SYRIA: THE SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

[GM111]

Following the demonstrations in Syria which for many months have been calling for a change of government, we embarked on the present study. In this first part, a comrade identified key points with a view to helping us understand what is really going on in the country, as distinct from all the ideologically loaded bourgeois interpretations.

A fundamental requirement is to establish which social strata – which classes – are involved in the protest, what the various alignments between the different groups and parties leading the movement are, what are the objectives they have set themselves and how they propose to achieve them. A long-held tradition of ours that this kind of enquiry requires detailed study of the past class struggles of the country concerned and of the region within which it lies.

Syria had its national revolution and obtained its independence decades ago and the Syrian State has already given abundant evidence of its counter-revolutionary nature on many occasions, both inside and outside its borders. The State is clearly one which serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and of the landed proprietors.

The strategic position of Syria makes it an appetising target for the imperialist powers, from the United States to Russia, from China to Iran, from Israel toTurkey, all of whom are striving for influence in the region. And what with the international crisis increasingly forcing these plunderers to redefine their zones of infuence, Syria’s position has become even more appealing.

Given this situation, any political movement which calls for greater liberty and democracy without putting class questions at the centre of its demands can only mean one thing: it wants to transfer the country from one imperialist camp to another. Syria’s industrial and agricultural proletariat has nothing to gain by taking to the streets and shedding its blood so it can pass from one imperialist boss to another.

In order to defend itself and assert itself as a class, the working class in Syria, same as the workers in Tunisia, Egypt and Israel, doesn’t call for the boss to be changed but for a struggle against its own bourgeoisie – whoever it is, whichever imperialism happens to support it – by building a class front to defend living and working conditions, and by becoming politically independent by adhering to the line of internationalist communism.

By means of a thorough study of Syria’s history, economy and society, this ongoing work will be looking to confirm this general assumption.[GM112]

In 1918 English troops occupied Syria, putting an end to Turkish domination. The country’s independence dates from 1946. Before that France had played on ethnic and religious differences, in particular those between the Christian, Druze and Alawite minorities, in order to gain control of the Sunni majority. In 1963 the Baath party (effectively the Assad clan) seized power and declared a state of emergency, assigning sweeping powers to the police and army.

The divisions between the various social groups never healed over and they have been exasperated by the imperialist crisis, with a consequent rapid decline in the living conditions of the lower classes.

Clearly a bloodless transfer of power to the majority, which in the Syrian context is the Sunnis, is no longer possible, if, indeed, it ever was. The Alawites, along with the Christians, hold economic and military power.

What is certain, however, is that the enemies of the Syrian proletariat can be found amongst the representatives of all of the national groups.

Passing on to the economy, in 2011 the crisis in the economy worsened considerably. Many industry indicators, such as those for tourism and foreign trade, showed a sharp decline. Various capitals abandoned the country and foreign investment was been frozen. The rate of exchange of the Syrian Lira against the dollar dropped by around 10% and oil exports plummetted to an all time low. What is more, on November 15, 2011, economic sanctions imposed by the EU on Syrian oil came into force.

In the last few years the admission of the Syrian economy onto the global market has contributed to undermining the “soundness” of the Baathist social sytem, and the free trade agreements with China and Turkey have swept away many of the small businesses in the industrial and agricultural sectors, increasing the levels of unemployment and inequality. By the end of 2010 a substantial portion of the active working class was in difficulty, with wages, eroded by inflation, no longer sufficient to satisfy the basic requirements of their families.

During the early months of the year the protests had generally been peaceful, but in the city of Dara’a the struggle would escalate, and street demonstrations would be met with harsh repression. The government didn’t hesitate to use the army and special militias against the people in Deraa, Homs, Douma, and Hama, with the latter subjected to heavy bombardments and with armoured vehicles used to crush the barricades.

It is likely that many proletarians, particularly farm workers and the unemployed but also workers in industry and the services, have taken part in the protests and will continue to do so, but without pressing for specific class demands of their own.

On the one hand the Alawite bourgeoisie has sought better relations with the United States, as shown by its support for the coalition in the war against Iraq; on the other it is working to reinforce its strategic alliance with Iran against Israel. But the Syrian regime, because weak at home, was forced in 2005 to abandon its military occupation of neighbouring Lebanon.

On the international front, the isolation of Damascus has been intensified, whilst on the domestic front we have witnessed progressive militarisation of the revolt. More and more often the various armed groups, financed by assorted Western imperialisms and the Gulf monarchies, are confronting the army. Periodic incursions against command centres, ambushes, and targetted killings are taking place, as well as full scale battles which have apparently brought some towns and districts under the control of the insurgents.

But the revolt lacks political leadership. The fragmented and uninfluential Syrian opposition abroad consists mainly of bourgeois factions fighting among themselves, and its continued existence is entirely due to support from the Western powers.

In October the Free Syrian Army was formed, financed for the most part by foreign capital. Special forces from Britain, France, Jordan and above all from Qatar are at work in the Turkish base in Iskenderum, where they are training mercenaries from the FSA alongside troops from Ankara.

American imperialism is putting pressure on the Arab League to oust the Alawite bourgeoisie which currently holds power in Syria; something which would favour America to the detriment of its enemy Iran, and would counter the influence of Russia in the area.

The ports of Syria have always been very important for commercial traffic between Europe and Asia. Today this is especially the case because it is there that the oil pipelines terminate, one of them transporting petrol and gas from the fields in the extreme North-east of the country, bordering Turkey, and the other from Iraq. Both these pipelines converge at the city of Homs, from where they branch off towards the two ports of Baniyas, and Tartus, where, incidentally, there is a Russian naval base.

The American road to Teheran passes through Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. However, its ultimate destination lies further east: shutting down Chinese expansion towards Arab energy sources.

Over the long months of this revolt, which has also taken on the features of an armed insurrection, it seems the Syrian proletariat hasn’t managed to equip itself with autonomous organisations, neither on the political plane nor for the purposes of articulating immediate economic demands. The resistance movement against the government, in which large sections of the proletariat are certainly taking part, is in the hands of bourgeois factions bankrolled by Western imperialism.

The revolt of the Syrian proletariat will need to expose the lies of bourgeois propaganda which wants to dissolve the classes into the indistinct magma of the Arab “people”, which wants to chain proletarians to the fetish of religion in order to postpone the moment when the middle-eastern proletariat will have to unite with their working-class brothers and sisters in the West in order to fight a common battle against the capitalist regime.