Last week, the jihadist regime of al-Jolani orchestrated another pogrom. Those targeted were members of the Druze minority in Syria’s southern Suweida province. Using this as an excuse, Israel dropped enormous bombs on the headquarters of the defence ministry and sites near the presidential palace in Damascus.
Both Jolani and Netanyahu are creatures of western imperialism. Now both of them, each in their own way, are pushing the country to the abyss of renewed sectarian barbarism.
With Iran and its allies weakened, the balance of power has changed in the Middle East. Two increasingly hostile powers now face each other: Israel and Turkey, both allies of the West.
The Turkish-Qatari backers of the fundamentalists in Damascus want to see the regime extend its control over the whole of Syria. They are advancing their agenda through terror, summary executions, and sectarian bloodletting.
For their part, the Zionists want to grab Syrian territory to check their Turkish rivals’ ambitions, and to permanently weaken Syria. In this, they are content to watch Jolani’s cutthroats drive Syria’s minorities into a corner. Once there, Israel has designs to exploit the desperation of the Druze and others in order to turn them into their own proxies.
In other words, both reactionary sides, both western allies, are quite knowingly pushing Syria towards complete destruction and a new civil war that could be even more devastating than the last, purely for their own cynical interests. Until imperialism is driven out of Syria and the Middle East, there is no future for Syria or its people.
[Note: Jolani is known as al-Sharra in the western press, who in their bid to whitewash him, refuse to use ‘Jolani’, his Al Qaeda nom de guerre.]
Massacre in Suweida
On Friday 11 July, violence flared between armed Sunni Bedouin tribesmen and Druze militias in southern Syria’s Suweida province. Allegedly, the violence erupted after armed Bedouins established a roadblock and stole the vegetables of a Druze vegetable merchant, before subjecting him to a sectarian assault.
That these horrors were triggered by the theft of vegetables shows what poverty relentless imperialist intervention has created. This is the poisoned soil from which sectarian violence is sprouting. In the course of the civil war, the Syrian economy collapsed by 85 percent. Its economy was reduced to the size of the pre-7 October Palestinian Territories.
Following this outbreak, Jolani’s regime in Damascus took the opportunity to send troops, tanks, artillery and drones to the southern province to ‘restore order’.
Suweida has been out of the Damascus regime’s control since before Jolani’s jihadist mercenaries seized power last December. Control has instead been in the hands of a number of Druze militias, led by the religious minority’s three spiritual leaders. The clash was Jolani’s pretext to attempt to extend his regime’s control southward.
Events followed a similar pattern to the pogrom conducted in the western coastal regions when the army was deployed against the Alawites in March.
Jolani put out the call to ‘restore order’ and ‘calm’. The Salafist mosques supplemented this with a call for jihad. Then his army of foreign jihadist mercenaries entered the fray and began committing a massacre.
The regime troops immediately joined in the fighting against the Druze on the side of the Bedouin tribesmen. Summary executions were carried out. Bodies were left lying in fields, along roadsides, and in homes where whole families were killed while huddled together. The faces of Druze men were shaved as a mark of humiliation. So far, more than 1,000 have been killed, the majority Druze civilians.
After his forces had committed their massacre, this former head of Al Qaeda, who is now the darling of the West, told the Druze that “protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities.” As he had done after the massacre of over 1,500 Alawites in March, he promised a “full investigation”.
Incidentally, no results of any ‘investigation’ into the killing of Alawites have seen the light of day. No one was punished. Quite the contrary. The jihadist militiamen that carried out those murders have since been promoted in the Syrian army, including the leader of the Hamza division, who is now a brigadier general, whilst the Turkistan Islamic Party militia that carried out many of the attacks was officially integrated into the army in May.
We cannot fail to at least pay Jolani this compliment: what a master he has become at playing the tune that the hypocrites of western imperialism love to hear!
Jolani is a complete cynic. He isn’t driven by any principles. He just wants to open the country up to imperialist investment, allowing them to loot the country in exchange for reestablishing the power network, for instance. But more than anything, he needs time to bring the country into his iron grip.
He knows that to get this, he must use the sweetest liberal phrases to reassure his western benefactors, ensuring their assistance, while at the same time using the most ruthless methods in order to establish full control. He leaves it to others around him to translate those phrases into the language of the pogrom.
Zionist interests
In terms of cynicism, though, Jolani meets his match in Netanyahu. “We are working to save our Druze brothers,” Netanyahu stated. In southern Syria, the butcher of Gaza, we are told, wants to prevent a genocide!
In pursuit of this mission, Netanyahu began bombing the Islamist regime’s units around Suweida, and then dramatically dropped enormous bombs on Damascus, blowing up the Ministry of Defence building.
It’s clear what Netanyahu’s cynical game is. First, there is personal political survival. The war in Gaza has exhausted all possible military targets. At the moment, the IDF is fighting an invisible guerrilla enemy. He failed in his effort to draw the US into a protracted war against Iran. He therefore needs new wars to tie his far-right coalition partners to himself.
But beyond Netanyahu’s own personal interests, Syria holds strategic importance for Israeli imperialism. The fall of Assad has unexpectedly strengthened their rival: Turkey. The Zionists want to ensure Syria remains a weak, divided nation and that no regional player can ever turn Syria into a strong proxy.
In December, after Jolani’s gang swept to power, the Israelis bombed all of the military hardware they could locate inside Syria to prevent it falling into the new regime’s hands.
And after the pogrom against the Alawites in March, and now against the Druze, the Israelis cynically step forward as the ‘protectors’ of these groups. But they know as well as anyone that Israeli imperialism is hated by all and sundry inside Syria. To be seen to be bombing Damascus on behalf of the Syrian Druze – who also hate the Israeli regime, by the way! – will only make the Druze themselves the targets of sectarian animosity.
All this is very much to the satisfaction of the Zionists for whom ethnic civil war is a means to weaken Syria and to its permanent partitioning. They are masters of manipulating national groups and stoking animosities. Indeed, they have worked to mould the Druze inside Israel into a ‘favoured’ minority for years. Netanyahu’s ‘humanitarian’ intervention is also being conducted with one eye on firming up support from the Druze inside Israel, and another towards extending Zionist expansionism over the Syrian border.
Israeli imperialism wants Syria permanently partitioned and destroyed, never again to pose a threat to their ambitions. They already have troops stationed inside Syria beyond the Golan Heights, which they have now declared a permanent occupation.
Now they are talking about southern Syria becoming a permanently ‘demilitarised zone’, no doubt with designs for future settlements. Indeed, in April, Israel opened up southern Syria for Israeli ‘tourists’ (read: settlers) to take a look around. They want to use the Druze to weaken the Jolani regime, check Turkish influence in Syria and to push their expansionist aims forward.
Netanyahu’s poisoned offer to the Druze
Driven into a corner alike by Jolani and Netanyahu, the Druze now find Netanyahu’s hand of ‘friendship’ extended their way. He is giving them two options: face Jolani’s cutthroats alone or submit to being an Israeli proxy.
Faced with the onslaught of Jolani’s mercenaries, numerous young Druze have taken up arms, joining the militias to fight back. These are undoubtedly sincere young people of humble origins.
All over social media, they have made it clear: they are Syrians, they do not want to break up the Syrian nation, only to defend their families and to fight this reactionary, medieval regime. And they do not want Israel’s help; they want Zionism out of their country.
But only reactionary choices face the Druze in the forthcoming period. In a situation as we have now in Syria, events take on a logic of their own. The immediate options before the militias are: to submit to the tender mercies of al Jolani, or to align with Israel, which not only means the break-up of Syria, but poses the danger that the Druze of Damascus, within the reach of the jihadist cutthroats, become hostages of the jihadis and targets for revenge.
Both options are disastrous. The three Druze spiritual leaders – who exercise influence in Suweida and in the militias, although there are many militias, and new ones formed in the last week – have pointed in both these reactionary directions. First, they came out and agreed to allow Jolani’s troops into Suweida, only for one of the leaders, al-Hijri, to later call on Trump, Netanyahu, Bin Salman, and King Abdullah II of Jordan to intervene to ‘save Suweida’.
None of the leaders of the militias have any perspective, and in fact there is no perspective under this system. Syria will remain a playground for the imperialists, and it will experience horror after horror, until capitalism is kicked out of the country and the whole region.
There is literally no future for Syria or its people under capitalism. Their very existence is threatened by imperialism.
Imperialist meddling
An imperialist redivision is taking place in the Middle East. With Iran and its allies weakened, Israel sees its main regional antagonist in Turkey.
The collapse of the Assad regime was an unexpected consequence of Israel’s war in Gaza and a boon for Turkey. Assad’s main backers were Iran and its allies, who were distracted by Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran itself, and the Russians, who were focusing on Ukraine.
Now it is Turkey and Qatar who are the real powers in Damascus. The Israelis are increasingly uneasy, with talk about the Russians withdrawing from their Tartus port on the Syrian coast, and Turkey taking over the T4 airbase, bringing Turkish air operations within range of Israel.
As the recently released Nagel Commission report on the reorganisation of the IDF put it, in direct reference to Turkey and Syria, “Israel must be prepared for war.”
Israeli media is making ever more noise about the Turkish threat. This includes talk about Erdogan’s alleged nuclear ambitions, as the country’s first nuclear plant at Akkuyu is going live this year, giving Turkey the ability to potentially enrich its own Uranium.
With their intervention, the Israelis sent a strong warning to Jolani: they will not allow Damascus (and thereby Turkey) to extend its influence up to the Israeli border.
Jolani knows he needs to tread carefully. That is why he is courting everyone: the Europeans, the Americans. Until recently, he even put out feelers towards Israel, under pressure from Trump, suggesting that he would be open to normalisation of relations.
He needs time to build up a regular army and consolidate his regime, and isn’t keen on a war with Israel. He is not in a strong position.
Jolani got the message after Israel’s intervention: Israel has eliminated the leaders of Hezbollah, and they’ve killed Iranian generals. Jolani and his friends will be next if he doesn’t tread carefully, a threat that Ben Gvir has made explicitly.
He therefore attempted to beat a retreat. But Jolani is finding it is easier to unleash his mad dogs than to rein them in. He is not in full control of the jihadist ranks of his army. They regard the Druze as apostates to be killed.
There have now been three ceasefires. During the first, instead of respecting it, government troops extended their pogrom into the city of Suweida itself. Jolani agreed to withdraw his troops on Wednesday 16 July, after Israel’s bombardment, but the murder continued. It’s clear many troops continued their rampage alongside the Bedouin tribesmen, whilst others are still assisting the Bedouin by letting them through roadblocks, providing them with ammunition, and so on.
This is the real character of the Syrian regime, beneath the lick of varnish that the West has given Jolani as a respectable politician and state-builder.
Western imperialism to blame
Some sort of clash between the West’s most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel, and NATO-member Turkey looks increasingly likely. Both sides are vying for the West’s full backing, and we see this in the present events.
The European imperialists, stupidly as ever, were the first to embrace Jolani and also the most enthusiastic. They have a deal with Erdogan to control the flow of migrants to Europe, particularly Syrian migrants. Now they and Erdogan hope that a strong Jolani regime leading to some sort of economic stabilisation (through opening up the country for imperialist looting) might see Syrian refugees returned. It makes you question the intelligence of these people. The way events are developing, ethnic cleansing in Syria is on the cards, and with it a new, even worse chapter of the migrant crisis.
Donald Trump’s position, however, has been more erratic. And this was no doubt an important motivation in Netanyahu’s intervention too.
During the last massacre in March, which occurred at the same time as the ceasefire in Gaza was coming to an end, Donald Trump came out very clearly with the same line as Netanyahu. He sharply denounced the Islamist regime in Damascus.
But since then, Trump has been developing a different strategy. In May, Trump met Jolani, where he paid him many compliments, and lifted sanctions on Syria. This was at the same meetings in the Middle East from which Netanyahu was excluded, where Trump also signed deals left, right and centre with the Gulf states, including Qatar. Moreover, it was following these meetings that Jolani mooted the idea of the renormalisation of Syrian-Israeli relations and possibly joining the Abraham Accords. Turkey and Qatar have also become key brokers in negotiations over Gaza.
It’s clear what Trump’s strategy is. He wants to bring both American allies together, Israel and Turkey, in order on that basis to then withdraw US imperialism from the region. There’s a logic to it, but it is hopelessly utopian.
By his latest actions, Netanyahu has driven a coach and horses right through Trump’s Middle East plans. Trump is not a man who is known to relish being undermined and double-crossed.
In the words of one US official: “The bombing in Syria caught the president and the White House by surprise. The president doesn’t like turning on the television and seeing bombs dropped in a country he is seeking peace in and made a monumental announcement to help rebuild.”
Another put it a bit more bluntly: “Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time.”
Trump would like to withdraw US imperialism from the region, having been elected on a platform of putting an end to the ‘forever wars’, but it is trapped there, entangled in the web of contradictions of its own making, through its own meddling.
It is western imperialism, the US and Europeans, that planted and watered the seeds of what we see now in Syria. Their meddling in the first civil war in 2011 tore apart the fabric of Syrian society. They created the array of armed Islamist factions that now dominate the country with their funding and weapons. On the other side, they created, fed and armed the monstrous regime in Tel Aviv.
They continue to support both Turkey and Israel, who are both working together from opposite ends to whip up a new, even deadlier civil war. Other regional powers (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE) are waiting in the wings to participate in the carve up. Such an outcome now seems inevitable at this point. Western imperialism has essentially worked to destroy Syria as a nation in the furtherance of its interests.
On the basis of capitalism, the Syrian people will perpetually find themselves the victims of imperialist intervention and war. There is no way out under this system, there is no prospect whatsoever of a united, strong, democratic nation. Only when the working people and the oppressed find a leadership under which they can unite and fight a war to the death against capitalism and imperialism in the region will Syria be reborn as part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
