Syria: The fall of the regime, the future of the country and Turkey’s war on the Kurds

First published at Arguing for Socialism.

The extremely rapid and unexpected fall of Syria’s Assad dictatorship is a political earthquake in the Middle East. A regime (father and son) that had endured since 1970 is gone.

There were hardly any battles; the regime’s forces didn’t want to fight and just melted away (deserted, defected). Assad’s long-time backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — had all been weakened by recent events, but in any case they could not support the regime if its own forces had lost all will to fight.

The main component of the rebels now in control is Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), once the Al Qaeda group in Syria but now rebranded and improbably claiming to have changed. It has clearly been backed by Turkey but seems to have a relative independence.

The second big component of the rebels is the so-called “Syrian National Army” (SNA), a collection of jihadist gangs completely controlled by Turkey and used as an anti-Kurd militia. Large sections, if not most, of the SNA are simply rebadged Islamic State killers.

An important third and quite separate and independent element of the rebel forces is based south of Damascus in the provinces of Daraa and Suwayda. The latter is the heartland of the Druze community.

What will happen?

The Syrian people are obviously extremely hopeful. Whatever the uncertainties, a ghastly dictatorship has fallen and its prisons have been emptied. There is the prospect of a new Syria but the country has been wrecked and millions of its people are refugees or internally displaced. They want to return but most have nothing to return to. Also, they are unsure about the new regime.

The big question is: What will HTS do now? We should not take HTS leader al-Jolani’s claims at face value. I agree with Gilbert Achcar’s assessment:

The truth is that HTS would not have been able to spread in place of the forces of the collapsed regime had it not pretended to change its skin and open up to a democratic, non-sectarian future. Otherwise, local forces from Homs to Damascus would have fiercely resisted it, whether under the wing of the defunct regime or after emancipating from it. Now, al-Jolani’s haste to claim that he has turned the “Salvation Government” that ruled the Idlib region into the new Syrian government, frustrating the hopes of those who expected him to call for a coalition government, highlights a fact that should have remained in people’s minds: the fact that the residents of the Idlib region themselves demonstrated only eight months ago against HTS’s tyranny, demanding the overthrow of al-Jolani, the dissolution of his repressive apparatuses, and the release of detainees in his prisons.

Some ominous signs of where things are headed:

• The new HTS government has issued a directive to all Palestinian groups on Syrian territory. They will no longer be allowed to possess any weapons, training camps, or military headquarters and must dissolve their military formations as soon as possible and solely do political and charitable work.
• A December 11 article in Rupture reports that “female judges will be banned from courts that are now reserved exclusively for men. All pending cases handled by women will have to be transferred to male judges.” If this means what it appears to mean, it is a very serious step backwards.

Tariq Ali makes a very sharp negative assessment of Syria’s prospects:

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.

Winners & losers

Russia would seem to have lost badly. A longtime client has evaporated. The future of its two big military bases on the Mediterranean coast is completely unclear at this point but their survival seems unlikely.

Another big loser is Iran: all its influence has gone and it no longer has a land link to its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has clearly been badly weakened by the war with Israel. It has now lost its overland supply route from Iran. The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah was not an unalloyed victory for Israel: it was fought to a standstill on the ground in southern Lebanon. 

But there is no getting around the fact that the ceasefire has completely “decoupled” Gaza and Lebanon. Hezbollah’s strategy of limited war on Israel is finished. And under the terms of the ceasefire it may well have to abandon its vast network of tunnels, bunkers and fortifications in the south. The organisation is clearly facing an existential challenge.

Role of Israel

As the regime was collapsing, Israel conducted hundreds of airstrikes against Syria. Hundreds of raids have hit military bases and depots all across the country. The aim is to destroy all heavy weapons as well as the airforce and navy. While Assad was in control Israel knew these would never be used against it; now they want to be sure that no new, potentially hostile actors get control of them.

Israeli ground forces have advanced into Syria from the occupied Golan Heights and are on the outskirts of Damascus.

What is the HTS attitude to Israel? Israel’s bombing certainly helped it defeat the regime forces. And their directive to Palestinian groups to cease and desist is a very clear indication of where things stand.

The Autonomous Administration

All the territory east of the Euphrates is controlled by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria (DAANES) and its armed wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces. Initially, with the collapse of the regime, units of the SDF crossed the river and occupied the city of Deir ez-Zor on the western side, guaranteeing its security. (It is important to understand that while the Kurdish People's Defense Units [YPG] and Women's Protection Units [YPJ] are the backbone of the SDF, it is a majority Arab formation.) But the SDF has now been forced to withdraw back across the river.

Today, the Autonomous Administration controls about one-third of the country and a lot of its wheat lands, oil and water resources.

In the largely empty Syrian Desert, the Islamic State gangs are reforming and growing bolder. This is another big danger.

Role of Turkey

Ever since modern Turkey was founded in 1923, it has pursued an aggressive anti-Kurd policy. Despite being around a quarter of the population, for a century Kurds have suffered repression, massacres, language bans, denationalisation and other marginalisation measures. Today Turkey is trying to suppress any manifestations of Kurdish self-organisation — in Turkey itself, in northern Iraq and in Syria.

Turkey’s main objective in Syria is to destroy any and all expressions of Kurdish national existence, to establish a “buffer zone” along the whole long border with Syria, to ethnically cleanse it of Kurds and to push the Kurds and the DAANES as far south as possible.

Right now, it seems that Turkey is trying to ethnically cleanse all the Kurds west of the Euphrates and expel their self-defence forces.

• In 2018 Turkey invaded and occupied Afrin, the isolated westernmost canton of Rojava, and the most peaceful part of Syria; today it has been ethnically cleansed of most Kurds and is a dangerous, lawless place. Many families of Arab jihadists have been settled there. The next year Turkey occupied another chunk of northern Syria further east.
• After the fall of Afrin many Kurdish refugees moved to Tel Rifaat and the Shehba region. From 2016 security was shared between the SDF and regime forces. Now the SNA gangs have seized Tel Rifaat and Shehba. 150,000-200,000 people were evacuated eastwards.
• Then heavy fighting enveloped Manbij, closer to the Euphrates River. Manbij has a Kurdish community but it is mainly Arab. Thousands of SNA thugs and the Turkish airforce attacked the town as well as the Qerekozak bridge over the river. They met fierce resistance and hundreds of jihadists were killed. A US-brokered ceasefire appears to have fallen through. There are reports of atrocities committed by the SNA gangs.
• The Tishrin hydroelectric dam on the river has also been the scene of big battles and has been damaged and put out of commission. It normally supplies power to Kobane and many other towns and villages on the eastern side.
• The Kurdish community in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods of Aleppo remains largely isolated in the west of the country. The HTS wants the SDF to withdraw but that would leave the Kurds and other communities there defenceless — some 400,000 people would be at risk of massacre. A general mobilisation of the population has been organised for a mass defence of the area. The SDF is trying to negotiate with the new authorities.

Rojava revolution: A beacon of hope

As I wrote in a 2019 article on the seventh anniversary of the Rojava Revolution:

[T]he Rojava Revolution has attracted widespread interest, admiration and support around the world because of its heroic and unyielding fight against the barbaric Islamic State and the extensive and unprecedented participation of women in the fighting forces. Alongside the male YPG is the all-female Women's Protection forces (YPJ), a 25,000-strong women's army which has furnished its share of both military leadership and fighters, and martyrs of the struggle.

In Northern Syria the revolution is attempting to build a new society, one in which all ethnic and religious groups can live together amicably and cooperatively, in which women are empowered to enjoy their full human rights, and which is based on grassroots democracy and a cooperative economy.

Celebrated refugee Behrooz Boochani (an Iranian Kurd) accurately described Rojava as “the most progressive and democratic system in the history of the Middle East”.

This remains the case today and Socialist Alliance remains enthusiastic partisans of the Kurdish freedom struggle in general and in particular the whole emancipatory project represented by DAANES, which involves not only Kurds but Arabs, Assyrians, Chechens, Circassians, Turkmen and others. The area is an incredibly rich mosaic of humanity.

The Autonomous Administration points the way to a new Syria — decentralised and federalised; and democratic, multiethnic, feminist and focused on ecology (which Syria desperately needs if it is to survive rapidly onrushing climate change).

Socialist Alliance & the Kurdish freedom struggle

Our current has always supported the national rights of the Kurds. But with the rise of the Islamic State, and the assaults on Kobani in July 2014 and the epic October-January siege of the city, we stepped things up dramatically. In early October 2014 Socialist Alliance adopted a resolution (see here) committing the organisation to supporting Rojava as a living revolution. We have helped build solidarity actions in collaboration with the Kurdish communities, helped organise two major conferences with our Kurdish friends, continually publicised the issue in Green Left and LINKS, published a pamphlet, held public forums and internal educationals and generally got into high gear on the Kurdish question.

Since the epic struggle around Kobani, solidarity activity on the ground has declined for various reasons (especially since the rise of the Palestine question) but I think we have to look again at what can be done.

Alliance with US imperialism

To survive in the face of Turkey’s aggressive and instransigent hostility, Rojava was forced to enter into a limited alliance with the US. In a 2019 article I explained:

Rojava’s alliance with the US has confused some people on the left. It was only ever a tactical military alliance of convenience.

The US needed ground forces to fight the Islamic State. By itself, bombing from the air was never going to do it. So US imperialism allied with a people’s revolution. But Washington never signed up to support commune-style democracy, feminism, and ethnic and religious pluralism.

Rojava obviously needed US airpower and supplies or it would have succumbed to IS long ago. Of course the US was extremely careful not to give the defence forces advanced heavy weaponry (anti-tank missiles, artillery and anti-aircraft missiles) which could have created serious problems for Turkey.

The US alliance has not stopped Turkey. Washington stood by as Turkey grabbed Afrin and the next year occupied another chunk of the border. Recently, the US did not stop Turkey seizing Tel Rifaat and Shehba and attacking Manbij. However, the US does not want to see the SDF wiped out but made more pliable, hence they tried to negotiate a ceasefire in Manbij (which appears to have fallen through).

Sectarian criticisms

This is all too much for some left groups. For example, Michael Pröbsting argues:

The YPG/SDF, a petty-bourgeois nationalist force active among the Syrian Kurds, has played a highly unfortunate role since the beginning of the offensive of the Syrian revolutionaries. Since the 27 November, it has refused to join the struggle of the liberation fighters to overthrow the Assad tyranny. Worse, it has negotiated a series of deals with the Assad regime, handing over territory and even concluding joint defence agreement to block rebel advances. Let’s be clear: this is a treacherous stab in the back of the Syrian Revolution!

This comes as no surprise. Since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution in March 2011, the YPG leadership — which has very close links with the PKK in Türkiye — never joined the struggle against the tyranny. They rather limited themselves to control Kurdish territories and to keep a peaceful coexistence with the regime.

When the ultra-reactionary Daesh forces (ISIS) attacked the Kurdish territories in 2014, the YPG naturally defended their people against these terrorists (e.g. in Kobane). Socialists could not but support such struggles in defence of the national rights of the Kurds.

However, the YPG leadership went far beyond such legitimate struggles as it has concluded an alliance with US imperialism and jointly occupies the whole eastern region of Syria. By this, they have become foot soldiers of the Yankees and oppressors of the Arab majority population in this region (the Kurds are mostly concentrated in the Afrin region as well as the north-eastern parts of the country).

There are several things that are wrong here:

1. Firstly — and it is not a little thing — there is not just the YPG but the YPJ, the Women’s Protection Units,. The YPJ played a vital role in the struggle against IS and is playing a vital role today defending the Kurdish and other communities. In fact, the intense emphasis on women’s liberation and the formation of a women’s army has no precedent — anywhere, anytime. It is a world-historic development — and deeply inspiring.
2. “The offensive of the Syrian revolutionaries” . . . The fall of the Assad dictatorship is a great thing and naturally popular hopes are high but the “revolutionaries” are a very mixed bag. The HTS are reactionary jihadists as is the SNA, which is conducting an all-out offensive against the Kurds. Naturally the Kurds are trying the survive this.
3. The SDF and its forerunners tried to avoid open clashes with the regime forces and at various times had a limited cooperation with them against IS and Turkish gangs. Some leftists criticise the Kurdish forces for not joining the general anti-regime revolt way back. But the Kurds correctly refused to join in with people who would not accept their national rights.
4. Pröbsting charges the SDF with being “foot soldiers of the Yankees and oppressors of the Arab majority population”. As for cooperating with US imperialism, as I have explained, it has only ever been a limited tactical military alliance, with severe limitations. Diehard left sectarians would deny any agreements with imperialist powers but in the real world it is hard to avoid dealing with the devil if you want to survive.

Arab support for DAANES

Is the SDF the oppressor of the Arab majority population? A section of the Arab population is allied with the Kurds and supports the SDF (which is majority Arab). The regime always used Arab chauvinism (Syria after all was the Syrian Arab Republic and its military was the Syrian Arab Army). It is probably true to say that a section of the Arab community is hostile to the DAANES, but I suspect it is a small section.

Here is one story that caught my eye. It is a powerful refutation of sectarian slanders.

Our comrades Îman and Ayşe, one of our women's defence forces, defended their society until the last moment in the resistance positions in Manbij and fell as martyrs on December 8, 2024 in the village of Qereqozak [near the bridge over the Euphrates] in an armed drone attack by the occupying Turkish state.

Our comrade Îman from the Arab community was a mother of 4 children and was one of the commanders of the Social Defence Forces. She was known among her friends as a self-sacrificing, humble labourer and a mother who was a comrade of hard times. Our comrade, who developed herself under the leadership of women, was educated and raised awareness of her own society with this knowledge. When the enemy attacked Manbij and the war intensified, when her children called her crying, our comrade Îman explained the situation to them in a beautiful language and told them that she and her friends should defend their land. With this determination, Commander Îman heroically resisted in the vicinity of the Qereqozak bridge and was martyred in an air attack by the occupying Turkish state.

Comrade Ayşe, a young child of Kurdish people, came from Lebanon and started living in Manbij. Although it had not been long since she arrived in Manbij, she visited all the institutions in the city with her curiosity, enthusiasm and excitement. She won a place in everyone's hearts with her modesty, cheerfulness and stance. In the HPC, our comrade Ayşe became a recognised fighter of the Revolutionary People's War. She was a pioneer who gathered Circassian, Arab and Kurdish girls around her in the hometown of Martyr Abû Leyla and Koçerîn and organised them with the idea of women's liberation.

DAANES today is an alliance between Kurdish and Arab forces. The progressive ideas of the Rojava Revolution are also making their way, albeit more slowly, among the Arab communities.

It is absolutely amazing that the Rojava Revolution has survived for so long in the face of such a host of enemies (Turkey, IS, the Assad regime, patriarchal attitudes, etc). That it has lasted so long in such a difficult political environment is a tribute both to the burning commitment and sacrifice of the people and the great skill of the leadership in negotiating a way forward.

The Rojava Revolution has not deviated from its path because of the US alliance but has continued to forge ahead with its project.

As opposed to all sorts of sectarians, the Socialist Alliance has put the overwhelming emphasis in our work on solidarity, and publicity and education about the achievements of the revolution. We have tried to inspire people about the whole project and what has been achieved in such a difficult situation. I think that has been the correct approach.