Hari – I looked again at Tariq Ali’s piece and it is worse than I remembered, and very much in accord with what I was criticising a decade ago (in language Mark B finds off-putting – far enough Mark, but I happen to think “celebrity revolutionaries” was an excellent choice of words). It is essentially your Point ii I am dealing with here, but when I went back to his article I found I had to take more of it apart, so sorry for the long contribution.
“None but a few corrupt cronies will be shedding tears at the tyrant’s departure. But there should be no doubt that what we are witnessing in Syria today is a huge defeat, a mini 1967 for the Arab world.” So, just to be clear, it is not the moment in general – ie Israel’s holocaust in Gaza, its worst defeat of Palestine since 1948, as well as its fairly easy defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon and destruction of perhaps 50% of its missile capacity – that he is referring to as a 1967-type defeat, but the successful Syrian people’s revolution against one of the most vile tyrants on Earth. That’s quite a statement. Obviously the world’s working class and liberation movements need kleptocratic tyrants to hold the line for them, even ones that never did a thing for Palestine, and in fact have killed more Palestinians than any other regime other than Israel itself. “As I write, Israeli land forces have entered this battered country. There is not yet a definitive settlement, but a few things are clear. Assad is a refugee in Moscow. His Baathist apparatus did a deal with the Eastern NATO leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (whose brutalities in Idlib are legion), and offered up the country on a platter. The rebels have agreed that Assad’s Prime Minister, Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, should continue to oversee the state for the time being. Will this be a form of Assadism without Assad … ?” What? Tariq Ali has been in the stratosphere so long he has forgotten all about the role of the popular masses and only sees deals among the capitalist elites. His Baathist apparatus offered up the country on a platter to Erdogan? What the fuck is he talking about? He didn’t notice that the entire Baathist army simply collapsed because there was no worker in uniform in the whole of Syria who thought it was worth offering up his life to defend his thieving, torturing oppressor? He didn’t notice the thousands of other workers in uniform who were greeted by overwhelming masses of people in every city, who immediately went about doing everything from controlling traffic to restoring services to opening the Belsen-like dungeons and beginning he search of the mass graves? The state apparatus collapsed. There’s no army. Erdogan indeed. My point about celebrity revolutionaries back then was precisely that if you achieve that status you no longer have to research, even to know anything about a situation, to issue sweeping statements that might be so general that they are wrong, or maybe even just outright wrong, because you expect people to listen to you because you are called Tariq Ali. HTS and the other FSA factions that fought alongside it are not Turkish proxies at all, and in fact have been involved in an ongoing struggle with Turkey and its proxy SNA for a number of years, and I’ve written about that and provided detail and sources as always and I’m not about to “prove” it here, but either way this sweeping popular revolution would be a lot more than an ‘Erdogan takeover’ even if HTS was a proxy. “Erdoğan (whose brutalities in Idlib are legion)” – in Idlib? What the fuck is he talking about? Never mind. “Like Iraq and Libya, where the US has a lock on the oil, Syria will now become a shared American–Turkish colony.” Sartesian already made some comments on how the “oil” obsession often turns out to be false; my problem here is more about comparison of unalike situations. The Syrian revolution is not remotely “like” the US invasion of Iraq, and neither are “like” the somewhat in-between Libyan situation. What is Ali’s evidence that the only thing that can happen is for Syria to become a “shared American-Turkish colony”? Zero. Is there even a US-Turkish joint interest in Syria? For the last 10 years, the US intervention in Syria has been in support of the Kurdish-led SDF in its war against ISIS in eastern Syria, a war that was basically parallel to the main war in Syria between regime and rebels in mostly western Syria. Turkey sees the SDF as its main enemy. The US-backed SDF controls most of Syria’s oil wells (this is what is behind the dumb tankie meme that “the US steals Syria’s oil”). The regime, which controls the gas, also has oil refineries, so the SDF, with US permission, sends oil to the regime to refine it, in exchange for the regime keeping some of it. Turkey has continually tried to persuade the regime to launch a joint war against the US-backed SDF. This pisses off HTS and the FSA brigades independent of Turkey because they see the regime as the main enemy. The regime responds yes, good idea, but first remove yourself from Syria. Erdogan knows if he did that, the regime would have overrun Idlib and northern Aleppo and hence sent another up to 5 million refuges fleeing into Turkey which already has 3.7 million Syrian refugees, which is wants to get rid of, but knows won’t leave while Assad remains in power. That’s a brief summary of an enormously complex situation. But who needs facts when you can just write whatever? “US imperial policy, globally, is to break up countries that cannot be swallowed whole and remove all meaningful sovereignty in order to assert economic and political hegemony. This may have started ‘accidentally’ in the former Yugoslavia but it has since become a pattern.” Don’t get me started on Yugoslavia. But same deal – actual people, their movements, the working classes, the local bourgeoisies etc – all irrelevant; it is just a matter of the US “breaking them up.” Crap. “Now, Assad’s ousting has created a different type of vacuum – likely to be filled by NATO’s Turkey and the US via the ‘ex-al-Qaida’ Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the rebranding of its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani as a freedom fighter after his stint in a US prison in Iraq is par for the course), as well as Israel.” Like any neocon, and the Israeli government, Tariq Ali insists on putting ex-al-Qaeda in quotation marks. Jabhat al-Nusra was affiliated to al-Qaeda for three years (2013-2016), then quit, then joined with 5 other non-AQ Islamist groups to form HTS, and thus the core group has been out of AQ for 8 years. It remained a Sunni Salafist organisation, but was transformed also by the realities of governance of Idlib for 8 years. It remained sectarian for some time, but over the last few years has also grown out of that (again, I can demonstrate with sources etc), and above all, this revolution would not have happened if not for HTS acting in an utterly non-Sunni sectarian way towards the Christians, Druze, Shiites, Alawites and Kurds. But never mind, smart people like Ali know it is all just “rebranding,” just as the Israeli government does. “The latter’s [Israel’s] contribution was enormous, having disabled Hezbollah and wrecked Beirut with yet another round of massive bombing raids.” This is more contentious – I can understand people who know stories of “Israeli support to al-Qaeda” are bullshit, but nevertheless think that Israel’s destruction of much Hezbollah and Iranian capacity may have inadvertently aided the overthrow of Assad, despite Israel being dead against it as can be demonstrated easily. However, again, I dispute this, though that needs a fuller study. Hezbollah was unable to be of much use helping Assad not due to either defeat or victory but due to *being in southern Lebanon where it is supposed to be resisting Israel which is supposed to be its raison d’etre*. People supported Hezbollah resisting Israel, didn’t they? So in other words, while Hezbollah was doing something positive for the world, it simultaneously aided the Syrian people in doing something positive for the world, by not being in Syria at Assad’s service. The rebels quite deliberately did not begin their long-planned ‘Operation Deter Aggression’ (Assad and Russia had been bombing Idlib since October 7) until the Lebanon ceasefire precisely in order to not aid Israel. The ceasefire agreement moves Hezbollah above the Litani, to be replaced by the Lebanese Army. What of the destruction of much of Hezbollah’s arsenal? That was the missiles aimed at Israel, as a form of Iranian forward defence, which were largely not used even to defend Hezbollah ro Lebanon, let alone Gaza. They have nothing to do with Hezbollah’s past role in Syria. The Iranian-Hezbollah role in Syria in support of Assad was largely manpower. With a ceasefire, Hezbollah could have decided to rush its troops to Syria, but made it clear that it would not, especially after the Assad regime had not lifted a finger to help them. As for Iran, it had thousands of troops in Syria, plus thousands more Iran-backed Shiite troops from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They were there; they could have fought. They chose not to. Iran ordered them to withdraw. It became apparent that Iran now considered Assad a liability and a traitor, that he was sharing intelligence with Israel etc – OK, let me get the article together on this one. “Will Erdoğan do the same? The Sultan of Donkeys will surely want his own people, nurtured in Idlib since they were child soldiers, in charge and under Ankara’s control.” Sultan of Donkeys. No comment required. His people, who? HTS? Allied FSA brigades? Of course the years of struggle of Syrian people I arms against the dictatorship was jot their own, they were just Erdogan’s people, “nurtured since they were child soldiers.” The guy does not need to say “sultan of Donkeys” to show that he is full of Orientalist crap. “Erdoğan is strong on demagogy but weak on actions, and the US and Israel might veto a cleansed al-Qaida government for their own reasons, despite having used the jihadis to fight Assad.” “Might”. I guess he hasn’t noticed that Israel immediately launched a gigantic attack on free Syria the moment Assad fell, to destroy everything that Israel considered safe while in Assad’s hands, but had to be prevented from falling into the hands of the rebels, as Israeli leaders have been saying now, and have been saying for over a decade. They “used the jihadis to fight Assad.” How do you answer outright lies apart from just declaring the to be lies? Has he offered sources, evidence for the stupid assertion? “Regardless, it is unlikely that the replacement regime will abolish the Mukhābarāt (secret police), illegalize torture or offer accountable government.” Remarkable, Tariq Ali believes the Mukhābarāt is still in place. Thise who haven’t fled the country are being hunted down. “All US client states in the region remain intact, while three non-clients – Iraq, Libya and Syria – have been beheaded.” Yet the “US client states” United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan are terrified of being next, it is no coincidence that the ‘Abrahams Accords’ states, in the broad sense, those with relations with Israel, are identical to the ‘Assad Accords’ states, on a logical, counterrevolutionary basis. The “camps” he imagines exist do not. “Geostrategically, it is a triumph for Washington and Israel.” Yet Israel obviously does not agree. Even just a couple of days ago: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar: "This is a gang of terrorists who were first in Idlib and then took over the capital city of Damascus and other areas." https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/401397 . Geez, sounds like Tariq Ali. Not sure if you saw my article on Israel’s massive attack on free Syria: Background and motivations: https://theirantiimperialismandours.com/2024/12/19/israels-massive-attack-on-free-syria-background-and-motivations/ It gives plenty of detail showing that Israel does not think what Tariq Ali imagines it thinks. On Tue, Dec 31, 2024 at 1:10 PM sartesian via groups.io <sartesian= [email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 30, 2024 at 09:08 AM, hari kumar wrote: > > > ii) Ali - "Like Iraq and Libya, where the US has a lock on the oil, Syria > will now become a shared American–Turkish colony. > > > Please provide some data that indicates the "lock" the US has on Libyan > and Iraqi oil. US imports 15 times more oil monthly from Canada than from > combined Iraqi/Libyan sources. US accounts for 7%. of Iraqi exports . US > petroleum companies have small positions in Iraqi petroleum operations, > amounting to 2% of ownership, less than China's positions. > https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/crude-oil/112024-china-steps-up-presence-in-iraqs-oil-gas-sector-as-us-players-stay-on-sidelines > > US has, and has historically had, greater ownership in Libya with Hess, > Occidental, Marathon and Conoco having significant production long before > the overthrow of Qaddafi. > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34335): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34335 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/110333291/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
