Syria’s downfall

Baath power began with the Syrian revolution in 1963. It ended this month. For most of that time the Party that led the Syrian Arab Republic was led by members of the Assad family.
Now Bashar al Assad is in Moscow. The Syrian Arab Republic is no more. The Baath Party has been dissolved. The old pan-Arab flag has gone and a new one flies over Damascus – the flag of the bogus “Syrian republic” during French colonial rule. 
Though a pan-Arab movement Syria was always at the heart of the Baath (Renaissance) Party. Born is the 1940s in the struggle to break the chains of colonialism it evolved into a mass movement when it merged with the Arab Socialist Party in 1952 to become the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party under its famous slogan “Unity, Freedom, Socialism – One Arab Nation! One Glorious Destiny!” that would soon be adopted by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab Socialist Union in Egypt. 
Baathist Syria took the road of socialist advance sweeping away the old guard and the feudal order in the countryside to build a better life for the Syrian people with national health and education services funded by a public sector that also had to support the armed forces needed to confront the Zionist enemy. 
From the start Baathist Syria supported the just struggle of the Palestinian Arabs in confronting Israel as well as fighting side by side with Egypt, which was then the United Arab Republic, in two major wars with the Zionist entity. In the 1970s Syria intervened in the Lebanese civil war under an Arab League mandate through a peace-keeping force that remained in the Lebanon until 2005.
Communists and Nasserists had long worked with the Baath as “independents” in the Syrian parliament but in 1972 this was formalised with the establishment of a popular front, the National Progressive Front, that brought communists, Nasserists and social-democrats into government as junior partners of the Baath.
Baathist Syria was always to the fore in the struggle against imperialism. A pillar of the non-aligned movement the Syrian Arab Republic stood with the militant Palestinian resistance movements and other progressive Arab republics in the Rejection Front to oppose any surrender peace with Israel. It joined the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front that included the PLO, Algeria, Libya and People’s Yemen to oppose Egypt’s acceptance of the American and Zionist demands that led to the Camp David surrender peace with Israel.
Baathist Syria was a friend of the Soviet Union and the DPR Korea. Syrian trade with People’s China had soared in recent years and only a few months ago Syria applied to join BRICS, the independent economic bloc of the Global South.
This is why the imperialists, working hand in glove with Turkey, Israel and the feudal Arab oil princes worked to bring down the Assad government. They imposed sanctions and blockades on Syria to force it to end its alliance with the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran. They fomented the sectarian strife that triggered the civil war that began in 2011 and ended in the collapse of the Syrian government last week.   
The imperialists and their Zionist and feudal Arab lackeys cannot bring peace to the Middle East. Nor is that their intention. They believe that the best way to maintain imperialist hegemony and preserve the super-profits of the big oil corporations is by keeping the Arab masses weak and divided. It’s worked so far. But this is by no means the end of the story.  

The trail of a turncoat

None of us should be surprised at Keir Starmer these days. Crawling to the Americans. Pandering to Zelensky’s vanity in Kiev. Stating that Jeremy Corbyn will not be allowed to stand for re-election on the Labour ticket. The Labour leader is doing his best to prove to the ruling class that he will be a safe pair of hands when and if his party wins a majority in the House of Commons. And Labour members who don’t like it can simply push off.
    "The Labour Party has changed," Starmer says, "from a party of protest, to a party of public service...[Labour] will never again be a party captured by narrow interests... if you don't like that, the door is open, and you can leave". Over a hundred thousand already have. Many more will undoubtedly follow as Starmer and the ageing Blairite clique that backs him in Parliament prepare an election manifesto that is barely distinguishable from that of the Tories.
    In his quest for high office Starmer needed allies within the labour movement. He posed as a left-winger to jump on the gravy train and aligned himself with the Remainers when he was a member of Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. But once he became leader – elected on false pledges of “continuity” – he speedily dumped them in favour of a neo-liberal agenda that doesn’t even pay lip-service to social justice.
    Of course we’ve seen all this before. Every Labour leader, apart from Jeremy Corbyn and Harold Wilson, has come from the Labour right. Ramsay MacDonald, who led Labour’s first government back in the 1920s, talked about socialism, albeit in the far distance future, while admitting that all his government could do was administer capitalism. These days Starmer never even mentions it.
    What we get is this sort of vacuous nonsense. “The Labour Party I lead is patriotic. It is a party of public service, not protest. It is a party of equality, justice and fairness; one that proudly puts the needs of working people above any fringe interest. It is a party that doesn’t just talk about change – it delivers it”.
    Ultimately social democracy can never solve the economic and social crisis facing working people because it basically upholds the system which has created those problems in the first place.
    But the “socialism” of Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan that was based on Keynesian economics – like Mussolini’s corporate state or Roosevelt’s “New Deal” delivered the welfare state, the NHS and the education system. Starmer offers nothing.

End Sanctions Now!

Chinese, Russian and Arab relief teams are working in Turkey and Syria. Humanitarian aid from the Third World is pouring in to earthquake stricken region. But aid from charities and agencies in the West is being hindered by the US sanctions regime against Syria.
    While the Americans and their NATO allies bleat on about the plight of the Ukrainians to justify the billions of dollars-worth of arms being sent to Kiev to fight the Russians they turn a blind eye to the suffering of people who need medical aid, foodstuff and children’s needs aid in quake-afflicted in Syria.
    Under pressure the Biden administration has temporarily lifted sanctions on aid to Syria for a total of 180 days largely for the benefit of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria which is under American occupation. And it’s unclear whether the new measures have lifted the sanctions blocking much needed financial assistance to Syria.
    The answer is, of course, to end the sanctions regime altogether to speed humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands left homeless and destitute in Syria and help in the massive reconstruction needed to restore life to the shattered region.

Taking the road to prosperity

Syria took a further step along the road to economic recovery when it signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) last week – a move that will help the defiant Arab republic break out of the shackles of the American blockade and create new opportunities for cooperation with People’s China and other countries in the Third World.
    The Belt and Road Initiative was launched in 2013 to build a trade, investment and infrastructure network connecting Asia with other parts of the world along the ancient Silk Road trade routes and beyond.
    Since then the BRI has promoted economic prosperity and sustainable development. Under the initiative, a large number of highway, railway, airport and seaport projects have been carried out in Belt and Road countries, and important progress has been made in building "six corridors, six connectivity routes and multiple countries and ports", and the building of a multi-dimensional infrastructure network has been accelerated.
    The Belt and Road Initiative has also improved people's livelihoods and facilitated sustainable development in several countries. Currently, the 82 economic and trade cooperation zones under the Initiative have created about 300,000 local jobs. During the construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, more than 300 local enterprises were involved with local employees accounting for more than 90 percent of the workforce. Also, a large number of livelihood assistance projects including housing, water supply, medical care and education, have been implemented in countries participating in the initiative.
    The Belt and Road Initiative stresses the continuous pursuit of green development. China has signed documents on the Green Belt and Road Initiative with the United Nations Environment Programme, and set standards for green product certification and green infrastructure construction.
    The Initiative offers huge trade and investment opportunities to the post-Brexit UK economy. But sadly Boris Johnson has chosen to grovel to the Americans instead. Perhaps his successor will think otherwise.

Taking the principled stand

Top tennis players are not known for championing human rights unless their own personal liberty is threatened. Look at Novak Djokovic, the vain anti-vaxxer who even claimed he was upholding free speech and human rights during his failed bid to remain in Australia to defend his title in the Australian Open.
    So it was good to see another more modest man, Andy Murray, turn down immense amounts of Saudi money when he refused to take part in exhibition matches in the feudal Arab kingdom because of “what’s gone on” in the country over human rights issues.
    The Saudis have recently hosted football, Formula One, boxing and golf events – programmes that have been fiercely criticised by groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for attempting to cleanse the House of Saud’s reputation on the international stage, a practice described as 'sports washing'.
    Though Murray was offered up to £1.5 million to play in Saudi Arabia the Scottish world champion insists he is not interested in “eye-watering sums of money” on offer from the autocratic kingdom that persecutes gays and treats women as chattels.

Early days for Joe Biden

THE LABOUR movement in the USA largely backed the Democrat drive to dump Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election, and their leaders welcomed the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in January. Getting rid of Trump was, of course, a victory for American workers.
    The march of the most reactionary and racist elements of the US ruling class and the degenerates they mobilised to build the Trump movement has been stopped – at least for the time being – by the mass movement that grew from the Black Lives Matter movements and the rage on the street at the Trump government’s indifferent response to the coronavirus plague that is sweeping through the USA.
    Reversing Trump’s immigration laws and re-joining the Paris agreement on climate change may have won the praise of the environmentalist lobby, but on the left, few seriously expect much from the new administration apart from the usual platitudes that the Democrats dish out to keep their blue-collar voters sweet.
    The new US administration is naturally focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic that has already claimed some 480,000 American lives whilst the stimulus plan seeks to revive the country’s ailing economy. Whilst there are some very modest concessions to the working class, Republican Senators, with Democratic support, have stalled the proposed plan to double the minimum wage – which now looks likely to be replaced with staged increases over the next four years.
    On the world stage, Joe Biden clearly wants to continue where his predecessor, Barack Obama, left off. His first task is to restore US imperialism’s hold over its European NATO allies to restore US hegemony throughout the capitalist world and lead a global imperialist front to confront Russia and People’s China.
    Although talk about “regime change” is no longer fashionable in Washington, the Americans haven’t abandoned the dreams of world domination that they once called the “new world order” or “globalisation”.
    The US-led economic blockade of Cuba and Democratic Korea continues, and new sanctions are applied to Russia and China. American dollars prop up puppets in Ukraine and the Caucasus and the reactionary separatist movements in China.
    In the Middle East, Biden tells the Palestinians that he supports a “two state” solution and that the USA is ready to resume aid that Trump cut to their “autonomous” government in the West Bank. He tells Iran he wants to revive the Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up in 2018.
    But Biden wants the Iranians to agree to new terms and conditions before lifting sanctions on the Islamic Republic and tells the Palestinians that he will not reverse Donald Trump’s contentious US embassy move to Jerusalem.
    Biden’s team no longer call for the outright overthrow of President Assad’s popular front government in Syria – Russian intervention put a stop to that nonsense a few years ago. Now they seek to partition the country through a bogus “federal” plan that would legitimise the US occupation of the Kurdish region in eastern Syria.
    They’ve changed tack on Yemen. Trump backed the disastrous Saudi intervention in the civil war. Now Biden says he’s going to end all US support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales. But he’s only doing this because the Saudi intervention has backfired, bringing death and destruction to Saudi Arabia that threatens the House of Saud and the vast oil industry that serves US imperialism.
It is indeed ‘business as usual’ in Washington these days.

The only vote that counts

All sorts of nonsense has been spouted by Remainer politicians claiming that there’s been a sea-change in opinion towards a second referendum with most people now wanting to remain inside the European Union (EU). Wishful thinking and peculiarly framed opinion polls that avoided asking the question that was put to voters during the 2016 referendum have been used to justify calls for second ‘people’s vote’ or, like the Liberal Democrats, simply to ignore the first one.

But a huge new survey shows that 50 per cent want to Leave the EU, with 42 per cent wanting to Remain. With 'don't knows' removed, 54 per cent would back Leave compared with 46 per cent in support of Remain. Some 26,000 people took part in the poll, organised by ComRes and Channel Five.

This was the biggest Brexit poll since the 2016 referendum and it confirms what we’ve been saying all along. But the only real poll that counts is the one that took place in June 2016. The Labour Remainers in parliament should remember this in future.

Postal workers vote for action

Royal Mail workers voted by an overwhelming 97 per cent on a 76 per cent turnout for industrial action over the Christmas period, which is by the busiest period of the year. Their move is in defence of terms and conditions that Management seems set to undermine seriously. Their union, the CWU, says Royal Mail is reneging on an agreement reached between Royal Mail and the union. Entitled {The Four Pillars}, agreement it covered pay rises, pensions, and a move to reduce working hours from 39 to 35 per week by 2022 depending on productivity improvements.

The CWU's general secretary, Dave Ward, has now urged Royal Mail to enter “serious negotiations” with the union. If they’re realistic and genuinely want a negotiated settlement before Christmas, Royal Mail’s management should start talking now.

Making America Great Again?

The imperialist politicians who are now shedding crocodile tears over the plight of the Kurds of northern Syria have no real concern for the Kurdish people. If they did, they would have supported the Kurdish struggle in Turkish Kurdistan – where most of the Kurds live. Instead, they simply sought to use them as pawns to foster regime change in Iraq and Syria.

The fate of the Syrian Kurds now depends on the Syrian army and the Russian peace-keepers – not NATO nor the Turks that for so long abetted Washington’s efforts to bring down Assad’s popular front government in Damascus.

Donald Trump was quite right to pull the troops out of northern Syria. They shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If he really wants to ‘make America great again’ he should pull them out of Europe, the Middle East and south Korea as well!

Never Trust Imperialism

We’re told that Lord Palmerston was the first to say that the Britain had no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Whether the famed Victorian imperialist was really the first to say it only concerns historians these days. It certainly reflects the thinking of the Renaissance princes that Machiavelli so admired and it probably goes back to Roman days. The days of the British Empire that spanned the world are long gone but Palmerston’s doctrine lives on in Washington, the beating heart of US imperialism.

The Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara, once said that “you can never trust imperialism, not even for the least thing, absolutely nothing”. That was back in 1964. Sadly many leaders of the liberation movements that broke the chains of colonialism fell for the false promises of American ‘assistance’ and Western ‘aid’ that simply exchanged one form of colonial rule with another.

Some sold out to serve imperialism and line their own pockets at the same time. Those who refused to bend the knee were deposed like Sukarno of Indonesia or assassinated like Lumumba in the Congo. Genuine assistance came only from the Soviet Union, People’s China and the other people’s democracies, which has enabled some of the non-aligned forces that continue to rely on the masses for support to maintain their independence and socialist alignment.

This is a lesson that some people never seem to understand. Look at the Kurdish nationalist leaders who time and time again have put their trust in imperialism and their local lackeys, and refused to join hands with the progressive Arab movements in Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian popular-front government in Damascus accepted Kurdish autonomy in the north in 2012 whilst retaining control of the border crossings. Although relations with the central government began well, the Kurdish administration soon gravitated towards US imperialism. Their leaders foolishly believed that the Americans were their ‘only allies’ when Washington sent arms and military advisors to join them in the battle to drive ISIS out.

They decisively assisted the Americans in defeating ISIS. But now that they’ve served their purpose the Americans are moving out to make way for the Turks, who want to make northern Syria a buffer zone for their own auxiliaries.

The Turkish army originally moved into Syria to support the terror gangs fighting to overthrow the Assad government. Its secondary role was to create puppet militias of their own to contain the Syrian Kurdish drive for autonomy which, they feared, would provide a safe-haven for their compatriots fighting a guerrilla war in eastern Turkey.

Although the Turks and their lackeys proved powerless to halt the Syrian Arab Army that has driven the terrorists out of most of the country, they did succeed in driving a wedge between the eastern and western parts of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria. Now, faced with renewed armed resistance in Turkish Kurdistan, they want complete control of Syria’s border lands to crush the Kurds’ ‘Rojova’ zone and any dreams of autonomy or independence.

Once again those on the pseudo-left who loudly proclaimed their support for the Kurdish struggle when it seemed to assist the broader aims of US imperialism in Syria are predictably silent in the face of Turkish aggression that has clearly been okayed in Washington.

Communists must stand by all the Syrian Arabs and Kurds fighting Turkish aggression. Most of all we defend the legitimacy of the elected popular front government of Bashar al Assad and its right to seek assistance from its friends, such as Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. That assistance has helped the Syrian army’s victorious drive to crush the terrorists and restore democracy in Syria. And a Syria rid of terrorism will allow the people to again choose their own government and their own path in the future.

Joint Statement on Syria

For the past eight years, the people of Syria have defended their motherland, decisively and heroically. They have manifested a remarkable and honourable resistance, that hasn’t ceased for one moment in these years, despite the unmeasurable suffering they have been dragged into. It has already had its place in the great history of humanity. 

As the following communist and workers’ parties, we denounce in the strongest way possible the imperialist intervention of US and its allies, that has created one of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century. We have no doubt that those who have forced people to live this tragedy for the interests of the big capital, for the profit of the exploiters, they will be accounted for their outrageous barbaric crimes before history. We have no doubt that the enemies of the people will get their dirty, filthy hands out of Syria. 

We express our deep and unconditional solidarity with the working people of Syria, and their vanguard communist parties. In support with Syrian people, we appeal for a solidarity mission in Damascus. 

We demand the end of imperialist aggression and we fully respect the independence, full sovereignty and the integrity of the national territory of Syria. We emphasize once again that the decision regarding the future of Syria belongs only to peoples of Syria.

Hands off Syria!
Long live the internationalist solidarity!


SolidNet Parties

1. PADS, Algeria
2. Communist Party of Australia
3. Party of Labour of Austria
4. Communist Party of Bangladesh
5. Communist Party of Belgium
6. Communist Party of Brazil
7. New Communist Party of Britain
8. Communist Party of Britain
9. Communist Party of Canada
10. Communist Party of Chile
11. Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
12. AKEL
13. Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia
14. Communist Party in Denmark
15. German Communist Party
16. Communist Party of Greece
17. Hungarian Workers’ Party
18. Tudeh Party of Iran
19. Communist Party of Kurdistan-Iraq
20. Communist Party of Ireland
21. Workers Party of Ireland
22. Communist Party of Israel
23. Communist Party (Italy)
24. Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
25. Jordanian Communist Party
26. Lebanese Communist Party
27. Communist Party of Luxembourg
28. Communist Party of Malta
29. New Communist Party of the Netherlands
30. Communist Party of Pakistan
31. Palestinian Communist Party
32. Palestinian Peoples Party
33. Philippine Communist Party [PKP 1930]
34. Portuguese Communist Party
35. Romanian Socialist Party
36. Communist Party of the Russian Federation
37. Union of Communist Parties-CPSU
38. Communists of Serbia
39. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
40. Communist Party of the People of Spain
41. Communists of Catalonia
42. Communist Party of Sri Lanka
43. Syrian Communist Party
44. Syrian Communist Party (Unified)
45. Communist Party of Turkey
46. Communist Party of Ukraine 
47. Communist Party USA

Other Parties 

1. Pole of Communist Revival in France
   
2. New Communist Party of Aotearoa
3. Party of Communists USA