March 20, 2022

On the 11th anniversary of the Syrian revolution…
Revolutionary day of action about the Ukrainian question

Statement by Abu Muad, from the editorial committee of the newspaper "The truth of the oppressed", organ of the socialists of Syria and the Middle East

“In a talk about Ukraine, Syria cannot be ignored. We have to account for what led to today's barbarism, genocide and the partition of Syria to understand Putin's invasion of Ukraine."

Good afternoon to all the comrades who are present here. In a talk about Ukraine it is essential to talk about the Syrian revolution, so it is inevitable to pay tribute to the more than 600,000 killed in this bloodied revolution. It is inevitable for us to remember the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners  that revolution suffered and the other thousands who have disappeared at the hands of the butcher Putin and the murderer Bashar al-Assad.
It is a revolution where the masses put everything to succeed. Today we must remember that they not only fought to the end for dignity and bread, but also fought for an international revolution and their goal was to reach Palestine.
In this program and under these conditions, we especially remember our comrades from the Leon Sedov Brigade, comrade Abu Al Baraa and his father Mustafa from the brigade, and so many other comrades who fell in combat carrying the flag of the Fourth International, of socialism, back to the Middle East.
Due to the betrayal of the (world) left, which left us alone and isolated, it was not possible to continue this struggle, because the comrades from Syria were killed by the counterrevolution. Still, their legacy continue. The comrades who are going to speak today will give an account of what is happening today inside Syria, they are two comrades that are carrying forward the banners of the Leon Sedov Brigade and the entire legacy left, not only by comrades Mustafa and Abu Al Baraa but by all the fallen comrades of the brigade.

Let's start with the genesis, because as I mentioned before, in a talk about Ukraine, Syria cannot be ignored. We have to account for what we see today, the genocide and the partition of Syria, in order to understand Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Let's go back to 2008, when there was an international crash, where a real estate bubble burst and a lot of money had been issued that was not backed by the value of produced goods. In the development of this crack, around 2010-2011, food prices dramatically increased, which led to a chain of revolutions, starting with Tunisia, expanding to Egypt, passing through Libya, going to Bahrain, Yemen, reaching Syria.
It was a chain of revolutions that knew how to blow up the domination devices that imperialism had imposed on these countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East. People came out in their millions to the streets crying out for peace, bread, freedom and dignity. There was no peace under totalitarian governments. There was also no freedom. They were countries with enormous oil production, like Libya, and the people had no money. People were starving, so they asked for bread and dignity.
One by one the agents of imperialism in the region began to fall, like Hosni Mubarak or Ben Ali, or Qadafy himself, whose head rolled down the streets. In Syria the mass struggle began to grow. One by one they were liberating cities, cornering Bashar, the president of Syria, in the government house. They had taken practically all of Damascus. There was no country in the Maghreb and the Middle East that did not have the Palestinian flag waving high. All those revolutions, particularly the one in Syria, put in check the borders of Israel, the gendarme of imperialism in the region.

In Syria, US used its agents to break the chain of revolutions in the Maghreb and the Middle East.

Faced with this situation, one wonders what imperialism is going to do? Surely it is going to come with its gunboats in the best Bush style, to land its troops and invade as in Afghanistan or Iraq. But no, comrades. The reality is that the US could not do that.
Up to now it cannot do so because its own working class prevents it. The anti-war movement in the US rose up against that infamous war because they were sending hundreds and thousands of invading troops who were going back in little black bags because the heroic Iraqi and Afghan resistance was sending them back home. The mothers of the soldiers and the disabled stood up against the war and said “I am not going to your war in the Middle East anymore, that is not my war, I am not joining the army”. The working class took the ports and refused to ship the weapons.
That happened in the US and it prevented this imperialism from acting as it had been acting for a long time. It was also unable to use it's (Zionist) gendarme in the region, which had been carrying out all its orders, subduing the Palestinians and imposing terror throughout the Middle East.

That is why the US began to use each of its agents not only in the region, but particularly in Syria. It began to give oxigen and a free rein to Bashar, who at the beginning of the revolution made a pact with the Kurdish bourgeoisie and broke the backbone of the revolution in half, dividing the Syrian population from the Kurdish population, and the massacre began.
But the Syrian masses resisted. That is why the Sunni bourgeoisie “changed sides”, because the Sunni generals broke with Bashar's army, changed one flag for another and claimed to be the greatest allies of the Syrian revolution. They said they supported the revolution, but all they did was selling it out from within.
The US protected all this. And more and more agents were joining, because the masses kept advancing, and it was then that Iran and Hezbollah came to give military support to Bashar. Turkey came from behind to support the Sunni bourgeoisie and said "they are the allies of the revolution."
In 2013 the US met in Geneva with all its agents, where Putin also appeared along with Bashar, and they all agreed to coordinate and carry out the counterrevolution. Turkey posing as an ally to the Sunni bourgeoisie, and on the other hand Putin, Iran and Hezbollah, supporting Bashar militarily. Thus they subjected the Syrian masses to one of the greatest genocides of the 21st century.

The treacherous leaderships of the world working class gave carte blanche to the actions of imperialism and its agents

How could this be possible when there are so many leftist parties in the world that raise the flags of the revolution? The reason is, when there is a revolution, where are those parties? Actually everything that happened in Syria was possible thanks to the world left, which either openly supported Putin and Bashar saying they were "anti-imperialist" or, as the LIT, said that the US should send weapons to the Syrian revolution, while the UIT was parading the generals of the FSA as the Jacobins of the revolution when they were the greatest traitors and betrayers of the revolution; or else the PTS said that it was necessary to be neutral, a neutrality that is expressed to this day, with its affirmation that "there are two reactionary bands" and that "it was a revolution up to the moment it was armed."
The left then fulfilled and carried out a fundamental role, because when the masses of Syria and the entire Middle East tended to ally themselves with the masses that were revolting in Europe, the left affirmed "the fundamental problem is Islamism." "Islamic State is the biggest enemy," they said.
In this way they were able to isolate the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East from the Syrian ones, calling the latter as "terrorists", which served as an excuse for the imperialist powers even to not let in the refugees who by the millions left Syria and tried to reach Europe. There was a meeting in Tunisia of the World Social Forum, where the left put a stamp on the massacre and “legally approved” it.

The defeat of the revolution means barbarism in Syria

Unfortunately, the sum of all these catastrophes has led to what is today Syria, a split nation, covered in blood. The images of Syria today compare  with those of Ukraine. Women, children and old people lying lifeless on the ground. That is the result of the equation between the US, its agents and the left that supports it: today's Syria bloodied, massacred, broken... barbarism. The exact number of dead is not known, it is estimated at almost a million. The number of missing is not known. It is not known if the prisoners are in the jails or not. More than 15 million refugees. The refugee camps overflowing with stench and putrefaction.
This is the result we have today in Syria. And unfortunately we have to say that this result was because there was a missing factor in that equation, which was the seizure of power. Today's Syria was reached because power was not taken. Because when the masses were cornering Bashar, and he had no way out, they did not take power. The masses had taken 90% of the territory and power was never taken. But that was not for lack of courage on the part of the masses. The more the masses advanced, the more agents joined to hit them… Hezbollah came, then Iran, then Putin with all his weapons. The US also did not get tired of bombing. And the masses continued to resist, but if they did not take power it was because of the betrayal of the left.
Not only did they not dispute the leadership of the masses to the FSA, but they vindicated it, and said "that is the leadership we want", which was the leadership that ended up selling out the revolution. They were the ones who supported al-Assad and Putin directly and called the  Syrian masses as enemies of the world working class for being “terrorists”. They passed off the friends of the masses as their enemies and their enemies as allies.

We have to prevent Ukraine from suffering the same fate as Syria
What does this have to do with Ukraine? What is happening in Ukraine? Why is Putin entering with his army?          
Putin is an agent (of imperialism). He invades, but he does not occupy. He was the one who put the most money, men and weapons to carry out the counterrevolution, but he allows the US to plunder Syria's oil and gas without even firing a single shot. For all those who say that there is a war between the US and Russia, we from Syria realize that this is not the case. Because both coexist in Syria, Putin comes and slaughters, and the US goes later and plunders the oil. That is Putin's role. Not only in Syria, but also in Ukraine.
That is why today we have to keep Syria in mind, what happened and was unleashed, because it is what we have to prevent the Ukrainian working class from suffering. The betrayal of the left is not “free”. "Neutrality" and looking the other way had its consequences. It is not "free" to support the bourgeoisie opposition, painting it as "democratic", as they are now trying to do in Ukraine with the "caravan of sunflowers".