Green Left Weekly backs war on Syria

By Tim Anderson
In a betrayal of all decent principles of solidarity and anti-imperialism, Green Left Weekly has jumped on the bandwagon of war against the independent nation of Syria. Apparent acceptance of the corporate media line that the ‘Assad regime’ is on its last legs seems to have encouraged this attack.

In his 12 August article Tony Iltis discounts the possibility of Syrian resistance, claiming that the Syrian government ‘no longer controls the country’ and that the ‘50 year role of the Ba’ath party … looks to be effectively over’. He goes on to assert that, while ‘anti-democratic forces have become more prominent within the opposition … most FSA (‘Free Syrian Army’) groups are not foreign armed’ and that sectarianism comes more from the government than from the FSA.

Another article by Reese Erlich, reprinted from a US website on 26 August, presents the romantic view of an FSA group leader who is against the fundamentalists and against foreign intervention. Nevertheless he, like all other FSA groups, wants a Libyan style ‘no fly zone’ – that is, bombing of Syria in support of an FSA takeover. The FSA know very well they have no hope of success against the Syrian army without direct US-NATO military backing.

This pro-FSA line goes against the better instincts of many of those who have worked with the GLW / Socialist Alliance group. Some have taken more seriously the group’s solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba, and have listened to the arguments for international solidarity coming from Latin America and best expressed by the eight-nation ALBA group, earlier this year:

“The Heads of State and Government of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America ratified their rejection of the systematic intervention and destabilization policy in the sister nation of the Arab Republic of Syria aimed at forcefully imposing a change of regime to the Syrian people … condemned the acts of armed violence that irregular groups supported by foreign powers have unleashed against the Syrian people, and fervently hope that calm and a peace are restored in the Syrian society … reasserted their support for the policy of reforms and national dialogue bolstered by President Bashar Al Assad, which are intended to find a peaceful solution to the current crisis, with respect for the Syrian people’s sovereignty and the territorial integrity of that Arab sister nation.”

Such ideas are apparently not shared by the GLW leadership. They don’t listen, and they refuse to acknowledge some basic facts:

- The armed attacks on the Syrian state (not just the government) were foreign backed and sectarian from the start, back in Daraa in March 2011;
- Vicious religious sectarianism is the central to the FSA attacks on Syria’s strong secular state;
- Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been used as conduits for US-NATO weapons precisely because the fundamentalist leadership of the FSA does not want direct western links, even though they depend on and demand outside air power.

The latest GLW article romanticises a ‘poster boy’ FSA leader in Aleppo who opposes the fundamentalists and refuses western arms (yet in the same breath demands a ‘no fly zone’). But the paper said nothing about appalling atrocities committed by the FSA in Aleppo, such as the kidnapping, torture and executions of pro-government people, mostly civilians, even when these crimes have been widely reported on YouTube and even in the corporate media.

GLW did nothing to oppose the destruction of the Libyan state, they support the current attacks on Syria and they are likely to support attacks on Iran, a country more vulnerable to human rights criticisms than Syria.

Nevertheless, Iran, like Syria and Libya, deserves support as an independent nation confronted with imperial aggression. People must maintain the right to determine their own systems and build their own nations. That has always been the founding post-colonial principle – but a principle the GLW leadership does not seem to understand. So, stupidly and opportunistically, they back imperial war.