Idlib: Victory to the Syrian Revolution!

 

The Syrian revolution at the cross roads

Will the Syrian people succumb to the Assad/Putin counterrevolution to recover Idlib, or will they be victorious over Assad/Putin and create a new base for the revolution to take root and revive itself as part of the suppressed permanent revolution of the region? It is necessary to assess the balance of the forces of revolution and counter-revolution as they fight to the death. Into this mix we factor in the potential game-changer of Turkey objectively taking the side of the revolution.

On the side of the revolution we have the majority of the Syrian people who have stood against and been martyred by every assault from March 2011 to today. This includes the ‘civilians’ who remain resolute and the ‘moderate’ and ‘Islamic’ militias who despite being politically at odds, are in a military bloc against the regime. Internationally support is weak (never sufficient to properly arm and augment the militias), sporadic (US, Turkey and Arab states arming militias but at odds with the revolution) and ineffective (EU and Arab states attempts at diplomacy) and must be unless it actively takes the revolutionary side in the war against the regime. The question of whether Turkey’s military intervention measures up to that standard is currently being tested on the ground and in the air in Idlib.

On the side of the counter-revolution the Assad regime is backed by Russia. Without it, the regime would have been defeated in 2015 when the rebels held most of the country and several large cities including Aleppo and Idlib. The Arab states that suppressed the Arab Spring in their countries sided with the Assad regime but were incapable of defeating the Syrian revolution. Iran is a special case, as it was instrumental in engaging Russia to intervene in Syria. Therefore, in the absence of any major imperialist power siding with the revolution, Russia’s intervention swung the balance of forces decisively in favour of the counter-revolution.

Russia and Turkey strategic partners?

Until recently, Russia and Turkey have developed as strategic partners, with Russia supplying Turkey with missiles and long-term energy. Russia collaborated with Turkey’s campaign to create a buffer zone along its border with Syria to prevent the Kurd ‘terrorists’ from creating an autonomous Kurdish republic and strengthen the PKK’s fight for self-determination inside Turkey. Imperialist Russia and semi-colonial Turkey made a deal that served the interests of both, but at the expense of the Syrian Revolution. The Astana agreement expresses that compromise deal. Russia is mainly interested in destroying the revolution in the name of the ‘war on terror’. Turkey supports the revolution only insofar as it can be used against the Kurds to create a buffer zone. Iran was interested in further spreading its influence from Iraq to Palestine. But there was a contradiction at the heart of that deal.

Russia wants Turkey to use the moderate rebels in Idlib under its influence to destroy the Islamic “terrorists” while Turkey wants to use those same rebels to set aside their differences and help create a buffer zone against Kurd autonomy. Such a contradiction was suppressed while the Astana deal held with neither side pressing its main interest. This stalemate was broken when Russia decided to join with Assad to invade Idlib against the ‘terrorists’ and take it by force. Both sides accused the other of breaking the Astana deal while professing to want a further negotiated outcome.

Russia and Turkey explode the contradiction

But the die was cast. Putin and Assad were against the ‘terrorists’ surviving anywhere. Astana was never observed on the ground and the gains made by the regime backed by Russian and Iranian forces tore it up. Assad’s revenge as elsewhere in Syria, was the total destruction of towns and cities and the targeting of civilians, men women and children, schools and hospitals. This was to be the total destruction of the revolution. Turkey’s response was to defend its buffer zone, by invoking a humanitarian crisis of the million refugees camped on its borders, and defending its authority under Astana to maintain observation posts inside Idlib. This situation then quickly escalated within weeks from a few soldiers on the ground to masses of tanks and infantry, and then F-16s in the air.

Is Turkey’s military intervention on the side of the Syrian revolution? Certainly, the Syrian masses in Idlib and elsewhere declare it to be so. They are ecstatic in support of Turkey defending their lives and towns, schools and hospitals from destruction by the regime and Russian forces. Moreover, Erdogan has opened Turkey’s border to the West to allow Syrian refugees to gain access to the EU if they can. In this he is responding to the EU breaking its agreement to support Turkey for stopping the near 4 million Syrian refugees leaving for the EU. Objectively then, despite Erdogan’s overwhelming national interests, his intervention in Idlib is on the side of the revolution against counter-revolution.

Defeat Russia in a war with Turkey 

Revolutionaries who claim the tradition of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky must agree. We support the Syrian Revolution against the counter-revolution. The revolutionary people who refuse to live under Assad can make use of any support offered their cause, whether or not their long-term objectives with their allies are the same. The revolution must live to fight another day, just as the militias who surrendered to Assad in return for safe passage to (ultimately) Idlib.

Yet, in defending Turkey’s military intervention on the side of the revolution we do not agree with its bourgeois national pro-imperialism, its political regime, nor its oppression of the Kurds. And if the war escalates into a wider war between two main protagonists, Russia and Turkey, we take the side of the oppressed semi-colonial nation against the imperialist oppressor nation.

For a Socialist Union of the Middle East! 

We unconditionally take the side of the workers and poor farmers who are the life blood of the revolution. We call for a ceasefire and a workers’ and farmers’ government in Idlib supported by all the Arab masses, and defended by workers internationally.

But for this to succeed the workers of the Middle East, in particular of Turkey and Iran must overthrow their authoritarian regimes and take the leadership in the anti-imperialist fight, breaking with their imperialist masters and overthrowing their pro-imperialist bourgeois ruling classes.

We demand that the workers of Europe, and the other imperialist powers, fight to open their borders to migrants and refugees fleeing the exploitation and oppression of centuries, and build antifascist militias and workers councils capable of overthrowing their ruling classes, liberating the oppressed semi-colonies as part of the global socialist revolution, under the leadership of a new revolutionary communist international.

3 March 2020

Statement by the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (formerly the LCC)