Syria: “US Troops Must Leave Now”

syria-and-hasakah

26-09-2023: More than ten years after its war of regime change on the Syrian Arab Republic began, US imperialism is facing increasing difficulties managing its occupation of a third of the country. In July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the US to leave northern Syria, saying its withdrawal would weaken the terror groups supported by Washington.[1] Türkiye has sent its troops into northern Syria to combat the US backed Kurdish militia YPG (misnamed as the “People’s Protection Units”), which Ankara considers a Syrian branch of the self-serving PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). Despite its name, the PKK cannot be considered anything close to left-wing, as it works hand in glove with the Western backed ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and the US military to terrorise Syrians via armed force, and with others who carry out terror attacks within Türkiye.[2] The PKK terror groups form the majority of the grossly misnamed and US backed “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF). On August 30, in a joint press conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian “advised” US troops to “go home”.[3] Amir-Abdollahian and Mekdad were, amongst other things, discussing the illegal presence of American forces in Syria under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

900 US troops

The US government still has around 900 soldiers in Syria, which are split between the Al Tanf base in the south and the countries eastern oil fields.[4] This is what remains after its horrific proxy regime change war was militarily defeated by the forces of Syria, the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Lebanese Shia resistance force Hezbollah. Unable to accept this, the US retains troops in Syria to “keep the oil”, in former US President Trump’s words.[5] However, the US led war on Syria was overwhelmingly initiated and led by former President Obama’s Administration.[6] One could reasonably argue that the blocking of the US led regime change war on Syria in turn led to the US state ramping up its arming and funding of Nazi militia in Ukraine to prepare for the current proxy war on Russia. The Syrian government has had more than enough, and in mid-August the Syrian Foreign Ministry issued an unequivocal statement which demanded that the American side must immediately and unconditionally withdraw its military forces remaining on Syrian territory, refrain from stealing and smuggling Syrian oil and wheat, and lift the protection for the armed separatist and terrorist groups present in the illegal US base of Al-Tanf.[7]

These remaining US troops are coming under increasing pressure, even if the combined forces of Syria, Iran and Russia do not have the military capability at this point to completely drive them out. The US state has combined this illegal troop presence with devastating sanctions on Syria, which in some parts of Syria have led to an 800% increase in food prices since 2020.[8] Some of these sanctions have been increased after Syria was re-admitted to the Arab League in May this year, which in practice definitively put an end to Washington’s more than ten-year regime change war.[9] Some Arab League states, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, had previously sent arms and funding to the ISIS and Al Qaeda cutthroats attempting to overthrow Syria. After Russia intervened with its superior air power at the request of Syria in 2015, the tide began to turn, and from that point on the Syrian Arab Republic was not in danger of being overthrown, despite incredible hardships.

Staged Suwayda protests

In August, former US Secretary of Defence Christopher Miller visited Qamishli in “opposition” (ISIS/SDF) held territory and urged the US government to support the so-called “Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” (AANES),[10] despite being illegally within Syria at the time. This was soon followed by a visit to ISIS/SDF held territory by three members of the US Congress – Republicans French Hill of Arkansas, Ben Cline of Virginia and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin. Mr Hill said the visit was on behalf of “those in Syria who want to have their own representative government.”[11] That is, three elected US officials fly halfway across the world to enter a region controlled by ISIS and others who work with them, to declare support for those seeking to overthrow a sovereign state in the Middle East. It is hardly a coincidence that protests in Suwayda and other cities in Syria calling for regime change broke out in the days and weeks following the visits by US officials.

Suwayda is a province in southern Syria with a Druze majority population, and the protests there on the 17^th of August included Druze flags, demands for the overthrow of Syrian President, and the implementation of United Nations (UN) Resolution 2254 – which calls for a new constitution, elections, and the removal of President Assad from power.[12] It is extremely unlikely that ordinary Syrians would themselves raise the demand for the implementation of a UN resolution unless there was a heavy dose of foreign interference. It is more likely that it was also crafted to give the impression that the Druze population has now turned against the Syrian government, when in fact only a small minority of Druze in Syria support the Zionist Israeli state. What is more, Syria TV reported evidence that the Syrian Brigade Party, which was involved in the protests, has been backed by both the Israeli and US governments in an effort to establish a separate administration in Suwayda.[13]

The Syrian Brigade Party, which was only launched in July, denies that it receives any foreign funding. However, given the fact that it calls for the implementation of UN Resolution 2254,[14] this is scarcely believable. Not surprisingly, the US state backed SDF supports the secession of Suwayda from Syria, while it operates alongside Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was rebranded as Jahbat al-Nusra from the original plain Al Qaeda.[15] The Zionist Israeli state, after years of denials, admitted in 2019 that it had been arming ISIS and Al Qaeda in an effort to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic.[16] The Israeli state has maintained hundreds of strikes on Syria, the most recent being an attack on the Damascus International Airport, which killed five Syrian soldiers and caused other damage. Israeli authorities claimed it was aiming to disrupt the Iranian government’s use of aerial supply routes to deliver arms to allies in Syrian and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.[17] That is, the Israeli state is still assisting ISIS and Al Qaeda in its Syrian regime change operations, in an effort to break Syria’s alliance with Iran. It is rather revealing that much of the Western left jumps up and down for Palestine while denouncing Israel in the strongest possible terms imaginable. Yet, despite Israel carrying out more than 1000 airstrikes on Syria over at least the last five years,[18] this same Western “left” remains as silent as can be.

Assad in China

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently touched down in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in his first visit since the US led regime change war began. President Assad last year signed Syria onto Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the PRC is expected to play a prominent role in Syria’s post war reconstruction.[19] President Assad will also attend the opening ceremony of the Asian Games in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Soon after the arrival of the Syrian delegation, PRC President Xi Jinping and President Assad jointly announced the establishment of a China-Syria strategic partnership.[20] Syria and China have had 67 years of diplomatic relations, as Syria was one of the first countries to recognise the PRC following its revolution which triumphed in 1949. Today, PRC backing of Syria in an economic, political and diplomatic sense is a vital counter to Western backed sanctions, war and other hostile activities. It in fact adds to the growing isolation of the West itself, and the steady rise of the non-imperialist bloc via the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries, which will become the BRICS 11 from January 1, with the addition of Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Saudi Arabia.[21] While Syria may not join the expanded BRICS for some time, it is certainly regarded as a friend of the vast majority of BRICS members.

It is in the vital interest of working people to demand the lifting of all Western imposed sanctions on Syria. Also, the left must demand the total withdrawal of all US troops from Syrian soil. Similarly, Syria’s right to conduct political, economic, cultural, trade and other business with any state – including the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian Federation, the PRC, or any other – must be upheld. Imperialism must be driven out of the Middle East, and the rest of the globe. Yet imperialism itself is but one result of the actuality that the nation state remains arguably the largest impediment to the growth and development of global capitalism. The ruling classes of the West are well aware of this, hence their non-stop attempts to undermine or overthrow virtually any independent state via sanctions, externally funded internal political destablisation, colour revolutions and wars. The working class in the West can put an end to the constant danger of imperialist war through the building of workers’ parties which fight for workers’ governments, i.e., vanguard parties. This needs to combine with proletarian political revolutions in the PRC and similar states, to re-found the potential of socialism these revolutions have unleashed. The Marxism of VI Lenin and LD Trotsky provides a guide that must be astutely applied to today’s geo-political conditions, which could not have been foreseen in their time.

WORKERS LEAGUE

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[1] www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-erdogan-wants-us-out-northern-syria (23-09-2023)

[2] www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/two-pkk-linked-groups-behind-attacks-turkey-minister-2022-04-22/ (23-09-2023)

[3] http://www.english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/08/30/In-Damascus-Iran-s-foreign-minister-says-US-troops-in-Syria-should-go-home- (23-09-2023)

[4] www.newsweek.com/syria-demands-us-withdraw-forces-immediately-after-rocket-strike-1734451 (23-09-2023)

[5] www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/keeping-oil-syria-trump-considered-war-crime/story?id=66589757 (24-09-2023)

[6] www.l-hora.org/en/syria-and-us-war-crimes-the-reckoning-is-coming-christopher-black-new-eastern-outlook-01-23-2023/ (24-09-2023)

[7] www.americanmilitarynews.com/2022/08/syria-demands-us-troops-leave-immediately/ (24-09-2023)

[8] www.mate.substack.com/p/as-arab-states-seek-peace-us-insists (24-09-2023)

[9] www.redfireonline.com/2023/05/14/syria-rejoins-the-arab-league/ (24-09-2023)

[10] www.npasyria.com/en/103047/ (24-09-2023)