can have major consequences at any time: in addition to the confrontations between major imperialisms, such as the US, China or Russia, countries like Israel or Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia can cause terrible upheavals and drag the whole region into turmoil, without any power being able to prevent this, as they have their own imperialist agendas and are beyond any real control. The situation is therefore extremely dangerous and unpredictable not only for the region, but also, because of the consequences which may ensue, for the whole planet. The degree of imperialist chaos and barbaric warfare, beyond what could have been imagined 30 years ago, reflects the obsolescence of the capitalist system and the urgent need for its overthrow.

R. Havanese, 22.07.2020
 

Fire ravages Moria camp, already unfit for human habitation

In the night of Wednesday, September 9th, the refugee camp Moria on Lesbos burned down. Nearly 13,000 refugees, about a third of them minors, and about half of them children under the age of twelve, had to flee from the flames - now exposed to nature and left more or less to their own devices.

The refugee camp, which was designed for 2,900 camp inmates, was 'home' to about 13,000 refugees. When news of the Corona infection of some inmates spread and a quarantine was ordered by the authorities, the fire broke out shortly afterwards. The authorities accused refugees unwilling to quarantine of setting the fire.

The politicians speak of a humanitarian catastrophe, but in reality they themselves set the tinder to the fire.
 
The fact is that for years the EU has been pursuing a refugee policy of closed borders, blocking the Balkan route, confining refugees in camps, repatriating illegally apprehended refugees, deterring refugees in boats on the Mediterranean by not accepting or delaying acceptance of refugees rescued from the sea, etc.

This policy of wall-building, sealing off and deportations is not limited to the EU; it is pursued by the USA - long before Trump promised his "beautiful wall" - as well as by countless other countries.
According to official figures, 80 million people worldwide are on the run, desperately in search of a place to live and a future.

Meanwhile the permanent gigantic refugee camps of the Rohingya in Bangladesh, the Somali refugees in Kenya (Dadaab), in Sudan, in Libya, or the smaller camps e.g. at the French coast opposite England, have become an everyday reality - in addition to the countless people who have fled because of increasing political and economic chaos, as in Venezuela, or  environmental destruction and ecological disaster, and contribute to the rapid growth of the slums in the mega-cities of Africa, South America and Asia.

Refugee camps and slums in the metropolises are two faces of a spiral of destruction, wars, barbarism. In addition, the reign of terror (e.g. against Uighurs, Kurds, etc.) and pogroms in many areas make life hell for more and more people. 

Only a small part of this mass of displaced people has made it to the coasts of the Mediterranean or to the borders of the USA, where they hope to find a way to reach the industrialised countries, nearly always at the risk of their lives.

But the ruling class has closed the borders. Gone are the days when slaves were stolen from Africa and exploited without limits on plantations in the USA, gone are the days when they paid premiums for cheap labour from the Mediterranean, as in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the global economy is groaning under the economic crisis - and not just since the Corona Pandemic, when everything deteriorated dramatically once again. Today, mainly well-trained workers are selectively recruited...the rest are supposed to perish.

Capitalism can offer nothing to this army of millions of desperate people

Because the combination of various factors (war, environmental destruction, economic crisis, repression, catastrophes of all kinds) is driving more and more people to flee, and a considerable number of them will make their way towards industrial centres, the greatest possible levels of deterrence have been established. Thus the German government advisor Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative reported on 10 September on the German state radio station Deutschlandfunk: "The Greek refugee minister Notis Mitarakis says that people should stay in Moria or on Lesbos. The camp has burned down, the people have no shelter, they sit on the streets, that is the total loss of control. (...) And yet the Greek government is not demanding outside support. Why? The answer is obvious. These bad conditions are deliberate. This is a policy of deterrence.
On the island the tensions are enormous. Greek nationalists have attacked aid organisations. There are radical groups that also attack asylum seekers. (...) Getting people away quickly is in the interest of the island, in the interest of the migrants. Why are they being held there when they know (...) none of these people will be sent back to Turkey. (...) There are practically no more deportations due to the Corona restrictions. (...) This means that we have very, very many people in need of protection and very, very many irregular migrants (...) who are detained for a single reason: as a deterrent”. The closure of the Balkan route is intended to “prevent people from leaving Greece at the northern border, which only makes sense if you then say that the people in Greece should experience such bad conditions there that the influx into Greece, i.e. into the EU, stops”. An obvious consequence: unbearable conditions not only in the refugee camps, but also for the local inhabitants, some of whom then defend themselves violently against the refugees. The refugees then face barbed wire, armed state power and violence from nationalist gangs…

The same policy is also pursued off the coast of Italy, where refugees rescued from unseaworthy boats in the Mediterranean Sea are to be prevented from reaching the European mainland for as long as possible.

This deterrent tactic is, by the way, presented to potential refugees in the social media by German and other European governmental institutions in Africa and other refugee strongholds. The message is: "We will detain you as long as possible, as brutally, as inhumanely as possible like prisoners and let you die miserably in even worse refugee camps than in Africa and Asia, surrounded by barbed wires and fortifications; stay where you are, even if you have no home anymore". 

When politicians speak of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in this situation, they cover up the fact that these people are in reality a hostage of the politics of this system, which is defended by the ruling class by all means and in all countries. 

Eastern Mediterranean: The global impasse of capitalism concentrated in one region 

The eastern Mediterranean is also a focal point of capitalism's destructive tendencies: a century ago Turkey and Greece fought each other in a war that saw the first organised ethnic cleansing; now the two imperialist rivals are facing each other again over the dispute over gas and oil resources in the region. But in addition to the threat of war in the region, capitalism is also threatening the people through the economic crisis and explosions like those in Beirut, factors that will drive even more people to flee.

Ruthlessness of the rulers hidden behind fine phrases

The infamy in the attitude of the ruling class is not diminished by pretending to show a little "mercy" to the "weaker" among the refugees. It is only after certain forces from the bourgeois parties' own ranks, concerned about the loss of prestige of the Western democracies, exerted pressure, and after local administrations showed their willingness to accept a limited contingent, that France and Germany called for  400 "unaccompanied" young people to be allowed to enter. And after almost a week of delaying tactics, 1500 children and their families will be allowed to enter Germany. The remaining 10,000 from Moria will languish in Greece – not to mention the many other thousands stuck in in other refugee camps on Greek islands. The rulers hide behind their fear of the populists or the heads of state in Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands and Austria, who are unwilling to accept refugees. No country can shoulder the fate of the refugees alone – and under this pretext, they insist on a uniform European approach.

In fact, they do not want to attract a new wave of refugees like in 2015, and they do not want to allow the populists to continue their upsurge. The Greek government prefers to lock up the refugees who are now surviving in the open in newly built camps instead of allowing them to enter the mainland, from where camp inmates could then continue to flee. The rulers in the EU have diligently learned from all the textbooks on the construction of camps from Guantanamo, Siberia, special camps in the GDR or Xinjiang.  Prevent escape at all costs, deterrence by all means! Their actions are not guided by the need to protect the wretched, but by their need to hold on to power. And they defend this rule with all means, whether by building impassable borders and prison camps, or by the fine phrases of democracy and humanitarianism.  The repression of protesters in Belarus, Putin's assassination squads or the Uighur prison camps in Xinjiang are being denounced by the Europeans, but they themselves have been cooperating with these regimes for years, even if at times the cooperation - especially armament contracts - is postponed or even cancelled.

In the U.S. the Democrats and Republicans with Trump at their head condemn China's dictatorial methods, which in Hong Kong uses masked snatch squads against protesters, but Washington sends the National Guard assisted by masked snatch squads of the American police, which also kidnap protesters in camouflaged cars.  Whether Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Xi Jinping in China, Trump in the USA, etc. - they all defend their system and power mercilessly and with means that are often exactly the same.

Humanitarian solutions are eyewash – we have to get to the root of the problem!

It is futile to count on the mercy of the rulers, and it is at best a dangerous illusion to believe that the problems that capitalism confronts us with can be eradicated through humanitarian rescue operations.

 The demand "No borders, no nation" takes up a real concern, but it can only be realised through a revolutionary struggle which will abolish all states. Therefore it is not enough to show indignation about the barbaric conditions facing refugees. The first step must be to recognize where the evil comes from and then to call it by its name. Only then can we get to the root of the problem, and that means attacking capitalism and all its mechanisms.

Toubkal, 15.09.2020