The recent conclusion of the Syrian Civil War, at least in the form of the sectarian struggle between the government and the opposition in the broadest sense, shocked not only the international public but even many of the actors involved. We invoke our historical materialist, that is Marxist method in order to make sense of the unfolding of the imperialist civil war in Syria, a country which our party has been following especially closely since the beginning of the civil war as well as recently.

Brief History of the Civil War

It would be in order to briefly trace the background and history of the Syrian Civil War, referring to our texts "Syria Between Class Clash and Imperialist Lusts" (il Partito Comunista, 351-2, 2012), "The Imperialist War Being Fought in Syria" (il Partito Comunista, 383, 2017) and "Turkish Invasion of Syria with the Consent of Russian and American Imperialisms" (il Partito Comunista, 398, 2019).

As we wrote in 2012: "In 1918 British troops occupied Syria, ending Turkish rule and supporting the appointment to the throne of Emir Feisal, their ally. But the French soon dispersed Feisal’s weak forces and assumed control of the country, sanctioned in 1922 in the form of a League of Nations mandate. The mandate lasted until its independence, recognized in 1941 but not implemented until 1946, at the end of World War II. During this period France leveraged precisely on ethnic and religious differences, particularly the minorities of Christians, Alawites and Druze, to secure easy and well-manageable control over the Sunni majority in the country, entrusting these minorities with the lower ranks of the army as the British had done in India with the Sikhs (...) In the post-war period there were several coups d’État. In 1963 the Baath Party, effectively the Assad family clan, which still holds power, seized power and proclaimed a state of emergency that imposed severe limits on the civil and political freedoms of the population and gave broad, discretionary powers to the army and police".

During the Cold War, Baathist Syria was a close ally of the Eastern bloc. Since the end of the Cold War, "the Syrian ruling class has been forced to devise differentiated tactics: on the one hand, the Alawite bourgeoisie has sought new and better relations with the United States, as has been demonstrated by its substantial support for the Washington-led coalition in the war against Iraq [in 1991]; on the other hand, it works to strengthen its strategic alliance with Iran in an anti-Israeli function. Despite these maneuvers, the Syrian regime, due to internal weakness, was forced in 2005 to give up its military occupation of neighboring Lebanon, where for years it served as a watchdog against the Palestinian and Lebanese proletariat. Despite these maneuvers Damascus has lost much of its influence in the region, and now these weaknesses on the external front are added to the internal ones increased by the inevitable precipitation of the global crisis" (il Partito Comunista, 351).

In this background, Syria would be along the countries that would be shaken by the series of mass protests and revolts which have been called the "Arab Spring" that started in December 2010 in Tunisia following the self-immolation of a street vendor. Although in certain examples, such as in Tunisia, Egypt, there was a clear class content expressed within the inter-class movements and the events lead to a quick disposal of the former rulers and reestablishment of order, Syria, like Libya, would prove to be a different case. As we wrote in 2012, soon after the arrival of the Arab Spring in Syria in late 2011:

"The divisions between the social groups never recomposed, rather they exacerbated, and the wave of the imperialist crisis, with the rapid decline in the living conditions of the lower classes, was the trigger of the fuse that set Syria on fire as well (...) During the first few months, the protest demonstrations in the various cities and governorates were broadly similar and tended to be peaceful; especially in the poorer proletarian suburbs, thousands took to the streets (...) The processions, chanting anti-government slogans, extolling the fall of the regime, social and economic reforms, hypnotized by the myth of the demand for more freedom and more democracy headed for government headquarters and offices, often clashing with security forces who did not hesitate to shoot (...) It is likely that many proletarians, especially wage-earning peasants, unemployed but also industrial and service workers participated and continue to participate in the demonstrations, but without highlighting any specific class demands of their own (...)

"In November and December on the international front the isolation of Damascus intensified; on the domestic front there has been a gradual militarization of the uprising. Since September, incidents of unequal confrontation between government and generic protesters have diminished, but various armed groups, funded by Western imperialisms and Gulf monarchies, increasingly confront the army. Periodic raids are conducted against command centers, ambushes of convoys, targeted killings, but also outright battles that appear to have even led to the insurgents’ control of some towns. However, the uprising lacks authoritative political leadership (...) In October, an army, the Free Syrian Army, was also formed and is responsible for increasingly frequent attacks on military and civilian targets; this FSA, directed by a section of the Syrian opposition, is largely financed by foreign capital (...) British, French, Jordanian and especially Qatari special forces are operating at Turkey’s @skenderun base where they train FSA mercenaries along with Ankara’s military" (il Partito Comunista, 352).

"During the 2011 civil war, protests spread to Kurdish areas as well, but Bashar Al Assad had granted some autonomy to the region and shown tolerance toward the Kurdish minority political group PYD (Democratic Union Party), the Syrian branch of the PKK at war with the Turkish State, freeing many imprisoned militants and withdrawing his forces from Syrian Kurdistan in 2012, thus strengthening other fronts of the civil war. This left the PYD and its armed wing, the YPG (People’s Protection Unit), free. The YPG militias, it should be remembered, in the towns and villages under their control have suppressed demonstrations and gatherings of Kurds and organizations in opposition to the Damascus regime, in perfect agreement with Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies" (il Partito Comunista, 398).

In the meanwhile, the Islamic State, a break-away from the Al Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al-Qaeda, begun its activities in the region. By the winter of 2013-14 the Islamic State organization controlled one-third of Iraq and one-third of Syria. Its rule was one of terror: Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Druze and whichever other members of minority groups who had the misfortune of living under them were brutally repressed, murdered, tortured, raped and sold on slave markets. The Islamic State, which promised its adherents unrestricted hedonism and which pursued a particularly unprincipled pragmatism in its commercial and covert diplomatic relations, earned the disapproval even of other jihadist organizations such as the Al Nusra Front. As we wrote in 2017:

"In 2014, the Islamic State became an inconvenience for Washington and Moscow, whose interests in Syria are divergent but can find each other momentarily to fight common enemies. But what are their common enemies? The Islamic State, like Al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist groups, formed and developed with the help of the U.S. and its European and Middle Eastern coppers, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, with the aim of destabilizing first Russia in Afghanistan and its Muslim-inhabited territories, then Syria and Moscow-linked Shiite Iran. Jihadist groups received significant flows of foreign fighters from the Maghreb, Europe, and also Russia and China; this flow ended after 2015. The monstrous creature had now achieved the purpose for which it was generated, and it was now necessary to contain it (...) Since 2015, the officially declared common enemy was the Islamic State.

"Western media present Kurdish-Syrian forces as the best military tool against the Islamic State, overshadowing Islamist guerrilla groups, including those supported by Western countries through Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Above all, they omit the fact that these Kurdish-Syrian forces are not fighting the Syrian regime but aim to negotiate with it in order to achieve a federal Syria, within which the Rojava region would have broad political and administrative autonomy, as the diplomacies of Russia and the United States have probably floated in order to gain their support on the battlefield.

"Turkey for its part (...) although it has supported the Islamic State in the past, changed its strategy in 2015-2016: after attacks on Turkish soil attributed to the PKK, Ankara in July 2015 broke off peace negotiations with it and bombed its bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. After the attempted coup in Turkey on July 15, 2016, it moved closer again to its Russian enemy-friend by openly proclaiming its hostility toward the Islamic State".

"In September 2015, Russia openly intervened in Syria, called upon by the Syrian government to fight, it claims, against the Islamic State and al-Nusra. Western reactions were modest, except for incessant reports of massacres of Syrian civilians by the Syrian Army and bombings by the Russians (...) The pacification of Syria was entrusted to the regular Syrian Army, backed by Russian and Iranian forces (some elite units and the Lebanese Hezbollah) with the support of Turkey, despite the reticence of Damascus, which feared Turkish ambitions on Syrian border territories. Instead, the reconquest of Iraqi territories from Mosul to northern Syria was entrusted to the U.S.-led coalition (...) Indeed, the agreement with Russia, kept secret, would provide for the liquidation, in addition to the Islamic State, of anti-Assad jihadist groups, including al-Nusra, and also the neutralization of the Free Syrian Army. Thus, after their official entry into the war, Russian bombers focused on rebel groups hostile to the Damascus regime, although these were still officially supported by the United States, Europe and Turkey itself" (il Partito Comunista, 383).

"In October 2015 the US pushed for the creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish PYD troops, Syrian Arab and Assyrian brigades, some tribal formations and Christian militias. The purpose was to engage the non-Kurdish populations in the PYD-controlled area in the fight against the Islamic State; the YPG remains the most important contingent of the SDF, but some Arab tribes that had previously associated with Isis were also included, which again showed that alliances and their reversals are made according to the needs of the war and not on "ideological", ethnic, racial or religious grounds. In 2015-16 only the SDF forces confronted Islamic State jihadists in Syria with the support of international coalition aircraft, along with small contingents of 2,000 U.S., 200 French and 200 British soldiers. In 2016 the YPG fought, with Russian air support, along with the Syrian army against anti-regime rebels in the Menagh, Tell Rifat and Zalep areas. At the end of 2017, almost one-third of Syrian territory, including hydrocarbon-producing regions such as Deir Ez Zor, was under the control of SDF militias, and they were putting their principles of =democratic municipalism’ into operation".

"In regaining territories east of the Euphrates river from the Islamic State, YPG troops found themselves masters of a territory rich in hydrocarbons (around the city of Deir Ez Zor, east of Qamishli and Al Hasakah, two-thirds of Syria’s oil resources are gathered), of agricultural products (vast agricultural lands in the northeast along the Euphrates, where 52% of Syria’s wheat and 79% of its cotton is harvested, but severely damaged by the war), and infrastructure, 3 of Syria’s 4 hydroelectric dams, albeit poorly maintained, while Turkey controls the upstream flow of the river to Syria".

"On Jan. 20, 2018, the Turkish army and the Free Syrian Army rebels launched an offensive, dubbed =Olive Branch’, this time directly against the Kurdish forces of the YPG in the Syrian Kurdish canton of Afrin, which the YPG had controlled since 2012, alone, without the support of Western forces, apart from a small Russian contingent. Before launching the offensive on Afrin Erdoğan negotiated with Putin the withdrawal of his men and the non-intervention of his powerful anti-aircraft missile batteries. This was how the YPG’s =friendly’ governments, American and Russian, left Turkey a free hand in the operation against the Kurds".

"While Bashar Al Assad’s troops, backed by the Russian army and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah militias, continued to heavily bombard Idlib province, the last enclave in Syrian territory controlled by the opposition and protected by Ankara’s army, Turkish troops, backed by mercenaries from Syria’s Islamist brigades with the support of Ankara’s air force, penetrated northern Syria on Oct. 9, 2019 to =end’ the Rojava (i.e., Western Kurdistan) =political entity’, or =self-government of northeastern Syria’, accused of supporting Kurdish PKK guerrillas in southern Turkey. The military operation was called with cynical realism =Peace Spring’" (il Partito Comunista, 398).

Operation Peace Spring added cities such as Ras al Ayn and Tell Abyad to the part of Syria under Turkish occupation, formally under the control of the Turkish backed Free Syrian Army, or with its new name, Syrian National Army, organized as a mercenary army whose salaries are paid by Ankara. As the US withdrew from Syria for the most part in the meanwhile, the SDF was forced to reach an agreement with the regime, which lead to the Syrian Army controlling the border with Turkey. Following some military action centering around Idlib, the only major city still under jihadist control, in 2019-2020, the situation in Syria evolved into what appeared to be a stalemate.

The Sudden Fall of the Regime

The sudden fall of the Baath regime at the hands of jihadist remnants, only a few years after the apparent pacification of most of the country under either its rule or that of the Kurdish nationalists, came as a surprise to many, admitted even by the functionaries of various governments. The explanation can be found in two three factors: economic, diplomatic and military. The economic factor, simplest to explain, was perhaps the most powerful one as well. The Syrian annual inflation rate was already one of the highest in the world; this only became worse from mid 2020 onward. As Bashar al-Assad declared Syria to be following the Chinese model of socialism, prices of basic goods skyrocketed and some products disappeared from the market as the public struggled to keep up with the rising cost of living. Peace, or at least ceasefire, in a divided country under Western embargo was not, it turned out any better for the Syrian economy than war.

As for the diplomatic and military factors, it would be in order to take a look, first of all, at the evolution of jihadist politics in Syria after the fall of the Islamic State, which we briefly described as follows in 2017: "Soldiers and officers =defected’ from the Syrian army founded the nationalist and democratic Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Turkey, which grouped together some 50 factions of the most diverse ideologies. In fact, from such a heterogeneous FSA in 2013 some groups split off to join the jihadists of the al-Nusra Front, the official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. Created in 2011 at the beginning of the insurgency, it became Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in 2016, and, since late January 2017, after violent clashes with the competing jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham and following a merger with other smaller groups, it changed its name once again to Tahrir al-Sham" (il Partito Comunista, 383).

Better known today with its full name as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, this organization disaffiliated from al-Qaeda and, despite being put on the list of terrorist organizations by numerous countries including the United States and Turkey, began to moderate its stance. In particular, HTS renounced the claim of its predecessors to establish a caliphate, settling with claiming Islamic rule over Syria alone. Undoubtedly, this moderation drew the attention of Western imperialist powers.

With mere 10,000 to 15,000 fighters out of a total of about 70,000 that make up various mostly jihadist anti-government militias and surrounded by enemies on all sides in Idlib, the rescue for HTS came from Ukraine. Ukrainian military intelligence, even by its own admission, has been reported for a while in various countries targeting Russian interests, from Sudan to Mali and Georgia. Not only were Ukrainian agents organizing attacks against Russian forces in Syria, but according to Kurdish, Turkish, Syrian and Russian forces, they supplied HTS with military drones and sent 250 instructors to give HTS militiamen training. Added to this was the fact that years of war had particularly worn down the Syrian Arab Army, which already had a narrow base, essentially backed by the Alawite, Christian and Druze minorities of the Syrian population, and the Israeli-American attacks on Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon on whose support the Baath regime had been depending on. Both factors left the Baath government militarily particularly vulnerable.

On November 27, HTS, along with its smaller allies and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, launched an offensive out of Idlib, with Aleppo as their primary target. The success of the rebels was wildly above their own expectations as they conquered city after city in a matter of days. The rebels, mostly equipped with small arms and handheld weapons (including FPV drones now inevitable in any theater of war), could not have so quickly gained the upper hand in Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damascus and then also in Latakya and Tartus (in that coastal area inhabited by Alawites) if Syrian forces had put up real resistance.

The Syrian armed forces are credited with 170,000 military personnel and 100,000 gendarmes and paramilitaries to which are added at least 4,000 Russian military personnel, 1,000 Iranian Pasdaran and 2,000 Lebanese Hezbollah with hundreds of armored vehicles, artillery and more than 200 aircraft and helicopters. If in the early days of the HTS offensive some Syrian units fought decisively thanks in part to the air support of the Syrian and Russian air forces (in fact, estimates recorded far higher casualties among the rebels than the government) already a few days later Russian sources were noting the absence of will to fight among government troops. By December 8, al Assad had fled to Moscow and the Baath government capitulated to the rebels.

Today, the main fighting in Syria remains between the SNO, which the HTS did not allow further south following the fall of Aleppo, and the Kurdish nationalists. The SNO’s primary gain so far has been Tel Rifat, which the Kurdish nationalist led SDF withdrew from. The Turkish backed mercenaries then moved to Manbij where they faced fierce resistance and where the fighting still continues despite Turkish air support and earlier rumors that SDF would withdraw from Manbij too. In the meanwhile, the Kurdish nationalists managed to take over all parts of Deir ez-zor with American support, along with Qami\lo and Heseke to the east of Euphrathes, strategic locations of which were previously controlled by the Syrian government, considerably enlarging the territory they control.

Nevertheless, the Kurdish nationalist rule in Deir ez-Zor was short lived as the Military Council aligned with the SDF defected and joined HTS lead forces. In the meanwhile, Israel quickly took advantage of the opportunity and occupied the disputed Golan Heights to the south and started bombing numerous military targets, officially in order to prevent the jihadists from inheriting the full military capacity of the former Syrian Arab Army. In short, while the central sectarian conflict of the Syrian Civil War, between the Alawite government and the Sunni opposition, was resolved with the fall of the government, this in no way indicates that the war in Syria is over.

The Imperialist War Continues

"To the victor go the spoils". In this case, the victor was HTS and the spoils were above all of a diplomatic nature. HTS, which has been ruling the Idlib region with an iron fist for the last few years, did not fail to do its part: it issued a declaration condemning the treatment Kurds, Alawites, Christians and Druze endured under the Islamic State as un-Muslim; it ordered its militias not to intervene with women’s clothing; its leader al-Jolani declared to Israeli press that they wanted to transition into an inclusive democracy.

In turn all the imperialist powers active in the region embraced HTS. Erdoğan, who knew of HTS’ operation in advance and had done nothing to help or stop it, except inviting al-Assad back to negotiations one last time before the events, quickly declared support for the jihadists marching on Damascus. After the fall of the government, Qatar was the first to establish a formal and public political relationship with HTS as the US and the UK begun considering removing HTS from their list of terrorist organizations, and European leaders started declaring that HTS will be a part of Syria’s future, whatever that may be. Of course all these powers already indirectly supported HTS through the Ukraine.

From the Kurdish side, politician Salih Muslim declared himself optimistic about HTS and appreciated its inclusiveness, and General Mazlum Abdi noted that they had never fought with HTS and that they were ready for dialogue. Indeed, during the assault on Aleppo, HTS and SDF negotiated for the retreat of fighters in the Kurdish neighborhoods of the city, who were followed by a large portion of the population out of Aleppo. HTS even reassured Russia by declaring it will not interfere with the Russian bases in Latakya and Tartus. Though it will be seen whether this will be enough for Russia and China not to veto removing HTS from the United Nations’ list of terrorist organizations, it is reasonably clear that there will be a new Syrian peace process, beyond the Astana format involving Russia, Iran and Turkey. Of the three countries, only Turkey will continue to play as major a role as before in the future of Syria.

A particularly relevant dimension of the future of the conflict in Syria is about the negotiation process between Turkey and Kurdish nationalists. In "Turkey-Kurdistan: New Negotiations Are Paving the Way for Bigger Wars", we recently wrote:

"Erdoğan’s emphasis on strengthening the internal front in the context of the spreading war in the Middle East is equally important. This is undoubtedly a militarist emphasis. Unless this problem is somehow resolved, in future regional and global wars, the PKK threat will remain a major weakness, as it can always strike the Turkish State from within, and could cause enormous damage to a possible war mobilization of the Turkish State. Therefore, this move could, albeit unlikely, give the Turkish State a chance to strike a deal with the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria, thereby resolving its problems with the US to a large extent, and move towards overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria" (Enternasyonal Komünist Partisi, 2024).

With the sudden fall of the Syrian government, a Turkey-PKK alliance, which is not without its promoters in Turkey, could not materialize against it; aside from uniting in their support for HTS, are still actively fighting each other. Nevertheless, minor partner of the government and leader of the main fascist party in the country, Devlet Bahçeli, recently continued his democratic advances and applauded a speech by Kurdish nationalist parliamentarians calling for peace in Syria.

The Kurdish nationalists, however, are not united in how they will approach these advances. While Öcalan and some parliamentary deputies are warm to the idea of reconciliation with Turkey, there seems to be a significant resistance from some of the PKK leaders in Qandil. Moreover, while the SDF leaders are friendly towards the HTS, Sabri Ok, one of the PKK leaders in Qandil, boldly declared HTS to be no different than the Islamic State, adding that it will share the same fate. Qandil leadership’s confidence is likely due to Israel declaring the protection of the Kurds in Syria to be a priority, and actually being in a position to do something about it.

Among the regional imperialist powers, it is Turkey and Israel who will play the most important role in the future affairs of Syria. In any case, regardless of whether the Syrian peace process stalls a larger war for a while or whether it fails to stop the current situation from evolving into a much bloodier conflict than what was witnessed in the last few weeks, the bourgeois future of Syria looks much gloomier than those celebrating democratic jihadists’ overthrowal of a brutal dictatorship portray it to be.

In "The Historical Causes of Arab Separatism", written in 1958, we wrote: "By following the path already taken, the "balkanization" of the Arabs will reach its extreme consequences. The Arabs will wall themselves off more and more within prefabricated States, that is, States manufactured by imperialism and its agents, States poisoned by a depressing squalor, disheartened by insurmountable impotence, and which will consume their futile existence in infighting (...) Fragmented, divided by ignoble dynastic issues, devoured alive by the bloodsucking foreign capitalist monopolies who willingly cede large slices of the oil profits, entangled in the deadly military alliances of imperialism, the Arab States not only instill no fear in the various imperialisms but serve as pawns in their diabolical game" (il Programma Comunista, 1958).

What we wrote almost seventy years ago continues to be confirmed today. Syria is not a nation in the Marxist sense; it is merely the name of a historic region which was made into a country. The various nationalities, ethnicities and denominations that make up the Syrian population never united as a nation in a bourgeois revolution but were grouped together as a result of borders arbitrarily drawn by imperialism.

For this reason, it was particularly easy for the Syrian Civil War to turn into a complex imperialist conflict so quickly, as numerous global and regional imperialist powers had stakes in the country which they could pursue through the vast variety of political organizations and affiliated militias that emerged. All sides to the war acted as boots of this or that imperialism on the ground.

National struggles with a revolutionary and anti-imperialist character were exhausted a long time ago in the Middle East. There were no anti-imperialists in this war: it was, and it remains, an inter-imperialist conflict played out within a single country, which is among many local wars bringing us closer to a new imperialist world war. There is no solution to the burning national questions of the region within the framework of imperialism.

The only path for the liberation of the proletarians of Syria and the Middle East is to unite against all factions in this war, all the regional and global imperialist powers involved, in a trade union front from below, lead by the International Communist Party. Only the proletarian revolution, resulting in a Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics of the Middle East, can heal the wounds of the region.