The Syrian people’s revolution: on the road towards overthrowing tyranny and exploitation, rejecting sectarianism and resisting Zionism

The Revolutionary Socialists – Egypt (8 May 2013)

The latest Zionist raid on the Syrian regime’s military positions, Bashar al-Assad’s escalation of bombing attacks on Syrian civilians in response and the rejoicing by some sectarian factions at these raids, clearly exposes the current situation in the Syrian revolution which has proved so confusing for many revolutionaries in Egypt and the Arab world.


The Zionist raid, which targeted weapons and military research centres, was not in support of the Syrian revolution or retaliation for Bashar al-Assad’s actions. On the contrary, Al-Assad was immediately reassured that Israel would not intervene as a party to the Syrian conflict. Rather, the raid struck at the military infrastructure which could benefit any of the sides in this struggle, since Israel and the imperialist powers want to see the emergence of weak, competing statelets, as the division of Syria becomes a serious option.


So Bashar al-Assad is continuing the task which his father began with the bombing of Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp and the liquidation of Palestinian resistance in Lebanon. Bashar and the regime he inherited have for forty years claimed to be confronting Israel without actually undertaking a single war. Instead they exploited this claim to build a tyrannical, corrupt regime, hostile to its people while nurturing the sectarianism which is bearing fruit today.

He and his regime continued throughout those decades to drain the wealth of the Syrian people, who have suffered poverty and repression for years. Finally, Bashar turned his guns on his own people when they rose in revolt, killing hundreds of thousands in massacres which continue on a daily basis.


However, the popular revolution in which millions of Syrians have participated lacks a revolutionary party and a fighting revolutionary leadership capable of winning wide sections of the people to the ranks of the revolution, especially the Syrian working class in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities.

The dictatorship has kept control of the trade unions and stopped them from engaging in political action for several decades, and likewise the youth of the universities and the revolutionary intellectuals. They view with suspicion some factions of resistance who raise sectarian and reactionary slogans, and who, thanks to good organisation and funding, have come to dominate the revolutionary scene temporarily.


The US, Israel and their allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have sought to push the Arab revolutions towards a choice between the reproduction of the old regime itself (the remnants of the old ruling party), or its replacement by a dependent and pliant sectarian copy of it (the Muslim Brotherhood). Those of us in Egypt who are fighting for a revolutionary regime which will complete the aims of the great popular revolution reject this choice.


It is the duty of all revolutionaries in Syria, Egypt and around the world to support the correct path for the Syrian popular revolution to overthrow tyranny and exploitation, and the ruling class which has leeched the blood of the Syrian people for years. This means fighting to win the working class, the students and the youth and revolutionary intellectuals to the ranks of the revolution and to create a revolutionary leadership that can attract millions of revolutionaries away from sectarian feuds and attempts to divide Syrian society.


The millions who shook the thrones of tyranny in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, will accept nothing less than the completion of their revolutions by the elimination of all forms of exploitation, sectarianism and persecution and the creation of revolutionary regimes capable, through the support of their peoples, and solely their peoples, of confronting Zionism and US imperialism.

Victory to the Arab Revolutions! All power and wealth to the people!

Original Arabic version here