ISIS and counter-revolution: towards a Marxist analysis
The only mention of the Free Syrian Army is an unverified, and unverifiable claim, as the footnote link loops back to the article, that they are linking up with ISIS. The SWP seems to get more ignorant about Syria as time goes by.
"Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and Islamist factions in Syria were reported to be seeking alliances with ISIS in late November as US bombing intensified."
More writing off of the actual revolution in Syria from the SWP, leading to the Islamophobic approach of reducing all the forces fighting Assad to puppets of the Gulf states or America, and identifying them with ISIS. And beginning with the claim that Western states are using humanitarian rhetoric to justify an Iraq-style intervention, ignoring the actual humanitarian disaster they are feebly responding to, and largely ignoring when it comes to Assad.
"The question of sectarianism at a regional level was not of course confined to rhetoric but had by 2012-13 taken the form of interventions by regional powers into the spiralling conflict in Syria, with Sunni Islamist forces armed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf States confronting Hizbollah’s Shia Islamists backed by Iran alongside Assad’s troops."
I noticed this from 2012 earlier:
"It may be time to read, even re-read, Edward Said’s Covering Islam. Critical intellectuals did not believe US propaganda about al-Qaida's links to the Iraqi regime prior to the 2003 invasion. Shouldn’t the same criteria be used in the case of Syria? The regime there has also justified its repression of the popular movement from spring 2011 by depicting it as the work of"Salafis" and "foreign agents" funded by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France, Britain and America. A similar scepticism about the Syrian authorities and their claims would be welcome."
All the above are possibilities especially when you look at the opportunistic alliances established now. My view not necessarily that of the SWP, is that the Syrian Revolution was a good intentioned attempt to produce a more democratic Syria.
ReplyDeletebut because of external circumstances it became rapidly militarised into a civil war.I suspect Turkey was involved in allowing a huge influx of Jihadis and there is plenty of evidence of finance from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to factional groups.