Game changer in Syria

RUSSIA’S timely intervention in Syria in support of the Syrian government’s efforts to defeat the “Islamic State” (ISIS) and the other reactionary militias that have spread death and destruction throughout the country has won the support of the Arab street and all progressive humanity. People’s China supports the Russian role in Syria and the presence of Chinese warships off the Syrian coast is fuelling Arab speculation that Beijing may soon go beyond moral support to help a friend in need.

In a few days Russian air-raids, backed by missile attacks from the Russian navy, have crippled ISIS and the other terror gangs — something the Nato powers have failed to achieve in over a year of desultory bombing of ISIS positions in Syria and Iraq. No wonder the Syrian Kurds are now calling for Russian air support and arms supplies and that the Baghdad government is thinking of asking the Russians to extend their air campaign to target ISIS positions in Iraq.

A few weeks ago the imperialists were shedding crocodile tears over the destruction of Syria’s archaeological treasures by the Islamic fanatics and the flood of refugees fleeing to Europe to justify Nato’s own air campaign over Syria. But the US-led coalition’s aviation did nothing to dent the ability of the murderous militia of the “Islamic State” to launch offensive after offensive against Syrian government positions while the Turks used it as a pretext to bomb the Syrian Kurds, the very people the Nato jets were initially sent in to protect.

The real purpose of the Nato-led operations over Syria seems simply to prevent the Syrian Arab Airforce from attacking major rebel positions and to pave the way for the “no fly-zones” and “safe-havens” that the imperialists love to use as a pretence for open invasion and “regime change”.

Now it’s a different ball-game. The Russians have, in practice, imposed their own “no fly-zone” over Syria in accordance with the request of the Syrian government and international law.

The imperialists have, naturally, been bleating about “civilian casualties” that are largely a figment of the imagination of their propagandists — much like the supposed “moderate” Syrian opposition militias that are supposedly fighting ISIS as well as the Syrian army — while trying to brush aside demands for an independent international investigation of the US bombing of a hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan which killed 22 people, including 12 members of the international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and wounded dozens more.

The primary contradiction in the world today is between United States imperialism and the rest of the world it seeks to dominate. When it suits them American, British and Franco-German imperialists will bang the drum of “human rights”. They’ll bleat on that they are the friends of the Arabs when they think they can get away with it.

But when the Lebanese were attacked by Israel in 2006, Anglo-American imperialism did nothing to stop it until it became clear that the Israelis were losing. They look on while the Palestinians languish under a brutal occupation and the Gazans suffer an inhumane and illegal blockade.

They posed as the friends of the Libyan people to get a mandate at the United Nations Security Council, giving undertakings to the Russian and Chinese governments which were soon broken and the mandate used to sanction Nato support for the overthrow of the Gaddafi government by Libyan reactionaries in imperialist pay. Renewed attempts to use the UN as a cover for imperialist “regime change” in Syria have since been foiled by Russian and Chinese vetoes.

We support the Russian intervention in Syria and we stand by the Syrian government and the communist and progressive forces in Syria fighting to defend their independence and their democratic, secular constitution.

New Worker editorial
8th October 2015