October 24, 2016 – October 24, 2025

TRIBUTE TO ABU AL BARAA, REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST LEADER AND FOUNDER OF SYRIAN TROTSKYISM

Fallen in combat against Al Assad and Putin, who did imperialism's dirty work of massacring the Syrian revolution and guarding the borders of Zionism

Today, his struggle lives on in the hands of the Trotskyists who confront Al Jolani, the expropriator of the revolution and agent of Trump and Netanyahu

Hace 9 años caía Abu Al Baraa, dirigente trotskista de la Brigada León Sedov, en el combate por romper el cerco a Aleppo en 2016 en plena revolución siria contra los fascistas Al Assad y Putin. Estos últimos hicieron el trabajo sucio a cuenta del imperialismo de ahogar en sangre ese proceso revolucionario que había comenzado en 2011, como parte indisoluble de una misma cadena de revoluciones en todo Magreb y Medio Oriente por el pan y la libertad, para que el mismo no llegara a triunfar en Jerusalén destruyendo al estado sionista-fascista de Israel.
Abu Al Baraa, junto a cuadros internacionalistas, confluyó y reagrupó las fuerzas de partisanos revolucionarios, fundando así el trotskismo sirio, convirtiéndose en un gran militante internacionalista de la clase obrera de todo Medio Oriente. Levantaron las banderas de la IV Internacional en la trinchera de la revolución siria.

Nine years ago, Abu Al Baraa, Trotskyist leader of the Leon Sedov Brigade, fell in the battle to break the siege of Aleppo in 2016, in the midst of the Syrian revolution against the fascists Assad and Putin. The latter did the dirty work for imperialism by drowning in blood this revolutionary process that had begun in 2011 as an inseparable part of a single chain of revolutions throughout the Maghreb and the Middle East for bread and freedom. Their goal was to prevent this revolution from being victorious in Jerusalem and destroying the Zionist-fascist state of Israel.
Abu Al Baraa, along with internationalist cadres, united and regrouped the forces of revolutionary partisans, thus founding Syrian Trotskyism, becoming a great internationalist militant of the working class throughout the Middle East. They raised the banners of the Fourth International in the trenches of the Syrian revolution.

The Shiite bourgeoisie, always ready to massacre the revolutionary masses, but cowardly when it came to confronting Zionism and imperialism

In the midst of the revolution, al-Assad was reinforced by the counterrevolutionary troops of Putin and of the Iranian and Lebanese clerics, who drowned the Syrian revolution in blood, with 600,000 killed, 15 million refugees and displaced, hundreds of thousands in prisons tortured to death, tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered in Yarmouk camp, and Syria was devastated worse than Gaza.
These genocidal forces dedicated themselves to massacre the Syrian revolution for nearly 14 years, but they fired nothing but blanks at Zionism, which committed a genocide in Gaza for nearly two years. Iran threatened with a "devastating war" and eventually surrendered. Hezbollah accepted a unilateral disarmament pact, for which they surrendered their weapons and submit to the rule of Maronite bourgeoisie, the murderers of Sabra and Shatila. Not only did al-Assad upheld the Golan Heights borders, but upon his fall in December 2024, he gave Zionism the coordinates to destroy all heavy weapons so they wouldn't fall into the hands of the revolutionary masses.
They all closed the fronts and left Gaza isolated. This shows that these cowardly bourgeoisies are only there to crush the masses when they rise, not to confront Zionism and imperialism.

Imperialism concentrated all its forces to crush the Syrian revolution, not only with the Shiite bourgeoisie but also the Sunnite bourgeoisie.

But if al-Assad didn't fall in the first revolutionary onslaught, it wasn't only because he was supported by these genocidal forces. Imperialism also sent the Sunnite bourgeoisie of Iraq, the forces of former President Saddam Hussein under the name "ISIS" who dedicated to savagely murder the best of the revolution's vanguard.
Internationally, the Syrian revolution was besieged and isolated. The reformist left, Islamophobic currents, servants of imperialism, Stalinism, and former Trotskyists, formed the so-called "anti-terrorist front," which presented the greatest revolutionaries who fought in it as "terrorists" and "agents of imperialism." They thus separated this enormous mass uprising from the international proletariat.

As if this were not enough, imperialism had another agent: the Sunnite bourgeoisie, which handed over the rebel cities one by one. When the masses advanced, they took the lead in restoring the Syrian protectorate government alongside the Assadist remnants, as Al Jolani did.
On this ninth anniversary of the assassination of the revolutionary socialist leader Abu Al Baraa, we, as his comrades, are paying tribute to him by speaking up the truth. The first wave of the Syrian revolution did not succeed in 2011, and the second wave of 2024 was expropriated because the generals of the Sunni bourgeoisie, a part of the officer caste of the Syrian army, with promises of "democracy," "moved over" to lead the revolutionary movement with the aim of dissolving and destroying all self-determination bodies of workers, peasants, and rank-and-file soldiers, such as the coordination committees. This, and nothing else, were the generals of the Free Syrian Army under direct orders from Türkiye.
When the "democratic" deception was no longer enough to contain the masses, sectors of this same Sunnite bourgeoisie had to disguise themselves as Islamists to contain and surrender from within. And so, along came Al Jolani. They installed themselves as the government in Idlib, which the revolution had liberated, and took it upon themselves to surrender and close all the fronts against al-Assad, placing their forces solely at the service of containing the masses and imprisoning them if they "dared" to fight to open the fronts.

From Idlib, Al Jolani led the second revolutionary wave in December 2024 to expropriate the revolution, give continuity to the occupied partitioned Syrian protectorate and to support Zionism as it advanced into Gaza and also occupied more land in southern Syria. Not only this, but he also continues to hold 15,000 political prisoners of the revolution in his jails, continues to leave millions of displaced in tents, and has not met a single demand of the workers and peasants, those who sacrificed their lives for the revolution to win and today find themselves without bread, work, or house. Today, Al Jolani is showing his true colours, i.e. he’s a man of US imperialism, trained by the CIA itself (like all of Al-Qaeda members), who no longer dresses as an Islamist but as a businessman in a suit, and is preparing to sign, with Trump and Netanyahu, the pact recognizing the State of Israel, thus sealing what he has always done: besiege and isolate Gaza.

Abu Al Baraa was part of an internationalist revolutionary faction that fought on the front lines against the fascist al-Assad and the butcher Putin. But they also confronted those who, from within, were selling out the revolution and the international leaderships that slandered and threw dirt on it, leaving al-Assad Carte Blanche to massacre. He fought this battle alongside our international current, as a member of the Editorial Board of the Trotskyist paper The International Workers' Organizer, and founder of the paper The Truth of the Oppressed, which today is flesh and blood of the vanguard in Syria and throughout the Middle East.
Abu Al Baraa and the Trotskyists fought in the midst of the Syrian revolution with the program of expropriating the bourgeoisie and all the banks and using all their funds to win the war and so the people could eat. They seized factories and put them under workers' control. Thus began the emergence of a revolutionary left wing in the fight against Assad. This revolutionary wing continues to fight against Al Jolani, as in Idlib as well as always and now, has always has been the Sunnite guardian of private property.

The more al-Assad gained momentum, the more Zionism regained its firepower to launch its genocide on Palestine and its counterrevolutionary offensive to impose the "Greater Israel" in the Middle East.

Amidst the chains of revolutions in the Maghreb and the Middle East in 2011, imperialism was unable to intervene directly to crush them with its troops, driven by the anti-war struggle of its working class. Nor could it use its Zionist gendarme, whose intervention would have unified all the oppressed peoples of the region.
The international leadership, and especially the Palestinian masses, separated them from our revolution, and we were isolated and massacred, while Zionism grew stronger to massacre them. The role of the PLO was sinister. Not only did they separate the Syrian revolution from the Palestinian masses, but today they fill their prisons, persecute, and shoot down the Palestinian masses in the West Bank who wanted to confront the occupation alongside their brothers in Gaza.
When the first Syrian revolution was crushed and the 2011 revolutions defeated, Zionism regained its firepower. The left that betrayed the Syrian revolution already has a stain on its forehead from the blood of the Syrian masses… and the Palestinians.
It is vitally important for imperialism now to regain full control of the Middle East with its direct agent. We know that if it triumphs in Gaza, "Greater Israel" will continue to advance its counterrevolutionary offensive, as we already see with its incursions and bombings in the West Bank and Lebanon, and we know it will not hesitate to fill Syria with blood again. Our lives depend on defeating the surrender ultimatum that Trump, Netanyahu, and the Egyptian conference want to impose on the Palestinian resistance. Syria, Palestine, and the entire Middle East: One intifada!
The last word has not yet been said. In almost two years of genocide in Gaza, Zionism has been unable to prevail, on the one hand due to the enormous resistance of the Palestinian masses, but fundamentally due to the enormous international solidarity of the working class worldwide. General strikes for Palestine are already taking place in Italy, Greece, and Spain. The European working class is entering the fray in France and Belgium.
Much of our future is at stake in Palestine, and its fate today is in the hands of the international working class, primarily in the imperialist countries! In the US, we must take to the streets against the genocidaire-in-chief and confront his police and armed forces! For an international general strike!

We pay tribute to Abu Al Baraa and also to more than 15 Trotskyist martyrs who also lost their lives alongside hundreds of thousands of others who were murdered

When we see the enormous marches of hundreds and hundreds of thousands around the world and the general strikes of the international working class in solidarity with Palestine, we know that so much genocide will not be forgotten and so much betrayal will not go unpunished.
We know there will be justice because today the whole truth is coming to light. US officials openly declare that, at the start of the Syrian revolution, they coordinated their counterrevolutionary actions in Syria with Putin and the Russians because their business dealings throughout the region and the security of Zionism were at risk. They say they framed this as an operation "against terrorism."
The entire left claimed that "terrorism" had to be defeated, and under that pretext, they placed the working class in the trenches of the class enemy.
There will be no forgetting or forgiveness for those who massacred and betrayed in Syria, whether by openly supporting al-Assad and Putin under the pretext of “confronting imperialism” or “confronting terrorism”, or by supporting the Sunnite bourgeoisie who surrendered the rebel cities from within.

An entire generation of the working class lost their lives in the heroic Syrian revolution. More than 15 comrades organized by Syrian Trotskyism fell in this revolutionary struggle, along with hundreds of thousands of martyrs, such as Abd el Basset Sarout, the so-called "goalkeeper of the revolution."
The lessons of this enormous revolution were written in the heat of the events from the very trenches of the class struggle in Syria. One of its authors was Abu Al Baraa, who, together with leaders of the FLTI, wrote the book Syria Under Fire and its second volume, Diary of a Syrian Writer.

We pay tribute to Abu Al Baraa, to our fallen comrades, and to the Syrian masses massacred by al-Assad and Putin, and to the Palestinian masses massacred by Zionism, because we are martyrs of the same struggle, which continues today and which we continue to carry forward. We know that the battle is not yet over.
Abu Al Baraa, until socialism always! We pay tribute to the Syrian revolutionary socialists!

Editorial Committee of the newspaper The Truth of the Oppressed