‘The Ba’th party is a terrorist’ a protester in southern Syria in 2023 (Picture: Al-Suwayda 24 via Facebook)
Syrians are celebrating the fall of the Assad regime after more than five decades of bloody and repressive dictatorship.
Bashar al-Assad, who ran the country since the death of his father in 2000, fled the capital Damascus for Russia last Sunday.
Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), an armed Islamist group, launched a lightning offensive against the Assad regime at the end of last month. After storming the northern city of Aleppo, HTS made progress south towards Damascus and captured the capital.
It reignited the long-running civil war, which saw Assad drown the 2011 popular revolution in blood. Since then, rival imperial powers have intervened in the country.
After HTS took Damascus, people stormed the presidential palace, ransacking the symbol of Assad’s corrupt dictatorship. Rebels took control of the state’s media facilities to broadcast their victory and opened the regime’s prisons and torture chambers.
Around the world, from Washington DC to Berlin to Istanbul, Syrians flooded the streets in jubilation.
What was the Assad regime?
General Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, seized power in 1971 and built a brutal, corrupt dictatorship.
The Arab nationalist Ba’ath party had come to power in a military coup in 1963—and another coup in 1966 saw the left of the party take over.
It promised state-led capitalist development, social reforms and looked to Stalinist Russia.
After Syria’s defeat at the hands of Israel in the Six Day War of 1967, the right of the Ba’ath party went on the attack. Defence minister Hafez al‑Assad launched another coup.
He built a new regime based on a compromise between the new and old exploiters—the layer of state capitalist bureaucrats and the old urban capitalists and landowners.
The Assad regime’s upper levels included many Alawites and other religious and ethnic minorities. But it also drew support from the Sunni Muslim section of the capitalist class.
Despite the regime’s socialist rhetoric, Assad concentrated political and economic power in the hands of a small number of state officials.
In the 1970s and 80s, the Assad regime relied heavily on support from Stalinist Russia which supplied arms, loans and subsidies.
From the late 1980s, the Assad regime followed a similar path to other Arab nationalist regimes that had adopted a state capitalist mode.
It began implementing neoliberal reforms aimed at building up a private sector at the expense of ordinary people. Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000 and pushed through more “reforms” and sought closer ties with the West. He, for example, worked with the United States during the War on Terror.
His programme of economic liberalisation led to an influx of foreign capital from the Gulf. But this in turn created a property boom that crushed the middle and working classes with spiralling prices.
Public-private partnerships created a new layer of crony capitalists as the rich benefitted from two-tier systems in education and health. This sharpened class conflict in Syria.
What was the Syrian revolution of 2011?
Syria followed the mass uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia as part of the Arab Spring. In March 2011, police kidnapped teenagers for writing, “The people want to overthrow the regime,” on their school’s wall.
The protests that followed quickly gained momentum. Following in the footsteps of his father, Bashar al-Assad tried to drown the uprisings in blood, shooting protesters and targeting and imprisoning activists.
But it became clear that would not be enough. Assad’s forces began to lay siege to rebellious towns and cities, bombing residential areas to crush the very social fabric of the revolution.
And Assad turned to ramping up sectarian divisions among the rebellious masses.
As Syrian soldiers began refusing to shoot protesters, people formed militias to defend their neighbourhoods. They took the name the Free Syrian Army (FSA), but it was a fragmented organisation without a centralised leadership.
From 2012, Assad pulled in imperialist support. Russian jets bombed Syrian towns, Iran sent in its forces and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah intervened.
As Syria plunged deeper into civil war, armed Islamist groups thrived. They pushed the character of the revolution towards armed resistance, and away from its mass, popular base.
But, despite the brutality of the civil war, there were protests by revolutionary Syrians as late as last year.
What is Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)?
Jabhat al Nusra formed in 2011 as a Sunni Islamist armed group, capturing territories and imposing its reactionary views on inhabitants.
The group was linked to al-Qaeda, but broke with the organisation in 2016.
After a series of mergers, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) emerged in 2017. Unlike some other forms of Jihadism, HTS has nationalist aims and looks to take control of Syria, rather than establish a trans‑national Muslim caliphate.
Before overthrowing the Assad regime, HTS ran large parts of north west Syria.
The Syrian Salvation Government, which HST supports, provides public services to these areas, but there have been protests against HTS’ governance due to its reactionary politics.
Led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani since 2017, HTS is proscribed by Western states. But as it establishes a new regime in Syria, British cabinet minister Pat McFadden has said his government will review the terror ban on it.
How does the fall of Assad affect imperialism?
The tangled web of imperialist tensions in Syria has been thrown into chaos after the collapse of the regime.
Competing powers will now look to protect their interests by integrating themselves with the new regime. But they may not get their way.
Iran, a key backer of Assad, has already tried to distance itself from his collapsed regime. President Masoud Pezeshkian said last Sunday, “It is the Syrian people who must decide on the future of their country and its political and governmental system.”
While Russia is sheltering Assad in Moscow, HTS reportedly guaranteed the safety of Russian military bases in Syria.
Both Iran and Russia’s defence of Assad’s regime was muted with Russia occupied in Ukraine and Iran hammered by Israel’s attacks.
It’s clear both are trying to make concessions with the new regime in Syria, but it is unclear how that will play out.
Turkey supported HTS’ offensive. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to weaken his rival Assad—and to further repress the Kurds in north east Syria.
But after HTS toppled Assad, Kurdish fighters called for “de-escalation” of the conflict and for a “new Syria” with rights for all. Erdogan isn’t guaranteed to get what he wants.
What will happen with Israel and Palestine?
HTS leader al-Jolani has said he was inspired by the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. It’s unlikely HTS will normalise relations with Israel amid its genocide in Gaza.
Israel has pushed into Syrian territories in the Golan Heights, between north Israel and south west Syria. After Assad’s fall, Israeli forces marched into the demilitarised buffer zone.
In 1974, there was a disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel, but Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that agreement has collapsed due to the fall of Assad.
Netanyahu is using the instability of Syria to expand Israel’s influence in the Middle East.
On Sunday, Israel bombed Damascus, targeting weapons depots. Israel claimed it is thwarting potential threats in Syria, but with its seizure of Syrian territories in Golan it is clear Israel is escalating its violent warmongering to further cement Western support.
What about the Kurds?
The Assad regime drove through a process of Arabisation, forcing Kurdish farmers off their land to make room for Arabs.
It prohibited the use of the Kurdish language and repressed all forms of Kurdish culture.
At the same time Hafez al-Assad used the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which fought for the liberation of Kurds in Turkey, as a bargaining chip against his neighbour.
But in 1998, under pressure from Turkey, Assad expelled PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and his party from Syria.
During the Syrian revolution of 2011, the PYD party and its YPG forces fought to establish Kurdish-controlled regions in Syria. This led to the establishment of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known as Rojava, in 2016.
But Kurdish liberation efforts also have a history of embroilment with Western imperialism. In 2014, as the Syrian revolution faltered, the YPG became the main part of the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF).
SDF was a US-backed coalition of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Turkmen and Circassian militias fighting Isis and Jabat al-Nusra.
Today, as Kurds look to defend their autonomy in Rojava, PYD co-chair Salih Muslim appeared to back HTS as it advanced towards Damascus.
Despite HTS attacking Kurdish communities as it began its lightning offensive against Assad’s regime, Kurdish forces are looking to maintain control of their autonomous region.
But this could create tensions with an HTS regime. And Erdogan will seek to build relations with HTS to repress Syrian Kurds.
As Donald Trump looks to begin a second term in January, he is hesitant about intervening in Syria. But he also supports Erdogan’s regime, further throwing the Kurdish struggle into uncertainty.
Kurdish independence will require a reinvigoration of the spirit of the Syrian revolution—mass resistance from below free from the imperialist powers.
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