The West is cynically exploiting Syria’s revolution to suit their own military objectives, argue Kahlil Habash and Alex Snowdon.
Every night on the TV news and every day in the mainstream press the public in Britain are being assailed from the most unlikely quarters with demands for sympathy for the Syrian people. Hilary Clinton is weeping tears for the martyrs of Homs. British Foreign Secretary William Hague is desperate to avenge those who have lost their lives fighting the Assad regime. The Daily Telegraph, the house journal of the Tory Party, is promoting a revolution. The Sun for the first time in its history is looking forward to an insurrection.
Of course none of this is because the political establishment actually wants a strong, successful, politically independent opposition that can mount a successful revolution in Syria. On the contrary what they want to do is to harness popular sympathy for the revolutionaries to the project of military intervention by the Western powers. What they want is a Syrian opposition that is dependent on the West’s military might. They want to work on divisions within the Syrian opposition so that they can promote their own clients, just as they did in Libya.
So let us ask ourselves if the end to which the establishment is using the widespread sympathy for the Arab revolutions, military intervention, would actually help the Syrian people.
Military intervention?
What effect would a foreign military intervention have in Syria? Well we have before us some recent and well known examples of the effect of military intervention: Iraq and Afghanistan. Both countries have been ruined by war and are left with precious little democracy, social justice or stability. The ongoing human catastrophe in both countries is indescribable.
The Libyan experience has also shown how destructive intervention can be. The death toll in Libya when NATO intervened was around 1,000-3,000 (according to UN estimates). Estimates of the numbers of dead over the last eight months – as NATO leaders vetoed ceasefires and negotiations – range from 10,000 up to 50,000. The National Transitional Council puts the losses at 30,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.
This level of casualties is inevitable when an advanced Western military machine is unleashed in a relatively poor country.
The instability in Libya is also a consequence of this foreign intervention.
Foreign military intervention would also threaten to put the country under occupation for years. The new authorities in Libya have asked for NATO forces to stay in the country.
A buffer zone?
A foreign intervention in Syria would also probably lead to much more catastrophic casualties than Libya because of the nature of Syrian society.
A buffer zone is encouraged by some analysts and sections of the Syrian opposition, saying that it would offer a safe space for the opposition to gather and offer Syrian civilians a place of refuge. The creation of such a buffer zone mean war because it could not be established without international forces launching a pre-emptive air campaign to neutralize the government’s air-defence systems.
This would mean bombing military installations in and around cities such as Damascus, Aleppo, and Lattakia – all densely populated areas. An important section of the Syrian military assets are located in close proximity to urban settings.
The populations of Syria and Libya are 22.5 million and 6.5 million respectively. The population densities of Syria and Libya are 110 people per square kilometre and 4 people per square kilometre respectively. The active armed forces of Syria are made up of 295,000 people with reserves of 314,000, compared to Libya’s 76,000 plus 40,000 reserves.
The establishment of a buffer zone -bombing the Syrian military assets to neutralize them – would most likely lead to casualties in excess of those already incurred by Syrian civilians and security forces.
A buffer zone is also questionable because of the limited use of air power by Syrian armed forces against civilians. The on-going offensive on the city of Homs, where casualties are now over 500 since the beginning of the attack on February, was actually launched by the shelling of bombs from tanks.
Sending arms?
Channeling monetary support and weapons into Syria by Western imperialist countries and regional regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar should also be challenged. These reactionary forces will inevitably support groups that are close to their interests – not those of the Syrian popular movement – and could drive the country into a destructive civil war. This could lead to increasing anarchy in the country and reinforce armed elements of the opposition with sectarian leanings.
Currently, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is not yet well-armed or well-funded. The FSA purchases their weapons locally on the black market – from arms dealers and smugglers who are profiting from the violence in Syria – while also sometimes purchasing weapons via smugglers from Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey. They also capture weapons from security forces in attacks on regime arms depots. Being armed either covertly by the West or by the reactionary local proxies of the Western powers will ensure they are subservient to their armourers.
UN resolution and the hypocrisy of Western powers
The UN resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China made a series of demands on the Syrian regime and contained a clause that said, if these measures were not met, there would be further consequences. The Russians and the Chinese, having had their fingers burnt in Libya, refused to open up the road for military action a second time.
The Russian and Chinese veto was met with howls of indignation by Western politicians and by the mainstream media. But the Western condemnation of the Russian and Chinese veto are more than hypocritical as we can see if we look back at the history of the veto’s use by the US.
The veto has been used more than 50 times since the inception of the UN by the US to block any resolutions condemning violations of human rights, crimes against civilians and military offensives launched by its close ally Israel. The veto was also used by the US and the west against condemnations of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.
Western powers have long demonstrated the disastrous and unjust use of the veto in blocking any resolution condemning the use of violence against civilians by regimes allied to the US and its allies.
Syria is the scene of a contest between the different regional and great powers, all of whom have put their own interests above those of the Syrian people. The US and its allies hope to hijack the revolution and take control of Arab revolutions. Russia, China and Iran support the Assad regime for their own geo-political interests.
Syria: the regime and the popular movement
The Syrian popular movement has been demanding dignity, freedom, social justice, economic opportunities, and the overthrow of the regime. The popular movement has shown a capacity for uniting the downtrodden of all sects who suffered from the authoritarian and neoliberal policies of the regime. But the regime’s repression has claimed 8314 martyrs, over 35,000 injured, over 65 000 missing individuals and more than 212,000 prisoners, according to the Strategic Research and Communication Centre on 12 February.
In this context some sections of the Syrian opposition have fallen into the trap of calling for Western intervention. They seem to believe that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. But nothing could be further from the truth. The imperial powers have no wish to see a free, just, democratic Syria. The West would rather see another regime in Syria than the one of Assad not because of its murderous behavior towards the popular movement but because it sees in this regime an ally of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.
That the support of the Syrian regime for these movements is more rhetoric than reality is a secondary issue for the imperialists. They detest even verbal encouragement of opposition. And in the case of the alliance with the Iranian regime, the Syrian regime is allying itself with the state which is the number-one foreign-policy problem for the US in the Middle East.
So if these sections of the opposition get their way, Syria’s post-Assad government will be a craven hired gun for US policy in the Middle East – and that is very far from where the majority of Syrians fighting and dying for the revolution want to be.
It is the Syrian people who have pressured the Syrian regime to support resistance in the past. It is the Syrian population who welcomed Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi refugees when they were attacked and occupied by imperialist powers. Many Palestinian refugees in Syria have participated in the revolution and suffered alongside their Syrian brothers and sisters. A joint statement of Palestinian intellectuals has also condemned the Syrian regime’s use of the Palestinian cause to repress the popular movement, while demonstrations in Palestine have happened in support of the Syrian revolution.
The Syrian regime’s anti-imperialist credentials are also undermined by its increasingly neo- liberal economic policies based on foreign investments from Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia – and the abandonment of social policies, notably the progressive cancellation of its subsidy system in numerous areas of society, causing increasing social inequalities and poverty.
This regime finds support – alongside the security service apparatus – among the predominantly Sunni and Christian bourgeoisie in Aleppo and Damascus, which benefited from the neoliberal policies of recent years. The regime has built a network of loyalties through various ties, mainly economic, with individuals from different communities. The policies of the regime have benefited a small oligarchy.
The Syrian opposition needs to protect the revolutionary process in the country from the imperialists. The movement is struggling to build a new Syria, which would be democratic, socially progressive and anti-imperialist. Foreign interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya overthrew the dictatorships, but did not bring what the Syrian people are today struggling for.
