By Adrien Welsh
On January 29, the jihadist military factions that seized power in Syria – with the aid of Western imperialist forces and their local auxiliaries – jointly agreed to suspend the country’s constitution and concentrate executive and legislative powers in the hands of a single person, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa [photo, at left].
It only took a few weeks after the fall of the Ba’athist regime on December 8 for the new regime’s promises of democratization to be shattered. But this apparent about-face is really just the logical outcome of a process that began several decades ago. While Syria has had inconsistencies in its relationship with Western imperialism over the decades – cooperating with it during the 1976 invasion of Lebanon and the 1991 Gulf War, while denouncing it in the face of Israel and US-led partition plans for Syria itself – the fact remains that since 2011, amid US-China rivalry for control of the region, Washington’s obsession has been getting rid of the Assad government at all costs.
The US drive to Balkanize the region and break it into small dependent entities was obstructed by Syria, a sovereign state which relied on a partially nationalized economy to pursue and secure its own economic interests in the region.
The jihadist factions currently in power in Damascus – yesterday’s terrorists, but today’s democrats – continue to provide Western imperialism with all the necessary guarantees, starting with normalized relations with Israel. Alongside this, they have had multiple meetings with NATO (through Turkey) and other “emissaries of the dollar empire,” and they have wasted no time in liquidating state enterprises and laying off civil servants. Despite promises made in broad daylight, they are intensifying discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation.
The meeting on January 29 was simply the culmination of a long and brutal process aimed at annihilating labour and social rights and serving Syria on a silver platter to Western corporate monopolies.
The Ba’ath Party’s state structure dissolved itself just hours after former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. He remains in exile in Moscow and has ruled out a return to power or any form of resistance. His former allies are looking to make the best of the new political arrangement – clearly, nobody in Syria wants a return to the old regime.
Against this backdrop, the decision of the January 29 meeting to dissolve several national political parties, most notably the Communist Party of Syria and the Communist Party of Syria (Unified), had no other objective than to anchor the new regime in reaction, tyranny and total submission to the interests of Western imperialism. Why else would it liquidate the only two political forces that have, at great cost, both fought the authoritarianism and arbitrariness of the Ba’ath government and undertaken patriotic defence of the country against imperialist attack?
Syria’s two communist parties have rejected the new regime’s anti-democratic decision and pledge to continue the struggle. In a statement issued on January 30, the Syrian Communist Party affirmed that after more than a hundred years of existence, “it will continue its struggle for the defense of the people’s rights and for the restoration of the country’s independence and sovereignty.”
Syria’s communists say they are not afraid of “repression and persecution, and history bears witness to this. The Syrian people [know] them for firmness on principles and integrity in the service of the people.”
They conclude that in “these difficult times, one the first tasks is to work for the unity of all the living forces of the country, from all horizons, in order to confront tyranny and oppression.”
Clarté
Translated from French by PV staff
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