The below is a poem I read at the 13th anniversary of the Syrian revolution in Berlin, March 2024. The poem is titled: “The story of the supporter” (hikayat da’im). It imagines a fictional conversation between a Syrian revolutionary and the Western state “supporter” during the conflict, covering various flashpoints that took place over a decade.
English translation [Arabic below]
And those [the West] who proclaim freedom It turned out it’s [only] for them, not for me. We called out [we want] “democracy” But it seems they were taking me for a ride So [one day], an honest one [amongst them] came to me, With blond hair and blue eyes too. [He told me] “Let me explain to you on the side, my man,” Your place within “human rights” These are just words for conferences To make us sound good in speeches So we appear enlightened But we want you to remain backward. It is meant for internal consumption Not for you to revolt and then complain. Your lands, if you liberate them You’ll become my equal, and give us a headache [as a challenger] How will I remind you of my favours [to you]? And keep you beholden to this visa.
My son, this cause is not for you There is only the tyrant [suitable] to rule you He may drop a barrel [bomb], he may fire a rocket But why should my interests be the sacrifice? I’m not a charity, to let you bring harm to me Yes, the Russian and Iranian can come Making deals with them is my right The most [you will get] is a statement [of support] As for the weapons, those aren’t for you.
He’s asking me about [disparity of support for] Ukraine?! He must be living in another world [thinking he’s equal] What [anti-aircraft] defense [weapons] do you want?! With your beard, how do you [dare] ask for it? And if you seek it from the black market You’ll find a veto from me before Russia.
I will give you a “moderate” designation To throw poison atop the spilled blood. You have ISIS and Nusra Go fight them, I’m giving you the chance! Forget about Bashar for now His plane is next to mine. [Flying] In the same air space, Sorry, but this is [a matter of] national security. And what about the [Iraqi] Popular Mobilization Forces [PMF]? They’re fighting there? Oh my! With American weapons? Oh Holy! By God, I didn’t notice…
As for the Iraqi army and security, They handed over my weapons in Mosul. So ISIS came to Deir [al-Zor] and Raqqa With American weapons, oh my dear. And so I became wanted by two states [Assad and ISIS], And was still searching for my weapons.
[The donor says] “You can get [Iranian Revolutionary] Guards and Halesh [Hezbollah]” “You can get Hashd [PMF] and ISIS” “Still, forget it and don’t try [to ask for more]” “Simply, you are unworthy.”
[Revolutionary in first person]
Yes, I understand now The moderate designation was vexatious. He used it [“vetting”] to waste my time To buy time for the tyrant.
[Rhetorically asks the donor] Okay, forget about Bashar now Aren’t you the one who prevented my arming? So it [arms] wouldn’t go to ISIS Who invaded with the weapons of others? Now you dare to blame me And condition [aid] to forget my regime. So that I fight a terrorist Who you empowered over me?. When I fought him alone He categorised me as an apostate. He labeled me “the sahwas of apostasy”! He issued a fatwa [religious ruling permitting] to spill my blood They came and slaughtered my tribes And crucified my activists. And the regime was bombing [me] from above Never think I’ve forgotten On two fronts [ISIS and Assad], my youth went [and died] And you only woke up for Kobane Now you act heroic Yet you let ISIS go and take slaves And my warning had reached you. And you were pretending to be blind
Your pilot was watching from above Eating popcorn and joking around [The pilot said] “Wait, don’t rush “The right moment hasn’t come yet.” “Let the revolution be forgotten” “Leave ISIS defame it” “This way, he doesn’t have to leave” And Bashar can remain my ally. Let the [ISIS] cells gather [from around the world] Let them grow and expand. [This way] I rid myself of those who want to leave Let him travel, don’t stop him [at the airport]. I’ll concentrate them in a swamp Until the sheep is fattened for slaughter. That day [only then] I’ll come down and destroy
I drowned Raqqa in red blood. Congratulations, I came to liberate! And I supported the Iranians in Palmyra. Forgive me, I was forced to and couldn’t wait And handed him [Iranian proxies] the desert, And left Deir [al-Zor] for him as a prize.
[Revolutionary to the donor] Is the story clear now, o apple of my eye? Heavy weapons [are allowed] for everyone but me So that the lands are lost Those that I liberated with my blood. After all, this duality was intentional Either a tyrant or a terrorist Your message has reached me, Fine, you don’t have to sell [weapons] to me. I’ll find someone else To buy my weapons from And I’ll still continue my journey O betrayer of my freedom fighters.
[Donor in first person]
Just wait a second, where are you going? Take it easy, Abu Hassanain [nickname] What you’re saying is right, and doubly so But where will you get your weapons from? My son, [I thought] you understood the deal, Focus with me, I’m frank You’re not allowed arms from any friend I won’t allow anyone to supply you And we sent a warning to the Gulf Respect the big [dog’s] veto Don’t arm from your stocks Your warehouses are just for [repression of] your people. Don’t act on your own whim Or I’ll come and blow you off your throne.
As for Iraq, they can have new weapons Yes, I forgave them, naturally. I forgot about Mosul [2014], no worries [For] This is a regime that I manufactured with my own hands, And the PMF can have [Western] air cover What’s the difference [between them and you], you want to ask me? He’s not like you, acting all revolutionary He kills demonstrators casually Whether Sunni or Shia, In Basra or Ramadi. In this, I’m not sectarian, As long as he suppresses popular movements, And protects my agent’s corruption, You’ll always find me satisfied, And I’ll even praisehimopenly.
As for you [o revolutionary], you [threaten me] with disaster Understand, I won’t say it again! Rule by the people isn’t beneficial for us! And the most important thing are my interests. Iran, I can reach understandings with ISIS, I can obliterate from the skies As for you, you want to embarrass me! Neither a dictator, nor a terrorist! My son, this isn’t our equation We crafted it with our own hands You’ll waste years of work And make us appear as liars. My son, this is our ancestors’ heritage We won’t suddenly surrender it When they said “these [Arabs] are sleeping nations” That love to be oppressed always! They don’t have the values of tolerance And extremism is their passion Now you come to overturn the equation And tell my people this was a lie? Stop where you are right now Or I can tell Putin to fly over Be satisfied with my theatrical play And don’t expose my truth.
[Narrator] A final message from an Egyptian Borders are just dust, my friend O Syrian, o Palestinian Our fate is one, my love. And our journey still has a long way [to go] “The tyrant brings the invader” [Ibn Khaldun] But the price is high His fate is in the hands of the sponsor And history curses him as a [lowly] traitor,
As for you, you [Syrian revolutionary] are the honor of my nation [Ummah] Your steadfastness is legendary, my son, You’ve written down heroics, my father Don’t dare cry, o revolutionary Raise your head high, you are the authentic [honorable] one,
Heal your wounds, O revolutionary, Pray for your martyrs. Be proud of your sacrifices With truth, solidify your place Correct the mistakes of your leaders And never stop your struggle And remember my father in your prayers.
Arabic
واللي بيدعي الحرية دي طلعت ليه بس مش ليا قلناها ديموقراطية اتاريه بيحور عليا راح جاء لي واحد ابن حلال بشعر اصفر وعيون رزق كمان اشرح لك على حنب يا مان مكانتك في حقوق الانسان ده كلام بس للمؤتمرات نتشيك به في الخطابات علشان نظلع متنورين بس عاوزينكم متخلفين مقصود استهلاك داخلي مش تعمل ثورة وتشتكي بلادك لو حررتها حتجيلي ند وتصدعنا حفكرك بفضايلي ازاي واعايرك بالتأشرية هاي يابني دي مش قضيتك مالكش غير طاغية يضبطك يرمي برميل يضرب صاروخ وانا ذنبي ايه مصلحني تروح انا مش جمعية خيرية اسيبك تجيب لي الاذية اه ييجي روسي وايراني اتاجر معاه ده حلالي اخرتك اديلك تصريح اما السلاح فده مش ليك
جاي يسالني عن اوكرانيا؟ ده عايش في دنيا ثانية مضاد ايه اللي عاوزها بذقنك ازاي تطلبها ولو جبت من السوق السوداء فيتو مني قبل روسيا
اعملك تصنيف اعتدال ارمي سم في الدم اللي سال ده عندك داعش ونصرة حاربهم انا مديك فرصة سيبك من بشار دلوقتي طيارته جنب طيارتي في نفس المجال الجوي معلش بس ده امن قومي وكمان ماله الحشد الشعبي؟ بيحارب عندك؟ يا خرابي بسلاح امريكي؟ يا هولي والله ماخذتش بالي والجيش والامن العراقي
يجيلك حرس وحالش سلم في الموصل سلاحي جت داعش على الدير والرقة بسلاح امريكي يا بطة وبقيت مطلوب للدولتين وبتدور سلاحك فين يجيلك حرس وحالش يجيلك حشد وداعش برضه انسى وما تحاولش خلاص انت ما تستاهلش
ايوه فهمت دلوقتي المعتدل تصنيف كيدي كان عاوز يضيع وقتي يشتري وقت للطاغي طب انسى بشار دلوقتي مش انت مانع تسليحي علشان مايروحش لداعشي اللي غزا بسلاح غيري ليك عين دلوقتي تلومني وتشرط انسى نظامي عشان احارب ارهابي اللي انت مكنته فوقي لما حاربته بوحدي بالارتداد ده صنفني صحوات الردة لقبني طلع فتوى تحل دمي جم سفحوا في عشائري وصلبوا نشطائي والنظام كان يضرب من فوقي اوعى تفتكرني ناسي عل جبهتين راح شبابي وانت صحيت بس لكوباني عامل دلوقتي بطولي ده انت سبت داعش تروح تسبي وكان واصل لك تحذيري وانت كنت عامل عامي
طيارك فوق كان بيتفرج بباكل فشار ويهرج استنى بس ما تستعجلش اللحظة الصح لسه ما جتش خلي الثورة تتنسي سيب داعش تشوه فيكي كدة مش ضروري يمشي ويضل بشار حليفي خلي الخلايا تتجمع اتركها تكبر تتوسع انظف من اللي عاوز يطلع سيبه يسافر لا تمنع حركزهم في مستنقع لغاية ما الكبش يكبر يومها انزل وادمر غرقت الرقة في دم احمر مبروك عليك جيت احرر ودعمت الايراني في تدمُر غصبا عني ماقدرش اصبر وسلمتله البادية والدير سبتها له جايزة
خلاص وضحت يا نور عيني سلاح ثقيل للكل غيري علشان تروح الاراضي اللي حررتها بدمي ما كان مقصود ده الثنائي يا اما طاغية يا ارهابي كدة رسالتك وصلت لي عادي مش لازم تبيعلي حلاقيلي حد ثاني اشتري منه سلاحي واكمل برضه مشواري يا اللي غادر باحراري
استني بس رايح فين على مهلك بس يا ابو حسنين كلامك صح وكمان صحين بس حتجيب سلاحك من فين يا ابني مانت فهمت الطبيخ ركز معايا انا صريح ممنوع تسليح من اي صديق مش حسمح لحد يديك وبعثنا للخليج تحذير احترم فيتو الكبير اوعى تسلح من عندك مخازنك دي بس لشعبك ماتتصرفش بمزاجك لا اجي وانسفلك عرشك
اما العراق له سلاح ثاني سامحته ايوه طبيعي نسيت الموصل يا سيدي ده نظام صانعه انا بايدي والحشد حقه غطاء جوي ايه الفرق عاوز تسألني؟ مش زيك عامل لي ثوري ده بيقتل متظاهرين عادي سواء كان سني او شيعي في البصرة او الرمادي في دي انا مش طائفي ما دام يقمع حراك شعبي ويحمي فساد وكيلي حتلاقيني دائما راضي واشكر كمان فيه علني
اما انت في داهية بتودي افهم مش حقولها ثاني حكم الشعب مش لينا مجدي واهم حاجة مصلحتي ايران اتفاهم معاها وداعش بقصف سماها اما انت عاوز تحرجني لا دكتاتور ولا ارهابي يا ابني دي مش معادتلنا ده احنا صغناها بايدنا حتضيع شغل السنين وتطلع كنا كذابين يا ابني ده تراث اجدادنا مش حنسلم كدة فجأة لما قالوا دي شعوب نايمة بتحب تتقمع دائما! مافهاش عندها سماحة والتطرف ده هواها جاي تقلبلي المعادلة وتقول لشعبي دي كذبة؟ اقف مكانك دلوقتي لاقول لبوتين يعدي خليك راضي بتمثليتي واوعى تفضح حقيقتي
اخر رسالة من مصري الحدود تراب يا صاحبي يا سوري يا فلسطيني مصيرنا واحد يا حبي ومشوارنا لسه له بدري الطاغية بيجيب الغازي بس تكلفته بتبقى عالي مصيره في ايد الواصي والتاريخ ينعثه واطي
اما انتوا شرف امتي صمودك اسطورة يا ابني سطرت بطولات يا والدي اوعي يا ثاير ما تبكي ارفع راسك انت اصلي داوي يا ثائر جراحك اترحم ع شهدائك اعتز بتضحياتك بالحق ثبت مكانك صحح اخطاء قياداتك واوعى توقف كفاحك وافتكر والدي في دعائك
(Ann edited shorter version of this piece has been published in Middle East Eye)
Over the past few years, I have worked in the humanitarian and developmental sector as the lead analyst in a team of external consultants advising European donor governments on their crisis response in conflict zones. In November, I handed in my resignation notice due to the continued refusal by the European Union to call for a ceasefire in the face of a scale of violence that hundreds of scholars have warned can reach genocide. I cannot work with a donor’s crisis response in one country while they enable a crisis in another.
Rarely in modern history have explicitly-declared war crimes been given backing by supposed democracies. In the past few weeks, leading Western governments appear to have insisted on supporting a process of bloodletting by the state of Israel in response to the Hamas attack despite the intention to commit war crimes and collective punishment being explicitly and repeatedly declared both in advance and throughout the operation. This has included Israeli defence officials declaring that Gaza would be turned into a “city of tents, with no buildings” and that the emphasis of the offensive would be “damage, not accuracy”, Israel’s Defence Minister announcing the cutting off of water and power to the Gaza Strip at the start of Israel’s ongoing operation after stating that they are fighting “human animals”, one Israeli minister calling for Israel to “blow up and flatten everything”,, and that “Gaza should be erased… Revengeful and vicious IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] is needed here”. Another threatened to use the nuclear weapon
In any other context, such statements would be assessed as the type of rhetoric that has typically accompanied historical episodes of genocide. Since then, Israel has matched the rhetoric by breaking various records. More children killed than all conflicts since 2019. The most UN workers killed in any conflict. The most journalists killed than in any conflict on record. More civilians killed in one month than in a year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As many tonnes of bombs as those dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is necessary to deprive leading Western governments who continue to refuse to call for a ceasefire of any pretense of deniability that they did not know what was happening, a pretense that they may in future seek to retrospectively claim once the dust settles, the “moment” for supporting Israel passes, and the scale of the massacre “sinks in”. Half-hearted mentions today of “the need to abide by international law”, while simultaneously proclaiming the “right of Israel to defend itself” and enabling the ongoing military operation in Gaza, will not suffice for future attempts to reinvent history. Already, a shattering investigation citing the testimonies of Israeli intelligence figures on IDF combat practices and operational guidelines has extensively shown Israeli targeting of civilians to be calculated, premeditated, and intentional.
When that moment arrives, a disingenuous, disbelievable, and almost frivolous attempt by Western powers to claim that Israel is being trustworthy in taking “precautions”, or even denying the scale of civilians killed, is a shame that will be remembered and cited in history — as will be the complicity of a compliant media that allowed such a line to go untrammeled. Like Madeleine Alrbright’s “I believe the price [of half a million dead children from sanctions on Iraq] is worth it”, it will be recalled again and again by future generations. It is a return to pure, unadulterated, and unapologetic imperialism — after a period where the likes of Obama attempted to reinvent it in a more politically correct guise.
For the claim is as nonsensical as can be. It in fact is more defensive of Israel than Israeli officials themselves, who have explicitly taken to denying any responsibility for the Gazan population (saying the safety not their business but the “government of Gaza” — ostensibly the only time they seek to recognise Hamas as a government), claimed responsibility for the bombing of hospitals and declared their intention to displace the population to places like Sinai where they can live in “tent cities”.
It is this blatantly unconcealable and unsustainable dynamic — of leading Western powers attempting to provide a cover of deniability for an ally that is increasingly disinterested in keeping up pretenses — which has prompted leading Western governments to resort instead to attempting to repress speech and expression, criminalise protest, and ultimately intimidate opponents into silence. In various Western countries, those who have spoken out across various sectors have lost their jobs. All this has been reminiscent of the “if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists” paradigm promoted two decades ago by the Bush Administration, adopted today by many ostensibly “liberal” governments.
Is the sheer scale of the civilian death toll, unprecedented in any previous war with Gaza, also a “coincidence”? The result of an unconnected and mysterious rise of “tragic mistakes”? Let it be made crystal clear and said explicitly: Israel is not just targeting Hamas in this war, with high “collateral damage” of civilians on the side. It is intentionally punishing the Gazan population and seeks to get rid of this “sore” once and for all — and this is clear from both its actions and its officials’ statements. Just like it did in 2019, when it killed hundreds of protesters on the March of Return — to add to the thousands of civilians and children it has killed, hospitals and schools it has bombed, and illegal weapons it has used in a decade of wars before.
To pretend that Israel does not view the Palestinian population through adversarial lens, and that the same occupation power that has made the daily lives of the Palestinian inhabitants of the Hamas-free West Bank miserable for decades is somehow moved by liberality towards those in Gaza, is a childish fiction that belies basic understanding of this conflict, and indeed, any similar one. It is not one that should be taken seriously in any conflict analysis, whether of present or past. It is not even one that is being pretended by the likes of Israel’s president. Yet it is the theme we constantly have to endure in unserious questioning of Israeli officials on various Western media platforms.
For its part, the European Union is often believed to show greater consistency in condemning human rights violators than the likes of the US and UK governments. Events since October 7th have unfortunately revealed few substantive differences. While it eventually reversed its decision under pressure, the EU’s initial decision to suspend funding to Palestine after the Hamas attack — as clear an example of collective punishment as can be — set the tone. The heads of the EU Commission and Parliament would later travel to offer solidarity to an Israeli president who at the time was declaring: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being… involved”. Furthermore, the EU has also taken to repeatedly reaffirming “Israel’s right to self-defence” and condemned the use of “human shields” — without condemning Israel’s indiscriminate targeting of civilians.
Beyond Israel
Working on the context of the Middle East, as I have during the past few years, clear commonalities can be seen in the nature of violence deployed by the “Arab Winter” regimes, and that deployed by Israel in Gaza — as well as the enabling by international powers of both under the guise of “fighting terrorism”.
In various Arab Winter contexts, but perhaps most so in Syria, a ”Distancing to Protect” (D2P) model — in which Western powers led by the United States concealed a continued tacit support to Arab Winter regimes through adopting a policy of public dissociation — proved highly effective in concealing an extensive record of complicity in another possible genocide. It is necessary to make these comparisons to demonstrate just how deeply entrenched the opposition to regional democratisation is amongst Western powers such as the United States. The struggle for Palestinian freedom is part of this wider struggle, and those who oppose it also oppose the freedom of the other populations in the region. The commitment by leading Western powers, led by the United States, to Israel is part-and-parcel of a deep-seated, wider opposition to regional liberation — due to the threat to external interests that regional democratisation can bring, as noted by the scholar Eva Bellin. Far from “singling out” Israel, it is particularly useful to compare the context of Syria, where another plausible case for genocide took place. Despite being rivals on the surface, in both Syria and Israel, entire neighbourhoods were decimated by both in an indiscriminate scorched earth policy. And in both cases, the response by leading Western powers was one of deep complicity, in both similar and differing ways, as will be shown below.
Here, only one decade after the people of the region saw the invention of WMDs to justify an externally-imposed “regime change” in Iraq, the US Government went the opposite direction and falsely proclaimed that it had disposed of its WMDs precisely to avoid “regime change” (crucially this time however, when the demand arose internally and took place at the same time as an extensive US-Syrian normalisation process was taking place). When evidence of continued WMD use in Syria subsequently emerged, this was not only obfuscated and potentially concealed by the Obama Administration — but unknown to most, US-led military support was even quietly provided to the Syrian regime to enable it to capture areas where chemical weapons had shortly before been used.
Meanwhile, showing that narratives citing the use of “human shields” are not only deployed to defend Israel, during the Siege of Aleppo in 2016, former US Secretary of State John Kerry declared “there’s a Russian impatience and a regime impatience with the terrorists who are behaving like terrorists and laying siege to places on their side…” (known to few, US-led airstrikes even targeted opposition-held areas in Aleppo city during the regime offensive). Kerry additionally took to publicly providing the regime with license to launch airstrikes against certain designated “terrorist” groups, and called on the Syrian opposition to join forces with Assad against ISIS. Continuing into the Trump Administration, Pentagon officials publicly supported the genocidal regime undertaking military campaigns against ISIS. Throughout, Western powers including the US and UK were reported to have themselves shared intelligence with it (as well as meeting officials). Meanwhile, the main US ground allies in the war against ISIS, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Iraqi military and Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), both supported the regime in key campaigns (indeed, the SDF continues today to share control of certain territories with it, meaning that regime soldiers are deployed in areas that are covered under a US protective umbrella — while PMF fighters still serving in Syria continue to receive salaries from the US-backed central government in Baghdad, as well as having a separate line of Iranian funding).
Ultimately, US policy enabled the Syrian Government to deploy its airforce internally for possibly longer than any other actor in the history of civil war — continuing to share the same airspace even today (blocking the sort of anti-aircraft defence systems provided to more worthy Ukranians, while themselves joining the same airspace in 2014 and to this day). Ironically, these realities eventually led to the regime itself mocking the disparity between the loud public posture and the quiet ground collaboration with Western powers. Today, a new set of records is being broken with US-led complicity in Gaza.
So too In Iraq, where the anti-ISIS campaign saw the US-led Coalition ally with pro-Iran militias who under US aircover committed sectarian cleansing, again under the guise of fighting ISIS — with pro-Iran groups even receivingpraisefrom US officials despite their abominable conduct during the campaign, which included emptying villages from their inhabitants, razing their homes to the ground, and partaking in extreme brutality and torture against their opponents.
In other words, the punitive approach of collective punishment is a consistent facet of the War on Terror. It is no surprise, therefore, that Israel’s actions in Gaza today are receiving support from the states that themselves operate within the same paradigm.
That the US-led policy descended to such levels shows just how deep the complicity in regional authoritarianism — and possible genocide — is. This D2P model concealed the quiet return to the support of brutal dictatorships following a 2011 promise that “mistakes from the past” had been learned. It also served as a policy model of quiet complicity that is not Israel-specific, and clearly varies from the unabashed type of support proffered from Israel. Yet Israel’s long-established practices — from its disappearing of thousands including children within its prisons without recourse to trial, its labeling of all opponents (including human right groups) as terrorists, its enforcement of demographic change, and its indiscriminate targeting of civilians — clearly resembles the tactics used by other regimes in the region. The statement that “Israel is the only democracy in the region” attempts to try and sever any attempt to make this obvious connection: Israel is clearly part of the same regional authoritarian order.
Ultimately, no matter the tactical model through which complicity in regional authoritarianism has taken place, in all cases, the end result has been the same. Whether the unconcealed antagonism of the Bush days, the serial gaslighting of the Arab Spring democrats of the Obama ones, or the unconditional support for a serial international law violator in Israel, the people of the region have have experienced the full gamut of tactics in the creative arsenals of the other side of this longstanding toxic relationship, and been the beneficiaries of all forms of hostility, complicity, duplicity and deceit.
Against undeclared wars
All in, this extensive record of adversarialism, with all of its tactical variations, is in truth resemblant of a posture of undeclared war. Unfortunately however, just like the amnesia towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that predated October the 7th, much of the Western world tends to forget that many of their leading governments have been in such a posture towards our societies for quite a long time. Within this paradigm, the inconsistent designation of the term “terrorism” plays a crucial role — namely, by concealing these long-term undeclared wars by powerful states through connoting acts of violence by insurgents as “surprises”, and thus falling outside the laws of war. By contrast, the use of violence by the state cannot be a surprise, as it is presumed to possess the “monopoly of violence”.
Yet the use of violence against civilians for political purposes is what constitutes the definition of terrorism, but the term is never used for states — including even deplorable and “pariah” regimes — despite being the most frequent fulfillers of that criteria. And it is precisely the lack of formal declarations of war which has served as a modus operandi for the likes of the United States for so long, as Syrians, Yemenis, and Iraqis will attest. It is also the ability of a powerful state to act with impunity — so long as it is dressed up in the right colours — and be safe from retribution that helps explain why Western powers have fallen into line behind Israel’s “right to self-defence” Israel does not represent only itself in this paradigm.
Undeclared wars are immoral, whether they are carried out by state or non-state actors. Meanwhile, situations of injustice, tyranny, and occupation create causes of resistance that embed within them aims which go beyond the removal of a dictator or the liberation of land from the occupier, aims which include the construction of replacement moral and ethical frameworks — because it is the absence of these values that have caused such suffering, and they acquire such a level of meaning incomprehensible to those who are so well accustomed to them. This is what supporters of liberation movements have to push for, but they have to do so within extremely trying circumstances. For when the avenues for the fulfillment of basic rights are closed off, and justice appears to be a naive hope — the butt of a joke in which the victim is made to feel naked and worthless, nothing is more likely to replace the desire for justice with a desire for retribution. Brutalisation engenders brutality, and indeed, it is precisely the intention of beastly tyrants to create “beasts” out of their victims. To prevent the targeting of innocents, the duty of human rights advocates must be to address both the symptoms — the ethics of resistance and insurgency — and the root causes — occupation and authoritarianism; not focus on one exclusively at the expense of the other.
The instrumentalisation of Israel by Western powers is for their own benefit, not that of the Jewish people
In a reversion to the “if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists” paradigm promoted two decades ago by George W Bush, Western Governments, media, and institutions have taken to accuse all of those who seek to place the events of October the 7th in their context — contextualisation — as engaging in providing “justifications”. Leading Western governments and media platforms to restart the timeline of the conflict with the October 7th attack by Hamas. Yet the conflict does not begin with the selective tuning in of Western audiences. This framing neglects the historical record of three major wars with Gaza in which the same indiscriminate targeting of civilians and war crimes have been repeated in every campaign, including the bombing of hospitals, schools, and the use of prohibited weaponry — as reported by reputable groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. During these wars, more than 6,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed. According to Israeli rights group B’tselem, of these were more than 1,000 children. The narrative also neglects the hundreds of Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces during the peaceful “Great March of Return” of 2019, in which Hamas did not launch a military campaign. This is to add to decades of occupation, siege, and the apartheid regime that Israel enforces on the Palestinian people — as documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Israeli rights group B’tselem.
Such contexts are irrelevant, of course, only insofar as they implicate not only the State of Israel for complicity in the trajectory that led to the killing of its citizens on October the 7th, but also its Western allies. By refusing to put any serious pressure on Israel to come to a settlement with the Palestinians, at their weakest historical moment, leading Western governments helped firmly shut all other avenues. To make it worse, US administrations — both conservative and liberal — added insult to injury and chose by pursuing a series of normalisation deals with authoritarian regimes at the Palestinians’ — and indeed, in the aftermath of the Arab Winter, the Arab World’s — weakest moment, to make crystal clear to the Palestinians that they were alone.
Such an act, taking place on the wreckage of entire countries and popular spirits, was an act of no mean cynicism. It took advantage of the deterrence value that brutal crackdowns in Arab Spring countries communicated to Arab populations in others (indeed, it is no surprise that Western-allied regimes such as the UAE — an archetypal pariah one that has acted perhaps more than any to undermine attempted democratic transitions in the region, in the process conducting war crimes in a range of countries from Libya, to Syria, to Yemen, to Sudan — chose to normalise relations simultaneously with the likes of Israel and the Syrian regime; notwithstanding its abysmal abusive record, it was praised by leading Western states in the former case for doing so). But this approach was not only cynical; in conjunction with continued support for a regime of endless occupation and apartheid with no proposed end-date, it was also reckless and dangerous all-round — to Arabs and Jews alike.
As such, this posture by Western powers has little to do with the interest of the Jewish people — even if that is what it proclaims. Indeed, if leading Western governments did have the Jewish people’s interest at heart, they would not have continued to enable a situation that made the tragic events that took place on October 7th a more likely scenario. Nor is this some benefit of hindsight. Far before October the 7th, for its seven decades of existence, Israel has never been at peace. Israel has never enjoyed total security. Jews there are more likely to have to run into bomb shelters than they are in most other countries they inhabit in the world. While it is true that hardliners in the Israeli Government have in the past decade openly shut the door on both a two-state and one-state solution, many a conflict which have eventually been brought to an end through negotiations have also had their hardliners. It is not therefore the hardliners, who Western powers often hide behind, who are the primary factors in the equation. Rather, it is the position of sponsors on whether to continue sustaining them or not that determines the question of peace.
Leading Western governments may proclaim outrage at an accusation that they may be in any way responsible for the trajectory that led to the deaths of Israeli civilians at the end of the guns of October 7th gunmen. But within political science, the connection between indiscriminate occupations and indiscriminate insurgencies is not a controversial or novel one. This has long been accepted by conflict analysts, including those in the CIA. Indeed, in the not too distant past, the United States attributed the rise of ISIS in part as a consequence of the repression of the Assad regime, and other Western officials also admitted a link with the Iraq war.
Rejecting guiltwashing
We must also resist attempts to frame the conflict in a manner suitable for Eurocentric consciences. This current posture is a shameful abdication of the historical responsibility of leading European states — prime amongst them Germany and the United Kingdom — towards both the Jewish and Palestinian people. It is Western colonial and imperial powers who decided to implant a territorial conflict onto a faraway region as a “solution” to their refusal to open their doors to Jewish refugees, including during the Holocaust. It is they who created a war between victims, and manufactured a second victim community out of the first. These states owe reparations not just to the Jewish people, but also to the Palestinians.We cannot allow Western “guiltwashing” to take place through the bloodletting of Palestinians.
Here, we should be clear that “guiltwashing” does not mean simply acting out of guilt; rather, it is a model that intentionally seeks to conceal the pursuit of Western strategic interests under the guise of prioritising a historical responsibility to the Jewish people. As Joe Biden has repeatedly declared: “If there weren’t an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” As such, those who attribute Western posture on the conflict to an all-powerful Israeli lobby are mistaken. Nor was US-led support proffered for just “any type” of Israel, but for a specifically aggressive variant, which immediately ensured the manifestation of a long-term conflict by refusing to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in 1949, as demanded by UN Resolution 194.
In other words, the policy of Western powers on the conflict not only stems from a sense of historical responsibility towards the Jewish people, but continues to be influenced by a strategic decision originating with Cold War-era Western powers, led by the United States, to instrumentalise Israel as a “strategic outpost” which could serve as an allied “disruptor” within a geopolitical and civilisational space that was considered to be a historical, and if uncontrolled, future competitor.
And that it has, and both Arabs and Jews are victims of it. While the problems of the region cannot be solely laid at the foot of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the effects of a century-long conflict left over from the colonial era should not be underplayed. The historical US-led decision to support an aggressive model of the Israeli state at the expense of other alternatives was then, and remains today, an intentional choice. It is a choice which has stunted the wider region’s development, and contributed to keeping its societies under a state of long-term militarisation and authoritarianism, allowing regimes — both “moderate” and populist — to keep their societies in a state of permanent deprivation by pointing to the threat of Israel. It is a conflict that has served as a disciplinary vestige of colonial domination within the popular psyches of the region, and as a festering wound that has prevented the organic normalisation and natural progression of the region’s politics and governance. Perhaps worst of all, it created a deep fracture between Arab and Jew of a scale that never existed throughout the history of shared living between the two communities.
This state of affairs must come to an end, and there can be no return to “normality” after today. For it is “normality” that has brought us here, and it is the dishonest support of a regional “normalisation” process that clearly excluded — and was meant to exclude — one of the two main actors in the conflict, the Palestinian people, that has pushed the region to the precipice.
The need for consistency
Supporters of Israel often accused its critics of “singling out” Israel. Let us be clear that Israel is not a unique evil. There are other regimes in the region that attempt to whitewash themselves by proclaiming “resistance” to Israel, which are themselves abominable. Nonetheless, the Israeli occupation continues to be the longest ongoing foreign occupation in the world, and Israel is the subject of the largest number of condemnations by UN resolutions. The “singling out” is that which has been adopted, for decades, by leading Western governments and institutions — by promoting an Israeli-specific “opt-out” to international law. In any other context, Israel’s continuous, decades-long violations of international law would term it an archetypal pariah state.
European governments and institutions are not unique, nor should they be, in claiming to have an exception from recognising these basic realities that have been reported independently for years by international bodies and reputable human rights groups, both Western and Israeli. This is a self-centred approach that ironically claims a “European uniqueness” — albeit in a superficially contrarian “reverse” manner. It tells victims of the trajectory of events put in place by the Nazi era, both Jews and Palestinians, that they in fact know better. It, in fact, elevates Europeans above all others, including Jewish critics of Israeli conduct. To discredit these Jewish voices as being not quintessentially Jewish is ironic considering the accusation of anti-semitism often leveled at critics of Israel.
The ongoing exceptionalisation of Israel when it comes to human rights violations has long been rejected by various Jewish groups. Indeed, as many prominent Jewish writers — including members of the Zionist movement — have written both historically and today, unconditional Western support for a state of military occupation and apartheid is not only unjust to the Palestinian people, but also constitutes a corrosive factor on the political and ethical body politic of the Jewish state they proclaim to seek to protect.
For its part, the authoritarian regional order is also premised on the existence of competing authoritarianisms, both historically and today. Israel attempts to avoid recognition of Palestinian grievances by pointing to the backing by Iran of groups such as Hamas, as it historically did by pointing to the sponsorship of Palestinian groups by Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddaffi’s Libya, or Nasser’s Egypt. Iran for its part has required the existence of Israel to justify its expansive interventions in the region, even while its proxies take no significant role in the fighting against it today. Even more “moderate” regimes which have normalised ties with Israel often internally allude to the threat of Israel to justify keeping their societies in a state of permanent deprivation.
Moreover, Western support for Israel is often viewed by regional populations as part and parcel of their support for their own authoritarian regimes. This commitment was so deep that Western powers such as the United States preferred to collaborate with authoritarian, geopolitical rivals over those who professed the desire for democracy. Not only was this evident in Syria, but so too in Iraq and Lebanon, where governments with shared Western and Iranian sponsorship have respectively engaged in mass killing of protesters and in forcible deportations of refugees to danger zones. Analyses that focus on geopolitical fetishism — including both supporters and critics of Western intervention — constantly conceal this complicity, by adopting “good vs bad” powers binaries. It is important to connect these aggressive postures together and not understand Western support for Israel in isolation. In arenas of mutual interest, geopolitical rivals are able to come to deals with one another. By contrast, repressed populations cannot come to a deal with such powers.
For our part, we reject the attempts and pretenses by our region’s deformed regimes to continue to violate the rights of their citizenry by pointing at Israel, just as we reject Israel’s historical and ongoing violation of the Palestinians’ right to freedom, security, and liberty. Unfortunately, in both of these tasks we face not only the resistance of those regimes, but that of their international backers who stack up the odds by quietly helping to sustain them.
Today, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that if made to choose between sanctioning Israel until it grants the Palestinians their legitimate rights, or allowing Israel to wipe the Palestinians off the face of its map, that it is the latter option that Western powers can more easily make their peace with. Whatever Israel does, no matter how well-documented it’s human rights abuses, no matter how many UN resolutions it violates, no matter how consistent those who point them out are regarding other violators — it appears it will never be sanctioned.
Taking action
Stopping my work on a crisis response in a region that is dear to me was not taken lightly. I do not speak only for myself when I say that in effect, those of us especially from the region who work in such positions are presented with a choice: accept the decimation of one part of your community in one country, in order for support to be provided to another part of your community in another. The choice of how to respond to this choice can be difficult, especially in areas where the taking of action can potentially result in interruptions to programming that benefits vulnerable demographics. Yet while I fully believe that it can also take strength and courage to swallow misgivings that workers have with donors in the interest of the greater good, I also believe that there are certain moments in history where events reach a certain threshold. If this is not the moment for such action to be taken by those who can afford it, then there is no moment for it. In such a historical moment, the NGO sector cannot be paralysed by timidity and fear of donor punishment.
For its part, so long as the EU fails to develop its own independent foreign policy and extricate itself from that of the US, so long will it continue to relegate its own interests to the latter — as seen in it bearing the consequences of the refugee waves brought by the US invasion of Iraq, the US opposition to the overthrow of Assad, and the shambolic manner of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. EU donor crisis responses in places like Syria and Palestine are at best band-aids that are not framed within any coherent overarching political strategy that seek to change existing realities, and in lieu of this, end up by-and-large normalising de facto realities. Amongst other factors, this is also because the EU does not have the autonomy to set its own strategy. Meanwhile, at home the EU is alienating the populations within its wider geographical neighbourhood, raising inter-communal tensions within its own societies, and leading to the rise of populist nationalists that threaten the integrity of the EU as a political project. As part of this process, we are seeing a move towards authoritarianism and securitisation to deal with the inevitable challenges that are rooted in the contradictions between the EU’s human rights posture and its actual policies — a move that flies against Europe’s proclaimed historical tradition of liberalism.
On a personal level, it has become difficult to avoid the conclusion that attempts at institutional engagement have not reached the end of their road. The slow and incremental advances brought by two decades of engagement from the dark days of the early War on Terror appear to have been wiped out in the flash of an eye. For Western powers to be able to return to a post-9/11 posture with such ease, and with such little institutional resistance, appears to send a very clear, flashing message to Arab and Muslim communities: Not Welcome. Now, these communities are being asked to kneel. We cannot allow such a return to collective punishment, primarily of the Palestinians facing extermination in Gaza, and secondarily, of Arab and Muslim communities in the diaspora. Today, I believe there can be no more squaring of the circle, and it can no longer be business as usual.
For those who work in organisations that have partnerships with Western governmental institutions, it can no longer be business as usual. To my colleagues across this sector I say: it is true that we live in tough economic times. Yet the scale of the task is unprecedented: governments that are supporting explicitly-declared war crimes, and which are dead-set on “riding out the storm” to resist all calls for a ceasefire for as long as possible. We cannot allow such a return to collective punishment, primarily of the Palestinians facing extermination in Gaza, and secondarily, of Arab and Muslim communities in the diaspora. For there to be any chance of a change in policy, any chance at all, we must exert the maximum tools of pressure available to us. We must all bind together in this effort, to suspend our cooperation with these institutions until a call for a ceasefire is made. There is strength in numbers, and it is time to stand up and be counted. You are not alone.
Overall, distinctions shouldn’t be exaggerated, as both parties in power effectively supported a regime victory. The main differences are how they approach the next stage in the conflict. Here, it is difficult to discern a clear Republican policy due to Trump’s arbitrariness (from going from praising Assad to wanting to kill him and back to pleadingly asking him for help with Austin Tice saying ‘the US helped Syria againt ISIS’). A Biden administration is likely to take a harder line on Turkish-Russian deals, without, however, offering anymore resistance to attempted regime advances into rebel territory (of course, the Trump administration also didn’t offer any resistance to those, but took a softer line on Turkish-Russian deals, allowing the launching of Operations ‘Olive Branch’ and ‘Peace Spring’).
It’s not entirely straightforward trying to discern which party will be better for the Syrian opposition – and that’s both because of Trump’s arbitrariness and because Republicans can be both harder and softer on insurgent movements. There are contradicting tendencies at play here. Trump escalated bombing of ISIS, loosening the terms of engagement and killing double the civilians that Obama had within a few months (though much of the death toll was from the Battle of Raqqa which took place after Trump, which would have pushed Obama’s toll up significantly too). But he didn’t bomb rebel-held Idlib nearly as much as Obama. Because insurgencies/Islamists are sometimes tied in with notions of democracy (which traditionally Republicans like to have an element of to justify US imperialism abroad), the Republicans have sometimes shown greater flexibility in dealing with them then the Democrats (who place lesser value on ‘democratising’ missions overseas, and have a more multilateral vision of the US role in the world).
But there are a few things that distinguish them:
Trump is ‘harder’ on Iran. In practice and with regards to Syria though, this shouldn’t be exaggerated too much. Indeed, the US voice calling for Iran to withdraw from Syria over the past years has actually been quite weak and half-hearted. The US knows that it shouldn’t push too hard as the regime is still recovering, and needs the Iranians to stabilise. Indeed, there are Iranian-backed groups in Syria which have not been placed on the sanctions list.
Of course, Trump would have also (like Obama/Biden) allied with Iran against ISIS (and they did in Palmyra). However, I imagine he would have been less happy relying on the turbaned guys for their victory, and now the Republicans could return to the traditional bullying posture against Iran ‘post-use’, while the Democrats would have favoured continued engagement. It is possible that we see greater US belligerence towards Iran’s presence in Syria if Trump wins (and stays there), but I wouldn’t bet anything on it (but that’s also partly because I don’t bet).
Biden dislikes Turkey. This could have a repercussion on the Syrian opposition. Biden would have likely taken a stronger opposition to the Turkish incursions than Trump.
Trump is more likely to do something crazy and withdraw from Syria, which would be good for the regime as the Kurds will basically be alone. Having a third of Syria (including all the oil-rich areas) out of Assad’s grasp, albeit in the hands of a regime-collaborating instrument such as the YPG, is a strong pressure tool against the regime.
Both Biden and Trump will happily coordinate with Assad if a terrorist attack that links back to Idlib takes place.
Biden is more likely (≠ likely) to put in economic aid into regime-held Syria, and lift the toughest (for the population) aspects of sanctions.
To the extent that there is a difference, Biden is more likely to push for SDF engagement with Damascus. Again – barring an arbitrary Trump withdrawal, which his administration and military are against.
To the extent that there’s a difference, Biden, and this is my big hypothesis, is – based on the record of Obama vs Trump – more likely to bomb groups the US doesn’t like in Idlib, such as HTS – especially as that’s an indirect form of hitting at Turkey. Trump’s admin haven’t hit HTS hard, instead focusing on HTS splinters like HaD – though of course that could change.
While some have speculated that the US is content with HTS’s current reigning in of hardline groups, I have my doubts, and they likely do too. It’s unclear whether HTS will survive internally as a coherent force when the moment for full confrontation (so far HTS has followed a ‘suffocation, not massacring’ policy) arrive. Of course, on the other hand, the US knows the regime has a history of deploying extremist groups as a survival tool. But it also knows that the regime is far more of an ideologically-relatable force than HTS, and will put those people back in prison and/or destroy their villages, and will do a deal with the Americans (and even the Israelis) if they can be promised survival.
In other words, I’m not sure that the US has to ‘put up’ with a Taliban experiment in NWS, when it could get the Russians and regime to take them out – and perhaps help with a few strikes along the way, as they indeed did when the US bombed and killed the Jaish al-Fatah commander tasked with lifting the siege of Aleppo in 2016, and many, many others who the Russians couldn’t get. You also have France, and reports that it is now interested in coordinating with the Russians and regime now, and of course France and Biden share an antipathy to both Erdogan and Islamists in general, and have been the main supporters of the SDF.
Of course though, a new deal with the Russians in NWS (remember Kerry-Lavrov?) would completely destabilise the region and Europe, so perhaps the US won’t push it. But then again, the US policy in Syria was knowingly not about stability – it was based on buying time for the restoration of authoritarian stability, which of course was extremely destabilising in the interim.
They don’t like the status quo in Idlib, which US officials have described as ‘magnet for terrorism’, and to the extent that there’s a difference between Republicans and Democrats, ‘traditional’ Republicans – excluding the hardcore Ted Cruz and Trump types who don’t even pretend to care about democracy-promotion abroad won’t be happy with the US cooperating with Assad/Iran in Idlib, certainly not now when he doesn’t even need to take it to survive.
Let’s not give too much credence to the idea that Democrats are willing to accept more ‘progressive’ understandings of counterterrorism policy (i.e. not to defeat it by completely ignoring original grievances and choosing to crush it with another terrorist but non-islamist force). Indeed, ironically it was the Bush Administration which deployed that ‘social science’ approach. Having described the Iraqi Sunni insurgents fighting against them for years as terrorists and destroying their cities and towns in the process, they eventually realised they weren’t going to defeat the predecessor of ISIS at the time (AQI/ISI) without the support of these insurgents and their tribes. Which succeeded. Obama Admin’s approach was simply sectarian bloodletting – he simply said “We gave you support; we left your country; and you let these guys back up again: have the Iranians march into your villages and burn them down, and have fun trying to shoot us down in the air”).
The Democrats, I would think, have been closer to the US military’s less discriminatory assessment of threats from Idlib. Ironically, the likes of Biden/Obama were a perfect combination of all the bad (for Sunni rebels) worlds. They were both ‘establishment’ who were cold realists when it came to the War on Terror (which they supported), but (certainly in Obama’s case) were also simultaneously influenced by an anti-establishment milieu that didn’t like US foreign policy supporting Islamists for some notion of democracy that they don’t think is the US job to export (and probably have doubts on whether the ‘other’ even wants it). They were both cold realists but were also touched by the criticisms of US foreign policy. They also knew what many ‘anti war’ US citizens were saying about the rebels and I think for sure, they agreed with a lot of it personally. Their contempt for the rebels was often barely-disguised, and they resented the Republicans for pushing them to support them. They weren’t ‘centrists’ about the rebels, but were both ‘traditionally realist’ and ‘anti-neoconservative establishment’ ideologues. Their opposition to the rebels was about something much larger.
Again, to the extent that there’s a difference, I see the Democrats as having less qualms about Iran imposing authoritarian stability than the Republicans. Democrats traditionally have more of an inclination for diplomatic engagement, but Trump is such a Republican outlier in that regards. As well as the aforementioned ‘traditional Republican’ tension, Trump is additionally caught between the contradicting trends of War on Terror/anti-Islamist militarism and disengagement. He wants to appear tough on Iran, tough on oil, etc etc., but also has clearly shown a willingness to cut deals with those sort of regimes and he has a theoretical opposition to unnecessary wars. That doesn’t mean he advocates normalisation necessarily, he advocates pragmatic cooperation and I could imagine that to him it’s more like ‘let them all kill each other’. In other words, I think Trump is happy to let the Assad regime win (including abandoning the Kurds) and even help it to do so (as Obama did), but he’s less likely to send him reconstruction money (which he generally doesn’t like doing anyway with any sort of foreign aid) and help Iran.
But the Democrats also have much of that same tension, except they’re in theory less militaristic with those they don’t consider irreconceivable enemies (like Iran, and I would also say Assad). Obama was both pro-war and anti-war – except that the pro-war bit was about the War on Terror, while the anti-war bit was about ‘democratic regime change’. They too will be torn between wanting to support the Kurds and not wanting to stay in Syria ‘forever’. However, it is as of yet unclear to me which way they’ll sway, and right now I can both imagine them supporting an SDF-Damascus deal and deciding to stay there if the SDF doesn’t want to do one. Other variables will play a role here.
Seeing that there’s a debate right now on sanctions, I want to categorise a few of those who are now loudly proclaiming outrage about civilian suffering, but *do not do so* out of an ideological opposition to US intervention in Syria (i.e. unlike your usual misinformed Assadists, who believe US was engaged in a ‘regime change’ – the categorical reverse of the reality).
Here, Sam Heller (@AbuJamajem) is a case in point. I focus on him because he’s already established within pro-opposition circles as an ‘oppostion sympathiser’. Yet Heller is what I would describe as a US-first, anti-regime dove. Very skeptical of the Islamist component of the armed opposition. It’s important because while I don’t think the US waited for his writings to adopt his policy (he has written for the International Crisis Group), they provided nonetheless an intellectual and citable basis.
In one interview, Heller wrote that he doesn’t really place a value on ‘outrage’ and adopts utilitarian measures on Syria. So it’s a bit strange that having advocated policies like the US *selectively* evacuating northwest Syria (while staying in northeast) because of presence of ‘jihadists’, and thus indirectly giving a green light for the regime to attack, that he should raise ‘outrage’ against others about ‘civilian suffering’.
I should note of course, that in that piece Heller wrote that the US should evacuate *but* help those civilians who will flee. You know, the ones who didn’t die already from the offensive. And I’m not entirely sure what ‘evacuation’ he was referring to, US never had bases in Idlib (it actually bombed Idlib quite a bit) and ‘political’ evacuation was always going to happen (with or without his article). He also praised the anti ISIS campaign in Raqqa, which killed thousands of civilians.
Throughout his writing, Heller consistently blames the rebels for not attacking Nusra/HTS – while doing two things: completely ignoring the strain of a continuous four-year, two-front rebel war with the regime and ISIS (he largely disqualifies the magnitude of the latter effort, more on that later), and completely ignoring the pitiful US ‘support’ that the opposition received for the policy he and it supposedly wanted. In fact, the US consistently threw opposition groups to the wolves against not only ISIS (consistently), but also Nusra. Fighters from the ‘US-backed’ Hazzm Movement and SRF commonly complained that the US had drawn a huge ‘target sign’ on their back, told them to fight Nusra instead of Assad, and then refused to help when they came under attack by Nusra. The record vis a vis ISIS is even worse.
Let’s take Heller’s track record on opposition groups fighting ISIS. Heller describes the notion that the opposition would have served as an effective anti-ISIS frce as a myth, quite inexplicably discounting the opposition’s continuous four-year war against ISIS (there were very few ceasefires between the two). Indeed, rebel losses to the regime were most often combined with simultaneous ISIS attacks, as took place in Idlib in 2018.
First, Heller discounts the rebels’ expulsion of ISIS from northwest Syria to an ‘ISIS strategic choice to focus on east Syria’. Well A) what does that even mean? Yes, in war you withdraw (when you’re defeated) to focus on more important areas. B) even after ISIS regrouped, and attracted the most battle-hardened fighters from around the world, and had heavier funding and arms caches than anything the ‘generously supported’ rebels could ever dream of, ISIS failed to take recapture most of the territory it targeted from rebels. Places like Marea withstood an ISIS siege (and an ISIS chemical attack) for literally years. Damascus rebels expelled ISIS from the countryside. And that – unlike the regime and YPG – was all without the aid of aerial bombardment. Heller seems to underplay the chronology of the rebel ISIS war, and one who reads it can get the impression that it was mainly the 2014 campaign that was the rebel ‘record’, when those who’ve followed Syria for years, know that rebel frontlines with ISIS were in an active state for most of 2014-2018.
C) what is also long forgotten is that the rebels also nearly kicked out ISIS from its strongholds in east Syria too in 2014. The group was expelled from Raqqa, albeit briefly, and even from Deir Ezzor. Things changed when the group captured Mosul in Iraq and came back laden with tonnes of captured US made weaponry.
Secondly, Heller has written heavily on the opposition’s blame for failing to take out the likes of Nusra, which to keep it short he basically attributes due to ideological sympathy, often local/family fraternity and emotional wartime solidarity. The paranoia by which Heller sees Islamist rebels is evident throughout his writing – and of course a ‘US-first’ outlook, which basically (as I will demonstrate) condemns rebels for allying with people the US didn’t like. He believes that the rebels should have opened a third front to add to the one against the regime and ISIS, and he cites the rebels’ sharing of battlefields with the likes of Nusra as evidence of ideological sympathy. Their failure to militarily cooperate with Nusra had nothing to do in his opinion with US policy which alienated the rebels.
Indeed, Heller says that the idea that an empowered opposition would have turned on these groups was a fiction. Yet his statement is what is closer to a fiction. Firstly, opposition groups routinely fought Nusra on a low level scale. Yes, they often cooperated with it on the battlefield, and two things should be said here: Nusra was not ISIS, did not act anything like ISIS, and while many were skeptical of it, many others saw it as a reliable and motivated rebel group, like Ahrar al Sham, whose foot soldiers were mainly Syrian and often non-ideological. It was obviously not going to be viable that resource-starved FSA factions (by US diktat) would refuse to participate in military operations where other groups insisted on taking a role, they would lose all popular support and be overthrown.
Yet rebels nonetheless repeatedly asked the US for help which would allow them to outcompete Nusra and make the group redundant. Funnily enough, the US often tried to divert the rebel fight from targeting Assad to hitting Nusra, but when Nusra attacked them, the US refused to come to their aid and threw them to the wolves. The rebels *correctly* did not want to fight Nusra on US terms, something Sam Heller refuses to acknowledge or sympathise with. He has (correctly) written elsewhere that the ‘US-backed’ rebels refused to be proxies, and in effect that is what he wanted them to be.
Yet even then, to misreport and misanalyse (as Heller does) the rebel’s generally tactical alliance with Nusra as an ideological one with ‘Salafi-jihadism’ is wrong. Throughout the conflict, in every rebel-held territory, low-level clashes with Nusra took place. Of course, Heller puts this down to ‘usual rebel infighting’ and ‘power balancing’, citing the example of an FSA-Nusra alliance against Jaish al-Islam (who from what I’ve read he criticises the least – ironically despite being more ideologically conservative than FSA – because they did prioritise fighting Nusra and ISIS – in the latter case, as often criticised by locals, even above the regime).
What he doesn’t cite in this example is that Jaish al-Islam acted as a mini-Nusra, in the sense of imposing dictatorial governance and constantly trying to swallow the other factions – and perhaps most grievously, half-heartedly fighting the regime (this is a common accusation thrown about during infighting, but in JAI’s case it was widely reported). While ideological distinctions between rebel groups (and especially foot soldiers) can often be exaggerated, in general, the record shows that incidents of rebel infighting was mainly significant with regards to two opponents: Nusra, and Jash al-Islam. The preponderance of FSA and Ahrar battles against these did not compare to the frequency of internal infighting within the FSA, even in areas where they dominated such as Dar’a and northern Homs.
In other words, rebel groups were indeed always likely to take on the hardliners of Nusra (not that he distinguishes, implying the group is Salafi-Jihadi) if they were empowered. If they overthrew Assad, they would have immediately needed to seek international recognition, while also fully aware that if they didn’t eat the hardliners first, they would eat them. Indeed, perhaps this could have even taken place before: if foreign parties actually seriously funded rebels to compete with Nusra, I think it was not unlikely for them to open a third front against it (certainly as time went on and its intentions became more and more manifest).
In order to do this of course, Heller has to completely discount and misrepresent US policy. Unlike his work on the rebels, his cited research here is extremely weak. He has written of ‘generous US support’ for the rebels – kind of a sick joke – and ‘substantial airstrikes’ provided to select opposition groups in northern Aleppo against ISIS – a *huge* misleading exaggeration. Indeed, the US almost certainly provided more air support to an Iranian-backed anti-ISIS offensive in Palmyra (46 airstrikes in February 2017 alone).
The main role of US and CIA intervention and ‘arms coordination’ programs vis a vis the rebels (MOC and MOM) was to *limit and constrain* the quantity and quality of weapons that rebels got from third parties (mainly Saudi Arabia and Qatar). I expect this kind of thing from your usual recreational Assad apologist who hasn’t followed the conflict, but for a proper analyst to discount literally mountains of evidence collected over the years of the US policy being one of starving rebels of the support they needed is insane, and is I think an intentional omission. Unlike other aspects and stated opinions of the rebels, which he heavily cites, he focuses little on rebel complaints about US interference with arms precisely because it is such an obstacle to his narrative. He also wrote, in a degree of naivete which should be reduced to shallow media coverage as opposed to analysis, that the US had a “mistaken assumption that Assad would just fall“. No, it didn’t, and it was in fact trying to make sure that a ‘fall’ did not happen. If you want to know an example of poor analysis of US policy and poor proposals for it’s reform, Heller’s your man.
Did the rebels make mistakes? Yes, the rebels should have been more wary of foreign fighters coming in with their own agenda. Yes, there was a problem of majoritarian rhetoric within the opposition. Yes there was a problem of corruption within their ranks that made the rise of extremists easier. Yes they should have in theory coalesced more often as one when Nusra sought to gradually eliminate them by turn – though that’s not quite so easy when a) you don’t have that much weapons and ammunition to spare, b) you’ve not joined the war to kill a fellow rebel fighter and shell a fellow rebel village (your own constituency) and c) the fact that some of the groups Nusra were attacking were genuinely corrupt.
But when you’re talking about a traumatised community being bombed everyday from the sky and also facing foreign fighters fighting in their own sectarian ‘jihad’ on the opposite side, ultimately feeling completely alone against a regime that and mass raping and torturing, and when there was (correctly) distrust of the US from the start – as its statements and actions at the time both were clearly trying to hamstring the rebellion – then unfortunately those mistakes of ‘seeking the help of the devil himself’ in conjunction with ideological faults (understanding democracy as Sunni Arab majoritarianism) would have been made. But these mistakes shouldn’t be reduced solely to ‘ideology’ as Heller does. For instance, the rebels also made an obvious mistake of not asserting themselves on foreign powers and allowing them to be played off of one another, allowing a very unhealthy and one sided process of condition-setting when this didn’t have to be necessarily the case. More importantly, they were complicit in their own areas falling one by one to the regime by adopting local truces while the regime went to capture one area before going to the next.
Heller tries to post his writing as fact-based objectivity and realism, when it’s clear that an ideological underpinning informs his reporting/analysis (which is fine, it does for most of us, just don’t frame it as abstract realism).
Neil Lazarus has only posted some of the footage of the confrontations, though there are more.
So last week I went to this talk by this dude, Neil Lazarus, who came to Sussex uni to give an ostensibly ‘comedic’ commentary on the general recent news events. I actually wasn’t planning to do so at all, and was just sitting around in a common room when I heard about people going to it (it was in the same building).
So I go to this talk, honestly in good faith, not with the intention of ‘heckling’. Initially the guy talks about recent events about the Middle East in general terms (few mistakes like saying there’s both Al Qaeda and “Nasara” or something like that (Nusra) in Syria, when they’re the same thing), and appears to be ‘neutral’, not really approaching Israel Palestine yet. And then things start to subtly get slipped in (in the form of jokes). He makes a reference about how something (forgot what it was) was “BS, or BDS as I call it”, in passing. Doesn’t expand on it (this is a pattern which he employs throughout the talk, dropping a political view as a casual, ‘don’t take me too seriously’ witticism).
It soon becomes clear that the ‘drops’ are slowly shaping more and more into a congruent set of talking points. Starts off with Hamas; makes the claim “ISIS and Hamas are like friends with benefits, they’re sleeping together but don’t want to admit it to their friends”. Of course, Hamas and ISIS actually despise each other (as with the rebels, ISIS calls them ‘apostates’), and ISIS members languish in Hamas’ jails (in fact, a Syrian revolutionary once reported hearing an ISIS sheikh declaring that if they entered Palestine, they would fight Hamas before Israel as they are the ‘near apostate’ which is more of a danger than the ‘far away infidel’ – the exact same principle applied when ISIS would attack the rebels and not the regime). Comments on news of Saudi and “Sunni countries” rapproaching with Israel against Iran, and dropping “whilst that’s a good thing”.
Then it becomes much more systematic after that. Compromise on all sides needed one sentence: ‘we need to listen to each other and sit down together and talk, we’re cousins you know!’. A few sentences later asks whether Hamas will be willing to give up its weapons. The apartheid wall: “Believe me, I would be the first to take it down” BUT look at the images of the bombs from the suicide bombers before the wall was built. Another ‘drop’, again in a ‘by the way fashion’, “Palestinians want a state, though of course [“BTW”] historically there was no independent state called Palestine [Drop accomplished], but anyway”. The refugee problem, there will have to be a solution, though [Drop incoming] the only refugees in the world who get refugee status inter-generationally are the Palestinians; a Syrian son of a refugee born in London for instance would not be classified as a Syrian refugee’.
Then the angle just becomes more and more blatantly conventional Israeli talking points (again, keep in mind that the event wasn’t supposed to be a pro Israel event, but just ‘commentary’ on recent events in the Mid East). Israel taking out settlers from Gaza, settlers would even put up their arms in front of the Israeli soldiers to replicate the image of those in concentration camps, but they took them out anyway. Proceeds to show video of Israelis in bomb shelters. No videos of airstrikes in Gaza were followed up (the usual mainstream practice would be to start with a segment of the Hamas rockets, and then follow up with something on the Israeli airstrikes; even if not with the same time given or onus). At this point there was no pretense at all in my mind of ‘neutrality’; in other words, I thought he would be following the ‘liberal’ methodology of showing ‘both sides’ as bad, as mainstream news reporters have recently come to do, but it was clear this wasn’t the case. In other words, any possibility that this was a ‘mainstream’ commentator soft on Israel but still pretending to show both sides was definitively dropped in my mind at this point.
This is confirmed a few minutes later by what was just not even remotely subtle anymore (though initially and vacuously attempted). Israeli airstrikes can be problematic; however, look at this video shot from above by an Israeli warplane showing ‘Hamas terrorists’ getting into an ambulance. This is the situation that Israeli soldiers face. Now he asks a member of the audience; look, they’re getting in the ambulance now, what do you do? They say “I wouldn’t fire”. “OK, but then you’ll have any blood from any consequent rockets on your hands”. Still, “I wouldn’t fire”. And in the most predictable conclusion, the warplane in question doesn’t fire. Why? “Because Israel respects International Law” (that’s a direct quote). This was the culmination of the whole approach. There was no pretense at this point that this guy’s even ‘liberal’ or ‘mainstream’, but he had to go through a gradual process to arrive at it. Finally, he ends up with a map of what Israel ‘offered’ the Palestinians in 2008: “96% of the West Bank, and it was rejected”.
Now the reason I keep emphasising the methodology of his approach, namely that it wasn’t a ‘mainstream’ or ‘liberal’ kind of account was because the speech was clearly structured in a chronological way. There was a clear movement from a starting point of a pretense of ‘objectivity’ to subtle dropping of points to finally just all out conventional Israeli talking points. I don’t think this was coincidental.
So question time comes, and I say “You said you wanted for us to understand each other [immediately putting myself on the side of the ‘other side’]. Well, whilst I understand why Jews today who see Israel being criticised when others are ignored can feel singled out, and that I have criticised those who ignore other regimes” – he immediately cuts me off, saying “I want a question”. He knows that there was an explanation about to follow, and a criticism of Israel which tries to allay the sensitivities of the Jews in the room. I was going to proceed to say that whilst I understand why young Jews who see criticism of Israel around them and not other regimes which have committed vast or greater atrocities have a perception of unfairness, this perception is because of their youth; i.e. the fact is that for decades Israel has not had criticism despite its decades long abuses and that the attention now given to Palestine is something that has taken a loooooooong time to be arrived at. Palestinians getting more solidarity than Syrians, whilst perhaps not empirically reflective of the relative suffering at this point in time, is something that cannot be grievanced as it has taken *decades* to build up to reach this point.
Anyway, so a to-and-fro takes place whereby he does not want to give me the room to speak and responds with provocative shitty little rejoinders, I explain that if he was genuine about “talking to each other” etc., than he would be affording me two minutes. He says, no, ‘just one question’. I say if ;you’re genuine about understanding each other, how can there be one question when you’ve said so many points in your presentation, otherwise this is a lecture, not a talk or discussion;. He says ask me what type of claims. So I say ok well lets start off with the map behind you, you mentioned 96%, did you mention the conditions attached to that? That the Palestinian state be demilitarised, without control of its borders, no sovereignty etc etc. (without even mentioning refugees, Jerusalem etc.). This is all punctured by to and fro’s (including some bullshit by him about him “understanding why I was angry as an Egyptian with the dictatorship there” lol, a dictatorship Israel loves). I ask him if he doesn’t want to waste time here, debate me after the Q and A (at this point I’m still largely civil), he just turns away and says “No I won’t debate you”. Eventually (perhaps unfortunately) I lose my temper by his arrogant and bullshit provocative attitude, “keeps saying “Omar, chill, chill, I understand why you’re angry [i.e. al Sisi lol]”. He obviously wanted to paint me as some ‘heckler’ although I wasn’t yet at that point. Eventually though I brought him up on other points (don’t remember if that was during my question or others) which he would consider to be ‘heckling’ (as he addressed, actually didn’t lol, the one question about the map).
And if you’re objective, where’s the video of an airstrike in Gaza? And if Israel respects International Law, why is it criticised as violating it by groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the UN? He responds just seizing on the UN, saying “don’t talk to me about the UN, it stood doing nothing during the Rwandan genocide”. I said, okay, and what about HRW and Amnesty? He says “Well look, they can have their opinion, I’m just a fat Jew who has his” (his words). I say well no that doesn’t fly, your speech is entirely polemical, where’s the empirical evidence in your speech? Let’s compare the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the past few years. He responds at some point by some bs ‘witty’ rejoineder aimed at me and I say well this is your entire lecture, no actual evidence and thinking you can just get through by witticisms.
His claim about Palestinian refugees; did you not think it was appropriate to mention that the reason Palestinian refugees have that intergenerational status is because *they don’t have a state*? He says that he never tried to imply otherwise (what? so why mention it?). Re the “non existence of a Palestinian state”, I ask him and he responds “It’s true”, I said “Egypt didn’t exist as a nation state, that doesn’t mean Egyptians didn’t exist”. He again pretends like he didn’t deny that, though he obviously did. Later on, a Syrian questioner (Munqeth) asks him about what he thought of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. He responds saying he doesn’t like to use that term because we’re denying the historic link of Jews to the land in “Judea and Samaria”. I interrupt (couldn’t help it) saying “Man, Muslims controlled Spain, do you think that means I can go there and build up a state now?”. Another interruption I offered was when he objected to the term ‘apartheid’, to which I responded ‘two legal systems in the same area isn’t apartheid?’
Unfortunately, I might have lost some in the audience by the later interruptions, but I couldn’t help it and he succeeded in provoking me to that stage. Nonetheless, he did not come out there looking good at all, because it was clear in his responses that he did give that he wasn’t able to rebut the points.
Final note on the guy, I read later a quote of his: Hasbara was not just a duty for the Israeli government, but for “every Jew”. Though it is a cliche, this talk was Hasbara 101, in the sense of being clearly and methodologically propagandist. It was structured well, followed a clear order and was never meant to be challenged (he cut me off before I had time to breathe). Credit must be given to the subtlety of a lot of his ‘drops’, but tbh it was also clear that his claims were largely vacuous on being challenged about them. Furthermore, the simple reality is that the Hasbara line will eventually have to entail an apologistic and unempirical defence of Israel, and here, no matter the tactics, they will always be found wanting (like the ridiculous response he gave to the human rights groups criticising Israel, “they can have their opinion”). The contradiction within this new Hasbara school that Israel’s trying to get off the ground in the West – of the proponent presenting himself as not outwardly aligned per se with Israel but “sympathetic” to it – is unsolvable as the ‘liberal’ approach is no longer sufficient to defend, or more accurately, *rehabilitate* Israel. Thus, an effective rehabilitation of Israel requires both an initial ‘liberal’, ‘both sides’ pretense but also a radical, clearly apologistic one. Lazarus effectively was the manifestation of this contradiction: though he was being presented as not being even a liberal Zionist (but a news commentator), he ended up being far more right wing in his responses (in my eyes) than many liberal Zionists I have encountered. This contradiction is unsolvable. To be rehabilitated, Israel simultaneously requires a strong defence from people who need to initially distance themselves from it.
This piece is a longer version of an article published in The New Arab.
As Raqqa gets destroyed (and Mosul before it) Stop the War Coalition is nowhere to be heard – leaving Syria solidarity protesters to demonstrate in front of US embassies alone.
For years, the Stop the War Coalition’s leadership has justified either the group’s silence or routinely-promoted Assad apologisms as justified by the Syrian regime supposedly being subjected to a ‘US plot’ to overthrow it.
Most recently, much outrage was raised at the famous missile-strike on a Syrian regime airfield following the chemical attack on the Syrian village of Khan Shaykhoun in April. Stop the War mobilised an ‘emergency protest’ against ‘Donald Trump’s decision to launch attacks against Syrian targets’ and any UK participation in it – even though this UK intervention had been taking place for three years already, with the UK having dropped eleven times more bombs in the first 12 months of its intervention than during the busiest year of the occupations in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
It was also done despite the fact that UK officials voiced support for the airstrike whilst specifically praising its limited nature, and despite statements by the UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon declaring that the US strike was “not a declaration of war against the Assad regime” and laying out explicitly that the UK would not “take military action against Syria” (with ‘Syria’ here of course being equatable with the Assad regime, as the UK has never withdrawn legal recognition from the regime or conferred it onto the Syrian Interim Government). Similarly, US officials also repeated that the action was not a ‘declaration of war’ against the regime and that there was ‘no change’ in the US policy established under Trump (of relinquishing the already half-hearted so-called ‘demand’ for Assad to ‘step down’), besides ‘deterring’ further chemical attacks. Indeed, since this time the US has been providing aircover to Iranian-backed foreign militias on Syrian territory (as has been the case for years in Iraq). In other words, the US has been supporting foreign occupation forces on Syrian territory.
Indeed, a week before the much-heralded strike on a regime airfield – often described in both mainstream and alternative coverage as ‘Trump’s strike on Syria’ (again, with ‘Syria’ interchangeable with the ‘Syrian regime’ and not with Syrian territory; Trump had of course already launched more than 1,000 airstrikes by that point in Syria alone, killing 1,000 civilians in the month of March alone) – the US had committed a massacre in the province of Aleppo, whereby up to 50 worshippers were killed in an airstrike on a mosque in a rebel-held (not ISIS-held) town in Aleppo, and in Raqqa, where at least 33 civilians were killed in an airstrike on a school housing refugees. Stop the War Coalition would not call for any protests against such repeated massacres – which indeed barely made the coverage of its media outlets, certainly relative to the outrage by the strike on the Assad regime airfield (a strike that the US indirectly warned the regime of in advance via Russia and which did not even put the largely-evacuated airfield out of service, with airstrikes resuming the next day). Whilst Syria solidarity groups in Ireland and the UK repeatedly protested the US blitzkriegs at the US embassy, Stop the War Coalition would not join such protests.
As we will see from the comparative coverage in STW’s outlets, it is not an exaggeration to state that the regime’s damaged tarmac provoked more protest than the civilians killed in US-led Coalition strikes in non-regime-held territories. This disparity was strongly noted at the time by observers and Syrian solidarity activists.
funny trump bombed a mosque last month in Syria. can you plz post pics of your protests then?
— Ramah Kudaimi (رامة كديمي) (@ramahkudaimi) April 7, 2017
Indeed in the six months since the ‘airfield strike’, and with it becoming clear that the risk of ‘regime-change’ had subsided (vindicating not the Stop the War Coalition – who had spent the past three years of the US intervention claiming that it was ‘backdoor regime change’ – but those who viewed the US intervention in Syria as a form of regime-preservation), Stop the War Coalition again went into relative hibernation on the subject of Syria. This is despite the fact that the past few months have witnessed the most intense US-led bombardment of the war.
Here, there has not been a single emergency demonstration called against the intensive campaign of bombardment in Raqqa (or before that Mosul) or the US-led blitzkriegs of the past few months across Syria and Iraq more generally. Similarly, not a single statement written specific to the Raqqa bombing campaign (or the increasingly-murderous Coalition campaign more generally) has been written up during this period, by contrast to three statements devoted specifically to the aftermath of the Trump airfield strike and warning against further attacks on Assad.
Indeed, between December 2015 (during the UK parliamentary vote on Syrian airstrikes) and April 2017 (the strike on the regime airfield) Stop the War did not organise a single protest on Syria, and similarly in the period since the airfield strike there has not been a single protest despite the killing of up to 2,000 Syrian civilians in this period according to the monitoring group, Airwars (including almost 800 Syrian civilians within the single month of August 2017, entailing such massacres as 100 civilians being killed by the Coalition in Raqqa in 48 hours). Instead, a protest was organised against ‘the threat of nuclear war’ with North Korea.
An examination of Stop the War’s media output during the period since the ‘airfield strike’ (April 2017) demonstrates this lopsided reality. Stop the War’s website content on Syria during this period features five calls for national and local demonstrations against Trump’s airfield strike [1], whilst there have been two statements on the Trump airstrike (one by STW and one by Jeremy Corbyn), a further statement obfuscating the Assad regime’s responsibility for the Sarin attack (later confirmed by the UN – as often demanded by STW – without this confirmation being covered by STW), another citing and condemning media reports of Theresa May allegedly seeking authorisation for action against the Assad regime (an event which never took place, with reports today instead that British diplomats are seeking to obtain immunity for Assad from prosecution), and finally most recently a statement opposing Trump’s potential departure from the Iran deal.
Meanwhile, the website has featured four articles condemning the strike on the regime airfield [2], three articles warning of UK attacks on the regime [3], five articles complaining of how the US is actually targeting the ‘real prize’ of Iran in Syria (the same Iran whose proxies the US has been providing military support to in Iraq for the past few years, including Iraqi military brigades which have used their Western support to fight for Assad in Syria) [4], one article on the ‘illegality’ of the UK flying drones in Syria without permission from the Assad regime (a spurious allegation as this permission has been knowingly implicit for years), two articles linking the London Bridge attacks to the FSA [5], two more referencing Qatari and Saudi backing of ‘extremist rebels’ [6] and finally two pieces condemning an incident in the border region of Al-Tanf of the US bombing a rogue foreign militia (which disobeyed both Russian and US orders to withdraw from the area) [7].
The last event was declared by Stop the War Coalition’s National Officer, Chris Nineham as an ‘act of war against Syria’ and ‘bombing a foreign country’ – in other words the airstrike against a foreign militia which was invading Syrian territory (and which the local tribes of Deir al-Zor in the area declared was a ‘force of occupation’ that they were fighting) was declared by Nineham as ‘a foreign country’ (by virtue of its alliance with the Syrian regime).
Ironically, the real story is that the US has actually supported such foreign militias on Syrian territory (again without coverage by Stop the War Coalition, as this contradicts the long-propagated pro-Iran narrative that the US is ‘actually’ attempting to undermine it in Syria), including in Palmyra and Deir al-Zor. Indeed during the very same episode at Al-Tanf, the US would in fact authorise a regime airstrike against a local rebel group within a designated ‘Safe Zone’ area, after the group independently attacked the rogue pro-Assad militia in question (the US would also itself threaten direct airstrikes against a local rebel group which was expelled from the Pentagon’s anti-ISIS programme, again after attacking the foreign militias in the area).
In total, there have been twenty-five pieces citing either the Trump strike on the regime airfield, warning of or disparaging ‘regime-change’ (the call of “The People demand the downfall of the regime” made in 2011 is, of course, irrelevant) and/or ‘exposing’ a secret Western attempt to undermine Iran (as well as four pieces linking the rebels with ‘Islamic extremism’) against twelve pieces citing the rising civilian toll of the actual (not hypothetical) intensified Coalition bombardments in Syria in the past six months [8]. Meanwhile, a search of the group’s Facebook feed during this period will find no mention of Syria outside of the Trump airfield strike, whilst a Twitter search produces three references of civilian casualties from the US-led Coalition campaign against twelve references to the Trump strike and/or warning of ‘regime-change’ against Assad.
Conversely to this lopsided coverage, there has been approximately 6,000 US-led Coalition airstrikes on ‘Syria’ during the period concerned (according to the monitoring group Airwars), with all of these excepting five (this itself a wartime high – encompassing the much-publicised strike on the regime airfield, the downing of a regime jet in defence of the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces, and three strikes against the rogue militia at al-Tanf) taking place outside of regime-held territory.
Revealed: Stop the War Coalition routinely host supporters of Western intervention
The relationship of Stop the War Coalition and Syria solidarity activists has long been strained, with the latter long accusing the former of serving as ‘War on Terror- and Assad-apologists’, whilst the former accuse the latter of ‘supporting Western intervention’ and being indistinguishable from supporters of a ‘new Iraq’. This conflict has sometimes been reported in the media, as when MP Diane Abbot hosted a meeting in 2015 in which Syrian and Arab activists were prevented from speaking, or when Jeremy Corbyn was ‘heckled’ during the Stop the War’s annual conference last December. Yet to take the latter case for instance, at the very same conference in question Stop the War Coalition actually fielded three proponents of Western intervention on their platforms:
– Dr Alan Shemo, a representative of the Western-backed Kurdish PYD (the political arm of the YPG) – an organisation which has given the US several military bases on Syrian territory (with some estimates putting the number as much as seven), fought alongside US Special Forces, has repeatedly flown the American flag in territories captured from ISIS, and of course has been calling in US airstrikes since 2014 (including threatening Arab villagers with them if they did not evacuate). The YPG has repeatedly denied reports of Coalition massacres as ‘exaggerated’ or ‘ISIS apologism’, and invited the US to stay in Syria ‘for decades’. Indeed, Stop the War’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) praised Rojava as “genuine examples of radical democracy and efforts of establishing an egalitarian, ecological and democratic society” – seemingly unaware of this ‘imperialist’ backing.
– Michelle Allison, a representative of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), a group which supports anti-ISIS Western airstrikes. Allison has repeatedly called for Western arming of the YPG, whilst asking for Western governments to block regional support to the rebels. Allison also repeated the racialist (always polemical, never empirical) trope that there were no ‘moderate’ rebels.
– Diane Abbot MP, who called Western airstrikes supporting the post-occupation sectarian Iraqi government “legal” and “if part of a broader strategy, of course right”.
Nor was this the first time that Stop the War have given a platform to Western interventionists:
– The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt was invited to speak on a Stop the War panel in the House of Commons in November 2015. Blunt’s voting record included voting for the Iraq War in 2003 (though later changed his mind) and voting to continue to support the Afghanistan war in 2010. His initial disagreement with the government motion (the basis of his invitation to the StWC panel) for intervening in Syria had to do with logistics, not principle: he argued that the scope of the proposed airstrikes was not wide enough for excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and other Syrian Islamist rebel groups that could be later designated as ‘terrorist’, and declared a distrust of David Cameron’s claim that the UK would be supporting 70,000 rebels against ISIS (a hypothetical commitment to support which of course never materialised) believing that any intervention should seek the cooperation of the Syrian (regime) Army. Blunt would argue for Western intervention against ISIS from this very ‘Stop the War’ platform.
Tory MP Crispin Blunt shows up at Stop the War meeting to tell them only a war will deal with Isis. Cool response pic.twitter.com/cj5GWOIA6m
This would take place at the same meeting where Stop the War prevented Syrian and Arab activists from speaking (with the exception of one who was eventually cut off – none of her compatriots were then permitted) – including calling parliamentary police to ‘talk to’ one.
A month after the Stop the War meeting, Blunt would change his mind and vote for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. In other words, Stop the War offered a platform to an MP with a “pro-war” record who would – as they would put it – “vote to bomb” the country of the silenced activists a month later. This is a scandal which is still covered up by the Stop the War Coalition.
– George Galloway, who supported current Western airstrikes in Iraq and argued that he would support them too in Syria if they came with the main purpose of backing the Assad regime’s ground forces (UK and US airforces had in fact already provided limited low-key aerial support for the Assad regime, including ground forces).
Galloway was confronted on his advocating of “Western imperialism” to intervene in support of Assad during a film premiere in Brighton, and admitted the charge, stating that “he wanted to see every member of ISIS and al-Qaeda on the ground killed” and that ISIS was the “biggest threat since the Second World War”.
– Wijdan Derki, a PYD/YPG supporter who again used a StWC platform in Birmingham to argue for Western airstrikes against ISIS.
– Erdelan Baran, again from the KNK. One of the plethora who used the Stop the War platform provided to chastise the Syrian Arab revolutionary forces as ‘extremists’ indistinguishable from ISIS.
Indeed, at this meeting Stop the War’s leadership (including Convenor Lindsey German) would be lambasted by Arab audience members for ignoring the campaign of the US-led International Coalition which involved US coordination with Assad as well as bombing of mainstream (“moderate”) Syrian rebel groups. One Syrian activist from Manbij in North Syria present in the audience declared to the panel: “You know what’s going on now in Manbij city? Assad’s bombing us in the daytime, and the Coalition – the Americans – are bombing us in the night-time … there is cooperation between Assad and the West”. This has been a consistent refrain from Syrians on the ground, who have been for years reporting that they have been subject to joint and simultaneous bombardments by the US-led Coalition and the Syrian Airforce [9].
The Syrian activist made it clear that he was against all intervention in his country, whether Western, Russian or Iranian. Another Egyptian activist present (who began by stating that he was being shot at by the “Western-backed” Al-Sisi regime the year beforehand, to preempt any accusation of “supporting Western imperialism”) argued that Stop the War had covered up US bombing of Syrian rebels in 2014 and civilian deaths which arose from them, as these realities were “inconvenient to their narrative” (of regime-change). He also accused Stop the War of failing to understand US policy in the conflict, which was regime-preservation – with or without Assad personally at the helm of the regime – and whereby the US wants the Assadist regime and state to come out on top (German interrupted at this point, scoffing “it doesn’t!”). Both activists were criticising Stop the War not for opposing Western intervention, but for actively ignoring and misrepresenting it.
Stop the War’s convenor, Lindsey German, would respond by stating “there is nothing in their [US] actions that shows that they are in any way supporting the Assad regime… whether you like it or not that is the truth”. German would also declare to the activists that “if you are a Syrian, if you are an Egyptian, you are entitled to your own politics, but you don’t have the right to come here and say that we shouldn’t oppose our imperialism”. Considering that the activists were in fact telling the Stop the War leadership that they were not opposing their own imperialism, this was a form of Orwellian response. In a sense it was indicative: Syrians under the joint bombs of the US and Assad were effectively told by Western ‘anti-imperialist’ experts in Stop the War’s leadership: “you don’t know what you’re talking about”. A few months later, after having to wait for an explicitly laid-out statement by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Ms German would write that the US was no longer ‘seeking regime-change in Syria’ – not long after scoffing at Arab activists telling her the same thing.
Ironically, such statements attesting US ‘opposition to Assad’ were arguably more defensive of Assad than Assad himself, who himself declared that whilst Western governments criticised his regime publicly, they privately engaged in intelligence and security coordination with it. Indeed, whilst the US-led intervention in 2014 was described by STW leaders as part of a backdoor ‘regime-change plot’ – and warning in its policy brief against the 2015 UK intervention that intervening would lead to the establishment of ‘No-Fly Zones’ and was thus really aimed at the Assad regime, not ISIS – the regime itself by contrast would welcome the US intervention repeatedly, after spending much effort attempting to convince Western governments that it was their ‘natural ally’ in their “War on Terror”.
The UK has coordinated intelligence with the regime, stripped the passports of British Muslims who have joined non-extremist, mainstream opposition groups, and has even seized the passport of Syrian refugee-activist “at the behest of the Syrian government”. Meanwhile, a prominent US Muslim and supporter of the Arab Spring who went to fight for the FSA (and opposed al-Qaeda and ISIS) was prosecuted by the US, threatened with the death penalty and kept in solitary confinement before being finally released (he later overdosed on drugs) – a stark contrast to the treatment of Western citizens who have gone to fight for the Syrian Kurds.
In total, the US-led Coalition has carried out more than 14,000 airstrikes on Syrian territory. Barring five incidents (all in the past year), these bombs have for all intents and purposes (more than 99%) exclusively targeted territories not controlled by the Syrian regime. The areas on which both US and Russian bombs fell – areas such as Raqqa, Deir al-Zor, Manbij as well as (ISIS-free) Idlib – also happened to be the epicentres of the revolt against the regime in 2011 (regardless of whether the territories later came under the occupation of ISIS, which captured these territories after significantly outgunning – not outnumbering – local FSA brigades with tonnes of heavy military stocks seized from the Iraqi Army). The US bombs which have fell (for all intents and purposes) exclusively in anti-regime areas are estimated to have killed more than 4,000 Syrian civilians – these will undoubtedly include those who came out on the streets against Assad in 2011.
This means that the reality in Syria is that both the US and Russia have directly killed scores of Arab Spring protesters who went out in the streets in 2011. That this reality is so little-known and covered by alternative and anti-war movements points to the serious problem posited by their fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict. And contrary to portraying the regime as a ‘victim’ of Western imperialism, the regime in fact welcomed the intervention of the US repeatedly as well as that of Russia (after years of efforts trying to be accepted as a Western ‘War on Terror’ ally) – making the pro-regime Western propagandists (of the types of Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and Vanessa Beeley) arguably more pro-regime than the regime itself.
Similarly, another unknown fact is that no government in history has deployed an airforce inside its territory for as prolonged and continuous a campaign (2012 – today) as the Assad regime. Not only has the US blockaded the provision of anti-aircraft weaponry to the rebels (whether by Qatar, Saudi Arabia or private donors) over the past five years – encompassing an quiet, low-level seizure of shipments – but it has actively joined in the same airspace as this record-breaking regime to jointly bombard Syrian territories. This of course requires a nominal level of intelligence-coordination in order to avoid operational conflict (as admitted by Assad), but has also involved directly supplying the regime with intelligence for its own military campaigns,(again, the subject of Assad’s bragging), joint bombardment missions by the US and Syrian airforces, and even support for pro-regime ground forces advancing against ISIS (including foreign militias), especially in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor. 14,000 airstrikes later, Stop the War’s leadership are still proclaiming that the US is really in Syria to get rid of Assad and support the Syrian uprising (or “regime-change”, as they call it).
To Stop the War it would appear that an exception is allowed for the YPG to seek Western help, presumably as they are facing the gravest threat in Syria (against any empirical basis suggesting this). Thus, there is no criticism for the role of the US-allied YPG in leveling Raqqa to the ground (and similarly for the role of Iran’s militias in levelling Mosul before it). In the former, this is due to the familiar and culturally-comforting image presented by the YPG for the Western ‘anti-imperialist’ audience, often portrayed in glowing terms as ‘left-wing’ and uniquely ‘secular’ in a rare environment (with secular here in the context of the Middle East really meaning having a limited public expression of Islam) – unlike the unrelatable rebel with their unhidden and disconcerting political expressions shaped by Islam (the debate here, it should be noted is not whether it is wrong to have an ideological affinity with secular forces, but to highlight the discrepancy). Of course, the fact that an Islamic influence in the rebels’ politics is indistinguishable from the situation that exists with the likes of Hamas – or that Israel has promoted itself for decades precisely in the name of its ‘secularism’ in an ‘Islamic neighbourhood’ – seems to be lost.
Stop the War’s leadership have spent years refusing to platform or debate Syrian solidarity activists – claiming that they ‘refuse to give a platform to supporters of Western intervention’ (of course, blanket-labelling Syrian revolutionary supporters as all supportive of a No-Fly Zone, which is not the case – the Syria Solidarity Campaign for example opposes all foreign intervention in the conflict). Yet they have offered to publicly debate the likes of Hilary Benn and Boris Johnson, who are obvious ‘supporters of Western intervention’. Perhaps therefore, STW’s leadership and the likes of German, Nineham and co. would be brave enough to accept a debate with their Arab Spring critics.
Because it appears that in Syria, Stop the War have come to oppose the Syrian revolution, not Western intervention. US support of the Assad regime has thus, accordingly, been marginalised.
Part 2 How STW’s analytical contradictions have led to marginalising actual US interventions in Syria
Stop the War have constantly labelled their opponents to be “pro-war” and pro-Western intervention. The reality is not only that they have actively hosted Western interventionists – seemingly believing that Western intervention ceases to be “imperialistic” if it comes in support of Iran or left-wing Kurdish guerrillas – but they have also long ignored repeated instances of “Western intervention” in Syria which contradicted Stop the War’s (false) propagated narrative of “Western regime-change” (the following is not an exhaustive list):
Whilst constantly equating the foreign-imposed Iraq invasion and premeditated mass-killings of Iraq’s citizens with the grassroots Syrian revolt, Stop the War have had nothing to say about the dozens of Western-backed Iraqi military brigades (known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Units/PMU) which are part of the Iraqi regime installed in 2003 by the US, and which fight in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime. The PMUs are officially part of the Iraqi military; their forces are estimated to number between 20,000-30,000 fighters, have been backed against ISIS by the US and its allies in Iraq and are salaried by the Iraqi government. They form the crucial core of Assad’s forces in Syria (outnumbering any other single group, including Hezbollah), not least in the province of Aleppo. What this means, in other words, is that the regime the US installed in 2003 under the guise of ‘bringing democracy’ to the region is today playing a key role in burying the genuine, domestic demand for democracy which broke out in Syria in 2011.Meanwhile other ‘anti-imperialist’ Western allies such as the Egyptian regime of al-Sisi also militarily backs the Assad regime, whilst the Lebanese government (which Hezbollah is a member of) and army has been collaborating with the Syrian regime for years, as well as undertaking joint military operations (including with US Special Forces support) with Hezbollah against Sunni insurgents, ‘covering its rear’ inside Lebanon against domestic rivals, and facilitating Hezbollah’s invasion of Syria for years, allowing the passage of its fighters through their checkpoints. Indeed, the US has used the Lebanese Army as a conduit for security and intelligence collaboration with Hezbollah (indeed, relations improved to the extent that the US warned Hezbollah of an attack in Beirut by its rivals). The Lebanese Army has also been a direct security collaborator with the Assad regime (returning Syrian refugees to its hands) and has designated the FSA as a ‘terrorist’ organisation. Other US allies such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Oman and the West Bank Palestinian Authority (Fatah) offer political and diplomatic support to the regime, whilst the UAE and Jordan have designated most revolutionary forces as ‘terrorist’ groups and along with Bahrain (and according to its President, Israel) supported Russia’s intervention to boot.
Stop the War have had little to say about the sheer scale of humanitarian tragedies reported from the US bombing in support of the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as continuously and ceaselessly relayed for years by Syrians on the ground in these areas (see below). The humanitarian realities left behind by the plethora of military campaigns of the US-led Coalition in various Syrian towns and cities have gone extremely underreported by the platforms of STWC, despite dozens of reports and statements from the ground in Syria by civil society bodies and local councils laying out in detail the tragedies in areas under Coalition bombardment. Few if any of these would be relayed, translated or generally brought to the attention of Western anti-war audiences.Instead, the majority of STW’s energies went into continuing to warn of a never arriving ‘regime change’ plot by the US, demonising the rebels (who were in fact getting intermittently bombed by the US and whose territories were getting swallowed by the US backed YPG/SDF) and ignoring the actual US intervention concurrently happening on the ground.
Whilst condemning the FSA since its inception and misrepresenting it as a ‘US proxy’ (largely by virtue of the expected declarations of Western support for the Arab Spring in Syria), STW have noticeably failed to monitor the actual formation of what far more accurately qualifies as a ‘US proxy’ in the conflict: the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) led by the Kurdish YPG. The YPG/SDF is a supposed ‘third way’ between the rebels and the regime. On its formation (the SDF makes no mention of the Assad regime in its political programme), an FSA spokesman declared that the “goals of the SDF did not coalesce with those of the FSA or the revolution”. Despite this, the YPG/SDF has routinely been lazily labelled as ‘Syrian rebels’ by general media coverage; thus, commonly recirculated articles (for instance citing something like ‘US airdrops to rebels’) would be referring to the SDF: the non-rebelling ‘rebels’ that the US actually back.The spokesman of the SDF has declared that the SDF is ‘neutral’ towards Assad, and adding that the regime was ‘welcome’ to liberate territories from ‘terrorists’. The YPG/SDF has long been a collaborator of the Assad regime, including reportedly fighting alongside it during the recent fall of Aleppo (where the YPG flag was raised alongside the regime’s). Indeed, the “US backed SDF” has returned territories taken from ISIS under US aircover to the regime, as in the countryside of Manbij (where FSA forces attacked the SDF). This has led Syrian revolutionaries to mock the SDF’s ‘democratic’ credentials, declaring ‘those who collaborate with Assad, will never be democratic”. Furthermore, the main Arab faction of the SDF – Jaish al-Sanadeed – is a declaredly pro-Assad force.
An FSA fighter taking down the flag of the ‘US-backed’ SDFBy contrast to what you would expect of a ‘proxy’, the anti-Assad rebels (which the likes of StWC have long portrayed as ‘US proxies’, often by virtue of them being pro-democracy) have routinely refused to follow US instruction in Syria: opposing its military intervention in 2014 and declaring it “a violation of Syrian sovereignty”, refusing to accept US conditions (generally involving dropping the fight against Assad) in exchange for receiving “support”, consistently highlighting massacres of civilians by the US airforce, opposed the ground intervention of US Special Forces and ultimately for years being subject to (largely-marginalised and unreported) intermittent US bombardment.
This is by stark contrast to the examples set by the YPG/SDF, who as mentioned have welcomed the US staying in Syria ‘for decades’, allowed the construction of US military bases, fought alongside US Special Forces, ordered US airstrikes and routinely deny crimes by the US airforce – including the infamous US massacre committed in July 2016 in Manbij (the coordinates for the attack according to the Coalition were provided by the YPG/SDF). Indeed, after the massacre in question the Syrian political opposition (i.e. the largely-exiled Syrian National Coalition or SNC – itself a body largely alienated from the grassroots revolutionary forces) called for the cessation of Coalition airstrikes, only for the demand to be condemned as ‘supporting ISIS’ by the STW-backed YPG. The YPG has also been accused of expelling Arabs from villages recaptured from ISIS (with Rojava officials themselves describing mass expulsion as traditional ‘tribal’ punishment justifiable against families with ISIS members).
US envoy Brett McGurk being honoured by the ‘anti imperialist’ YPG, who are praised, offered platforms and never criticised by Stop the War Coalition.
The fact that these things are so poorly known amongst “anti-establishment” circles is precisely due to the misrepresentation of what is happening in Syria by groups such as Stop the War, deflecting “accusations of “Western proxies” onto anti-Assad revolutionaries instead of what is actually the only force on the ground in Syria that can accurately qualify as a “US proxy” – their favoured ideological “rebels” (who have largely kept out of the actual rebellion), the YPG .
Stop the War have had nothing to say about the repeated US bombing of mainstream anti-Assad revolutionary forces, which in the first twelve months of the Coalition campaign had killed up to 200 anti-ISIS rebels (as well as the execution of 45,000 or so ISIS members from the air, against one Coalition casualty – likely constituting one of the most assymetrical wars in history).(For a list of examples of the Coalition bombing mainstream rebels (excluding Al-Nusra), see footnote [10])https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYgqLLzZmxo&feature=youtu.be
Stop the War have had nothing to say about clashes between the rebels and US Special Forces embedded with the YPG/SDF. These have happened repeatedly, and most recently included an incident of FSA forces exchanging fire with US Special forces embedded with the YPG/SDF. Nor was this the first example of conflict; months before the incident another FSA brigade kicked out US Special Forces from a town in the countryside of Aleppo. Within a few hours of the incident, reports emerged that an FSA group in the area was bombed by the Coalition, purportedly ‘by mistake’ (a claim disparaged at the time by Syrian activists, who noted the unlikely coincidental timing of the ‘accident’).A look at the following post helps to understand the FSA ire at the US Special forces, a far cry from the reality-detached perceptions of the narratives of Stop the War Coalition which portray the FSA as ‘US allies’.https://www.facebook.com/SyriaSolidarityCampaign/posts/341956786147512Indeed, in a somewhat surreal and indicative example of the uncomfortable contradictions faced by STW, Stop the War would actually put more focus in their media coverage on Turkey’s invasion of Syria (i.e. drawing the connection to ‘Western imperialism’ by highlighting Turkey as a ‘NATO ally’) than the actual US invasion of Syria including by US Special Forces (i.e. the intervention of actual Western imperialism) alongside the forces of the YPG. Condemnations of Turkey’s invasion of Syria would be accordingly couched in terms of ‘anti imperialism’ – i.e. highlighting Turkey being a ‘Western ally’ – whilst the actual US support for the YPG is seldom mentioned.Indeed, the YPG/SDF would often raise both the US and Russian flags to deter attacks from Turkish-allied FSA brigades. And indeed, far from a ‘proxy war’ between the US and Russia, both US and Russian military forces would deploy in Manbij to protect the YPG/SDF from the FSA.
In other words, the likes of Stop the War would in fact actively attack the forces resisting US imperialism in this context, the rebels, whilst exonerating those who were advancing under US aircover and whom the rebels were in conflict with, the (left-wing) YPG. This is one example of the sort of convoluted results which have come out of the group’s immense analytical contradictions, which in turn have been caused by the group’s general inability to grasp the nuances and vital ‘small prints’ of the realities of the conflict in Syria. This is a difficulty which would have been ameliorated if they had built connections with Syrian activists familiar with the complexities and nuances of the conflict.
Stop the War’s lack of coverage of the humanitarian realities in areas under Coalition bombardment
Indeed activists have for a while accused Stop the War Coalition of inexplicably ignoring their complaints against crimes by the Americans and the so-called “International Coalition”, long before Russia’s entry into the war. Stop the War have largely refrained from covering and detailing the realities of the US intervention. There has been a very noticeable lack of campaigning, coverage and reporting of the local realities of areas under attack. Articles telling the stories of whole families killed as “collateral damage” in US airstrikes, posts showing the images of intentionally destroyed civilian infrastructure by US airstrikes or statements by local councils and committees in areas under US bombs have been barely seen or shared from such platforms; instead a look at the output of Stop the War and associated outlets shows that most energy (even) until today has been spent on warning of the dangers of a fictitious “regime-change” in Syria – whilst the US has been simultaneously bombing Syria jointly with Assad since 2014 – and pressuring Western countries to blockade (the already-restricted) support by regional allies to the rebels. Meanwhile actual intervention concurrently taking place in direct coordination with the regime has gone completely under the radar.
Thus the anti-war movement’s efforts led by StWC’s current leadership in opposing the current ‘anti-Islamist’ War on Terror intervention launched by the US in Syria since 2014 has been nothing compared to the prolonged effort spent to ward off a non-existent threat of anti-Assad “US intervention”. That the realities (not abstract, theoretical pieces) of the long-warned-of “American intervention” went largely unexplored when it finally came was inexplicable to many Syrian and Arab activists.
Whilst Stop the War have been extremely quiet in campaigning against real foreign intervention in Syria – with a striking absence of all the usual coverage and attention to reporting local realities of areas under “US bombardment” (coverage which is a necessary pre-requisite of any anti-intervention campaign) – revolutionary activists in Syria and their solidarity networks abroad have long launched extensive campaigns not just against Russian and regime massacres and military campaigns, but also against those of the US. Manbij Is Being Slaughtered Silently, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently and Deir al-Zor is Being Slaughtered Silently are all examples of such campaigns focussing on the crimes of the US-led Coalition (as well as those of ISIS, the regime and the YPG/SDF, the main combatants in these areas).
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Let us thus take the example of Manbij. Here, a plethora of statements were released by the revolutionary council of the city (exiled by ISIS to the rebel-controlled countryside) warning of the disastrous humanitarian situation under the joint US-YPG attack. These warnings would not make any coverage, until the well-reported massacre of 80 civilians in May, which was the only event in Manbij throughout the three month US-SDF military assault and siege on the city and its countryside that made headlines. This is but one example of dozens of reporting from the ground which has not been relayed onto anti-war audiences. Stop the War – who are supposed to be the party expected by anti-war audiences in the West to dig the realities of far-away places suffering imperialism and transmitting them to Western audiences – simply covered the massacre at the same time as “mainstream” media reports. In Syria, Stop the War was reduced not to reporting from the ground and being ahead a step, but from the politicised and/or shallow reports of Western and Russian media. Stop the War did not hear of or cover any of the suffering that had happened before that – despite being well-reported in pleas from Syrians of those areas. Their outreach would be ignored.
By contrast the UK-based Syria Solidarity Campaign – composed primarily of Syrian activists – provided English translations for Western audiences of statements and pleas for help from the locals and civil society organisations of Manbij, as well as reports detailing the chilling revelations of the scale of the humanitarian disaster in areas under US-led coalition attack. Yet the SSC did not of course have the reach of STW. Again, Stop the War never covered or recirculated these.
This lack of coverage of the actual realities of the US intervention in Syria, in exchange for theories of ‘regime change’ (whilst the US and Syrian airforces have been busy together bombing Syria in conjunction since 2014) or war propaganda which demonise rescue workers as ‘US proxies’ has been a large problem within alternative left wing platforms. To use a symbol of how convoluted and opposite to reality such theories often are, we can take the aforementioned demonisation of the White Helmets as ‘Western backed’. And then we can take the reality of White Helmets rescuing people not only from the rubble of regime and Syrian airstrikes, but also from those of the US-led Coalition (see footnote 11).
There were probably two reasons for this disconnectivity.
The fact that the areas which have been bombarded by the US-led coalition have been for all practical purposes exclusively those which had revolted against the regime (before being taken from the rebels by the far-heavier armed ISIS) meant that Stop the War – who had effectively boycotted Syrian revolutionaries and had no networks with activists on the ground – was ignorant as to the realities of the US campaign. It would be the revolutionaries and activists, not the regime (which seldom reports on airstrikes by the Coalition or their casualties) who were the sources of the overwhelming bulk of reports on the realities of the US-led intervention.The reason for this is that the main sources of these reports happened to be local councils and civil bodies which were pro-revolution and continued to operate in the environs of these areas (with most local councils, political committees and other civil bodies having been expelled by ISIS; by contrast there are seldom any reports of the Coalition’s abuses from ground monitors of the Assad regime).
To a lesser extent perhaps, the fact that the ground forces which had been attacking Manbij were the STW-supported (and universally popular in the West, amongst both right and left) Kurdish YPG. It seemingly mattered not that the YPG was the main “US proxy” in the conflict, for they were “left-wing”. By contrast complaints about what was happening to civilians under ISIS control are nullified for otherwise risking to appear as “ISIS apologism”. Indeed some alternative ‘left-wing’ pro-Assad outlets have actually accused Syria solidarity groups of “supporting ISIS” for highlighting the humanitarian tragedy being committed by the US-led coalition in areas under US bombardment. Others have more recently published articles celebrating coordination between the US-backed SDF and the regime, showing how little they actually believed in the “US-regime change” theory they had spent years propagating.
As for the wider lack of coverage given to reporting the events of the “anti-ISIS” Western intervention, there are also a few theories for this:
That STW have internalised the War on Terror propaganda of the Assad regime to such an extent that reading (for example) US boasts of “killing 45,000” ISIS members without challenge from the air moves them little, certainly compared to the killing of “secular” regime soldiers. This is because there is a unanimous agreement (between right and left, establishment and anti-establishment) that ISIS is the most demonic evil existent in the world today (“since World War Two”, necessitating both Western and Russian intervention, according to Stop the War stalwart George Galloway) and a tacit (if undeclared) acceptance that Western powers are “not as bad”. The reality is the United States has killed far more civilians over the past decades than ISIS (and indeed, potentially killed more civilians than ISIS during the campaign against ISIS) – which incidentally in the opinion of this author is a fascist organisation (in case that has to be made clear) – and yet the fact is also that few today have the courage to say something like that.Indeed, if it is stated that members of anti-ISIS, moderate ‘Islamically’-identifying (i.e. with public political expressions linked to Islam) rebel brigades were also targeted and killed by the US-led coalition, this would be brushed off as “insignificant” or “no different” from the pre-existent targeting of ISIS (as they were in a sense also ‘just Islamists’ like them). Regardless of the fact that ISIS has never presented itself to be a force of the Syrian revolution – indeed arguing that the revolution’s project was an apostate one – whilst many anti-ISIS ‘Islamists’ (in itself often an arbitrary and alien term especially used in Western lexicons, as many “Islamists” simply believe that Islam is political, a position held by most Muslims around the world) have always presented themselves as revolutionaries, all anti-Assad revolutionaries inspired by Islamic precepts in their politics would be seen as inherently ‘the same’ as ISIS (or ‘ISIS-lite’).
The contradictions posed by the reality of the US military intervention when it came in 2014 and which acted to preserve – not “change” – the regime (and doing so both before and after Russia’s intervention), and the ongoing collaboration with the regime since that date (paying put to the notion that the campaign against ISIS and other Islamist groups would be ‘regime-change by the back door’). The low-level campaign of airstrikes by the US airforce against anti-ISIS “moderate” rebel factions for example – which are estimated to have killed up to 200 rebels – were not covered by Stop the War coalition, as such events posed an inconvenient contradiction to the ‘regime-change’ narrative promoted for years by Stop the War.
Incidentally this was indirectly alluded to once by Lindsey German following a John Kerry statement in late 2015 in which US policy was explicitly laid out as “not regime change” (the statement simply reaffirmed long-standing actual and previously declared US policy, but Lindsey German had come across it for the first time), when German declared that the Americans seemed to have “given up on regime change”. She however tempered any positive in her statement by boasting “we were right to tell [anti-STW] Syrians not to trust the Americans”. This was an audacious boast indeed, as it took place a mere few months after scoffing at an identical statement by an Arab activist when he declared that US policy was not “regime-change” but “regime-preservation” – whether with Assad nominally at the head of the regime or not (with indeed even this likely being flexible, as has since been correctly proven). At the time German called the person who said this “idiotic” and declared “there is nothing in their actions to show that they are in any way supporting the Assad regime”.
That Stop the War Coalition understand the popular mood, and understand that opposing anti-ISIS intervention would never have the same prospect of garnering British public support as building campaigns opposing further “regime-change”. Thus they have simply prioritised opposing “regime-change” intervention over opposing “War on Terror” intervention, knowing that if they were to do the latter with the same vigour as the former (without being seen to be offering a solution to the British public beyond “let them sort it out”, regardless of even if this is the right approach) they would lose much of the credibility they gained with the public as during the Iraq war, and that therefore they must prioritise the interventions they seek to oppose.There is also of course a much stronger antipathy toward ISIS within STW itself which is additionally influenced by pressure from “leftist” pro-YPG groups, than there is toward the Syrian regime for example. It may not be inconceivable either that rhetoric aside, a slightly fearful recognition that ISIS is indeed “scary” (note here that there are never arguments made that “we are being lied to about ISIS”, as is the case with the regime) might also have an influence on how they approach (or don’t) the details of the US intervention.
The propagated notion and suspicion held and propagated by many within the movement that the “West is not really fighting extremism in Syria” if not that “the West is supporting Islamist extremism in Syria”. The logical consequence of what follows is a lack of recognition of the tens of thousands of airstrikes (and accompanied destruction) launched by Western warplanes on the towns and cities held by ISIS (and other groups arbitrarily deemed to be “extremist”) entailing a denial and lack of coverage of the casualties and suffering caused by “the West”. The result consequently is not only not “anti-Western imperialism”, but propagation of narratives which are actively distracting from Western imperialism’s actual policies. The reality is that the only extremism the West is supporting in Syria is the regime’s “secular” (that is, not justified in the name of Islam) genocide.
Indeed, during the fall of Aleppo, headlines were made when a spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn responded to criticisms of Stop the War for not protesting in front of the Russian embassy by calling on people to also feel free to protest outside the US embassy. Luckily enough this had already been done, and not by Stop the War Coalition, but by Syrian revolutionaries and their solidarity supporters:
The reality is that it is Syrian revolutionaries who have been constantly awake to the interventions of “imperialism”, both Russian and American. The reality is that whilst Syrian revolutionaries and their networks abroad have always exposed the realities of Western intervention and opposed the crimes of both US and Russian imperialism. The reality are in the below pictures:
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[Embed: Video of protests in Syria against the US intervention]
Stop the War have done little in terms of covering Syria’s realities beyond theoretical buzzwords and conflation of a popular uprising with a foreign invasion (Iraq), and have thus ended up – ironically – neither mobilising against US imperialism nor Russian imperialism. Indeed during the fall of Aleppo, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornburry, an MP who voted for airstrikes in Iraq in 2014 and before that repeatedly against an investigation into the Iraq War, suggested that the solution to Aleppo was the evacuation of 1,000 “Jihadist” fighters which she said “successfully” ended the tragedy of Homs. Homs was the heart of the Syrian revolution, whose population in 14 districts of the city were forcibly evacuated alongside the fighters and continue to be prevented from returning today. Ethnic cleansing. Homs was the city which was levelled to the ground by the Assad regime’s airforce and tanks during four years of siege. The solution she spoke of, of course, was its surrender to the Assad regime. The “progressive” answer she spoke of – though she may not have known it – was the ethnic cleansing of Aleppo.
Thornburry, the “imperialist intervention” supporter, was labelled “very sensible” by Stop the War Deputy Chair, Chris Nineham. The reality is that “intervention” had long stopped mattering for Stop the War – the priority now was “regime-preservation”, contradictorily even if this entailed Western intervention for it, such has been the capital invested into the “regime-change” narrative in Syria. Blunt, Thornburry and others would be happily cited regardless of their voting records if they stood against anti-Assad “regime change”.
Stop the War and Labour mouthpieces also accused Syrian revolutionaries and solidarity activists of distracting from “American crimes” by speaking of Russian ones. When asked to condemn Russia, Stop the War and Labour officials instead blurted out unspecified mentions of the US-led intervention – which has come exclusively against “anti-Assad” forces, both moderate and extreme, who according to the StWC narrative the United States of course actually “supports”.
The statements are an Orwellian upturning of reality onto its head. The first campaigns against the US-led intervention in Syria and the first campaigns exposing and monitoring its crimes were by Syrian revolutionaries and their activists. The reality is that those who Stop the War slander as “pro-West” – the Syrian anti-Assad revolutionaries and solidarity activists – have opposed the intervention of “the West” in their country long before they had a clue of what it consisted of (and indeed, arguably still don’t). And incidentally, they also opposed ISIS long before their “establishments” or StWC’s leadership knew much about it.
Anti-Coalition campaigning from Syrian Revolution Network
Friday of “Terrorism is not fought by allying with terrorists” – 29/08/2014
Friday of “Civilians don’t need International Killers” – 26/09/2014
Friday of “Defeating Daesh is not by the killing of civilians” – 22/07/2016
Amongst the most intellectually-dishonest claims repeated in recent times on Syria is the notion that Russia is being “demonised” in Syria amidst an environment of “Russophobia” and “hysteria” which could lead to a “world war”. This is a cheap way of hiding the Russian sympathies which exist within the upper echelons of Stop the War. Perhaps the most enraging, heartless and insensitive nature of such statements however are the selfish, nationalistic concern they portray. “We” do not want war with Russia. “We” are worried about what escalating tensions with Russia will mean “for us” – all regardless of the realities of the worthless, far away “others” that are actually suffering under a declared war by Russia. These did not matter.
This tendency is further proof of a dangerous isolationist trend visible within left-wing circles: a “critical” yet no-less narcissistic form of Western-centrism. In taking the core unit here to be Western agency and the marginalisation of the periphery (the “Other”), this was a lopsided form of Orientalism. Another problem is that this tendency tends to lend itself to a reactionary methodology: reactionary in the literal sense of being uncritically, superficially and susceptively reactive. ‘Diplomatic’ and rhetorical Western support for “democratic transformation” in the Middle East is hastily cited to condemn the democratic movements themselves as the conspiracy, rather than engaging in a deeper and perhaps more tedious analysis which firstly explains why such diplomatic and rhetorical support may be unavoidable, and secondly actually examines the extent of the genuineness of this Western “support”. However reactionary politics tends to be reactionary for the reason of the simple, effortless narratives they offer, and this is why they tend to be the domain of the Right (and why Assad-apologist narratives on Syria can be often found to be repeated verbatim by both the far-right and parts of the left).
This “alternative patriotism” contradictorily ends up not even countering true Western imperialism, whereby imperialist policy has had to evolve to become less brazen and hide under rhetorical commitments and facades (though with the election of Trump this may be reversed) – but instead it is more interested in occupying a position of easy, posturative counter-conformity, whereby the latest politician statement is taken as the key unit of analysis to pose “in counter” to. This leaves the “alternative patriot” easy pretty to the fact that statements do not make imperialist policy, or necessarily divulge them. Thus in the example given above Lindsey German ignored a Syrian stating that his town was under joint bombardment by the US and Assad, to cite as her evidence “an interview” in which a US official criticised Assad.
Of course the reality is that this is not a genuine principle, but a pragmatic one aimed at getting the support of the wider public. If “world war” was the concern, by the same logic Stop the War should not support the Cuban revolution, or the Soviet-backed Palestinians during the Cold War, for “raising the temperature with the West”. Assuming today that (in an alternative world) Russia was an ally of the Palestinians, would Stop the War have demonised Palestinian calling for a No-Fly Zone in Gaza to be enforced against Western ally Israel? Would Stop the War have said “Hands off Hitler” during the Second World War, as this would also lead to “world war”? (To be clear here, this is not to praise Western imperialism in the Second World War either, which was concurrently colonising and oppressing large parts of the world). If they would indeed have done these things, than it would have been the definition of cowardice and a relinquishing of moral and human responsibilities.
Imperialisms compete as well as collaborate, and often have shared interests. Russia declares officially that its intervention in Syria is one against the Arab Spring revolutions which broke out in 2011, whilst the US simply takes an undeclared counter-revolutionary role. This is why regional Western allies across the board – the likes of Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, Iraq and Libya’s General Haftar – are rushing to seek an extra layer of dual counter-revolutionary protection by Russia as well (contrary to those who declare a ‘return’ today to the Cold War, this dual ‘cross-camp’ US-Russian support would not have been possible then). These are the type of core contradictions which help explain why Israel was for a long time supported by parts of the Western left, as well as being supported – like the YPG today, it is interesting to note – simultaneously by both the US and Russia (indeed to add one more eerie historical repetition, with Israel also identifying then as ‘left wing’ to boot).
Counter-contrarian Continuity
Because of Stop the War’s fundamental failure to distinguish between the US Arab Spring policy of “orderly transitions” – essentially a policy of “regime preservation with facelifts”, whereby the head of the regime is urged to leave power to another regime member as the best way of preserving state institutions intact from collapse (as occurred in Egypt and Yemen), and the wholly different notion of “regime-change”, one of the biggest ironies has been that imperialists and (this brand of) “anti-imperialists” have in fact possessed identical positions and policy prescriptions on Syria, with the latter simply not knowing it:
Whilst official US policy has always been opposing “regime-change” and the victory of the armed revolution, this has been identical to the position of Stop the War. The US has since 2011 ensured this policy via limitations on the provision of qualitative weaponry to the Syrian opposition by regional allies (this has involved the routine seizure of arms shipments at the Syrian border as well as political pressure). This policy proscription urging a blockade of Arab states arming the rebellion is identical to that of the US. Indeed, Stop the War policy documents urging a blockade of arms to the rebels took place at the same time as US statements urging the same thing.
The US has from the start of the armed insurgency (since 2012) placed doubts surrounding the “moderatism” of the rebellion (it was the US that introduced the much disparaged “moderate” term into the lexicon), using this to justify blockading qualitative support to the armed opposition and ultimately maintaining the Assad regime in power. The US vice president declared in 2014 that “there was no moderate middle”. This position was identical to that of Stop the War.
Whilst US policy in Syria has been crucial (arguably more so than Russia) in changing the emphasis in narratives on the conflict from that being of a popular insurgency against a dictatorial regime to a renewed “War on Terror”, this has in fact what StWC have been arguing and implicitly advocating should be the case since 2012. Again, Stop the War’s leadership took a leading role in exaggerating the role of “Islamic extremists” in Syria since 2012 –with this, again unbeknownst to them, taking place at the same time as US statements.
Stop the War’s main demand on Syria has been a “political solution” which “drops the demand for regime change as a pre-requisite” – code for relinquishing the ‘precondition’ for Assad to step down. As it happens, the US has long accepted a “transitional” role for Assad, and indeed also stated that Assad should be able to run for future elections in 2017 – the position StWC effectively espouse.
[9] “The politics don’t matter to the people here, all we see is one type of death – it comes from the sky, whether the Americans are dropping the bombs or Assad, it makes no difference. They are both murdering us. What do you expect any sane person to think here? One day American airplanes and the next Bashar’s, how do they not crash or shoot each other? It is simple, they call each other and say today is my turn to kill the people of Raqqa, please don’t bother me, it will be yours tomorrow.” http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/sharing-skies-assad-america-s-predicament-syria-1105355734;
By contrast to what you would expect of a ‘proxy’, the anti-Assad rebels (which the likes of StWC have long portrayed as ‘US proxies’, often by virtue of them being pro-democracy) have routinely refused to follow US instruction in Syria: opposing its military intervention in 2014 and declaring it “a violation of Syrian sovereignty”, refusing to accept US conditions (generally involving dropping the fight against Assad) in exchange for receiving “support”, consistently highlighting massacres of civilians by the US airforce, opposed the ground intervention of US Special Forces and ultimately for years being subject to (largely-marginalised and unreported) intermittent US bombardment.
The Eternal Spring 