January 3, 2017

Farouk Mardam-Bey is a Syrian historian who has been living in exile in France since 1965 and co-author and editor of several books, including Itineraries from Paris to Jerusalem: France and the Arab-Israeli Conflict , Being Arab and Our France . Here, he offers his comment on the debate among the international left about how anti-imperialists should regard the Assad regime, in an article first published at Pulse .

AS A Syrian who has always identified politically with the left, I am particularly appalled by those men and women who call themselves left-wingers--and are therefore supposed to stand in solidarity with struggles for justice worldwide--and yet openly support the regime of the Assads, father and son, who are chiefly responsible for the Syrian disaster.

Following four months of intense bombardment by the Russian Air Force, Bashar al-Assad's army, along with Shiite militias hailing from everywhere and mobilized by the Iranian mullahs, have now finished "liberating" Eastern Aleppo. Liberated from whom? From its inhabitants. More than 250,000 inhabitants were forced to flee their own city to escape massacres, as had the people of Zabadani and Daraya before them, and as will many more Syrians if systematic social and sectarian "cleansing" continues in their country under the cover of a massive media disinformation campaign.

That in Syria itself wealthy residents of Aleppo, belonging to all religious sects, rejoice over having been rid of the "scum"--meaning the poor classes who populated Eastern Aleppo--is not surprising at all. We are accustomed to it: the arrogance of dominant classes is universal.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad surrounded by his generals (Syrianist)

That Shiite mullahs stuck in another era celebrate the event as a great victory of the true believers over Umayyad disbelievers, or proclaim that Aleppo has been Shiite in the past and will turn Shiite again, can also be understood if one is familiar with their doctrine, as delirious as that of their Sunni counterparts.

Finally, that, in the West, politicians and opinion makers of the far right or the hard right reaffirm, loudly, their support for Assad is also quite natural. Such people have nothing but contempt for Arabs and Muslims, and they believe, today as ever, that these "tribes" must be led with a big stick.

BUT HOW could one fail to explode in anger when one reads statements in support of the regime of the Assads, father and son, issued by men and women who claim to stand on the left, and who should therefore sympathize with struggles for justice everywhere? How could one fail to become exasperated when one hears them praise the independence, secularism, progressive character,and even "socialism" of a lawless clan that took power in an army coup more than 45 years ago and whose only concern is to keep exerting power forever? "Assad forever," "Assad or nobody," "Assad or we burn the country," chant Assad's partisans. And his "leftist" supporters nod approvingly under the pretext that there is no other choice: It's either him or ISIS.

And yet the Syrians who rose in 2011 were the first to vigorously condemn the jihadi groups of all sorts and kinds, and in particular ISIS, that have infested their popular uprising after it was forced into militarization. Completely alien to the demands of liberty and dignity of the popular uprising, these jihadi groups focused their attacks principally on the vital forces of the opposition, whether civilian or military, and cracked down on the population in the areas that they managed to control. In so doing, they buttressed Assad's propaganda inside Syria as well as internationally, allowing him to portray himself as a defender of religious minorities.

The same Syrians who rose in 2011 have, moreover, often expressed their distrust of those who have pretended, and continue to pretend, to represent them, and who proved to be incredibly incompetent. Hoping for a Western military intervention that was obviously never envisaged by the Obama administration, subservient to this or that neighboring country (Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey), divided among themselves and non-existent on the ground, these self-proclaimed representatives were incapable of addressing the world with a coherent political discourse.

But neither jihadi intrusion nor the shortcomings of the self-proclaimed representatives of the Syrian Revolution, nor any argument used to justify the unjustifiable, can invalidate two fundamental facts: that the Syrians had a thousand reasons to revolt, and that they did so with exceptional courage, under conditions of near-universal indifference, countering the ruling clan's limitless terror, Iran's imperial ambitions and, since September 2015, a U.S.-approved Russian military intervention that has already killed several thousand civilians.

IS THIS "Syria of Assad"--where Iran and Russia act as they please, together as well as separately, and whose future now relies exclusively on their agreements and disagreements--independent and anti-imperialist? Let left-wing admirers of the Assad regime read the unconscionable treaty that it signed on August 26, 2015, granting Russia exorbitant privileges as well as complete and permanent immunity regarding all damages caused by its air force.

How can anyone seriously describe as "secular" a regime that, since its beginning and in order to perpetuate itself indefinitely, has striven to poison relations between religious communities, held Alawis and Christians hostage to its policies, presided over the contamination of Syrian society by the most obscurantist form of Salafism, and has manipulated all sorts of jihadists, and not only in Syria?

How "progressive" is it to promote the wildest type of capitalism, impoverishing and marginalizing millions of citizens who barely survive in the suburbs of the main cities? These impoverished Syrians were the main social component of the revolution, and they became the main target of the regime's heavy artillery, barrel bombs and chemical weapons. "Kill them to the last," demanded the Shabbiha (Assad's thugs) from the beginning of the uprising, so that the new "progressive" bourgeoisie could securely plunder the nation's wealth and pile up billions of dollars in fiscal paradises!

If the above is not enough, one can also remind Assad's "left-wing" supporters of the crimes against humanity perpetrated with complete impunity by Bashar's father, Hafez, during his 30 years of autocratic rule. Two locations summarize them: the city of Hama, where over 20,000 people, possibly 30,000, were massacred in 1982, and the prison of Palmyra, the equivalent of an extermination camp, where the jailers used to boast about turning the men they tortured into insects. It is this same impunity that some on the left alas want to extend to Bashar al-Assad, the principal culprit responsible for the ongoing disaster with over 10 million displaced, hundreds of thousands of dead, tens of thousands imprisoned facing torture and summary executions in jail.

Until the executioners are defeated and punished, Syria's endless martyrdom risks foreshadowing many others in the world--a world from which Syria will have vanished.

Translated from the French by Joey Ayoub. First published at Pulse.