Sorry for posting this here, I don’t know a better place. I feel very sick watching the events in my country unveil. Sectarian tensions have been bad for a while, but in a matter of one week, so many of my people have decided that the druze minority is their enemy, and that “liberating” their towns (from their own people!) is their righteous conquest.
I am very saddened about where things have gone. Things just keep getting worse and I see no way out. A small protest in damascus against the violence was attacked by mobs, without any government protection or presence whatsoever (the protest was next to the “parliament” building!). We are living in fascism, where speaking out against sectarian violence is punishable my mob beatings.
I apologize for the rant. I understand probably none of you here is syrian or even middle eastern, so please feel free to ask questions and I will happily answer. At this point this is my only outlet.
I’m sorry my dude, it was the USA plan all along to fuck Syria up and let Israel swallow it piece by piece. I wonder if al-Sharaa has already figured that he is just a useful idiot.
I’m from Turkiye and I understand you comrade. It’s so evil that they first kill the nation and now they’re eating its flesh. In Turkiye, working people of Syria are dying in job murders and the survivors are facing racism and discrimination. Even though, It’s a taboo to have a Syrian refugee friend.(I experienced that a lot). Economic is dying so bad but reactionary ppl blaming the Syrian ppl instead bourgeoisie. We always tought to be an anti imperialist country like “We’re no imperialist”, “We fought with imperialism!” sort of propaganda and then invaded the Syria to end “terrorism”. Also, I’m well aware Alevis getting targeted in Syria now. That’s why, we need an new international to unionize. Enough with the mouth service time to take an action to end this bourgeoisie dictatorship in all regions.
I’m highly interested to learn more about syria. The geopolitical situation globally is hard keep track of imho, even if only vaguely.
From somewhere I read that syria used to be less oppressive but i’m not sure about that. Can you share some insights? Why is shit hitting the fan?
Assad was secular. But he was never supposed to rule, his older brother was trained for that, while he basically lived as a lib international student in london - in fact he became a “darling of the west” like Al-jolani, Putin, Orbán, and Erdoğan once were. He pursued neoliberal economic tactics which caused popular unrest, inflamed by the west and combined with the desturction of iraq created ISIS, since Syria was part of the “Shia Crescent”, countries friendly to Iran (somewhat), and also pro-russian, syria became a major supply hub for hamas/hezbollah.
During the civil war he had surrender a lot of political capital towards russia, which was very unpopular, so russians could basically save syria from being conquered by ISIS, the kurds under the SDF refused to ally with Assad and turned towards the us which started siphoning the oil and actually even build a massive base inside syria. So Syria was left without its oil revenue, sanctioned, depopulated, destroyed and its independence severely compromised. Bad turned to worse, as Assad stop paying his generals basically and lacked founds and access to world markets to rebuild itself, with the turks invading and occupying parts in the north and creating their own militias from al-Qaida factions. Then the Ukraine war happened, distracting russia basically and so Israel and Turkey did their thing and launched an invasion of the hollowed syrian state - It was the last major obstacle before the genocide of palestine could be finished.
Of course you had “leftist” crying about evuuul assad and celebrating his fall, then shaming “tankies” for being hecking problematic (hassan the streamer is an famed example). Now once again the “tankies” were right again (as they always are, were and will be)
Erdo is still darling of the West. Don’t let bourgeoisie parliament distract you.
it depends what you mean exactly by less oppressive. Do you mean of minority ethnic and religious groups ?
Why things are going bad, I don’t think there is one single comprehensive answer. The closest is probably that the country has undergone a devastating and long war for 14 years, and many of the events of this war had sectarian elements which agitated sectarianism in the population. That’s the closest thing to factual I can give.
My own analysis is that the imperial core saw the agitation of sectarian violence as the best way to “disable” syria (in the sense of disabling its struggle against israel and other imperialist aims), similar to how they did Iraq and Lebanon, and I think a lot of sectarian propaganda probably came in with foreign funding. But that’s just my own reading.
Sectarian propaganda combined with war leads to sectarian interpretations of the war and hence agitations. Sectarian violence only leads to more sectarian violence, agitating the other side, and it is just a runaway effect from there.
I’m from that imperial core. I am incredibly sorry and really ashamed of what we’ve done. I know that means nothing, and I am very sorry for that, too.
Yes, thats what I meant.
Its an interesting yet troubling read. The sectarianism kind of reminds me of the way the owner class divides workers in the west. It feels like a similar mechanic.
Do you live in syria or have family there?
but in a matter of one week, so many of my people have decided that the druze minority is their enemy, and that “liberating” their towns (from their own people!) is their righteous conquest.
And in great mockery, after months of getting bombed by Israel and accepting them as an ally they can’t refuse, they do this ethnic cleansing under the name of fighting Israel.
Druze were already brutalized by the “moderate rebels” during the first trump presidency. Syrians nowadays think they can carve out a window in their prison cell, like many others in the region.
In the end the political islam and anti-communist baathism, both failed the arab peoples, as any peoples will be failed by the ideologies opposed to communism.
The Ba’ath did not exactly fail the people, it just lost (similar to how soviet union just “lost”). We could argue that Bashar himself failed Syrians, especially in the 2019-2025 period. But by then, he was as far from Ba’ath as was Gorbachev from Communist party.
To add, in mid 20th century, communist parties in Syria and much of the Arab world were unconditional followers of USSR and influential foreign communist parties, even in matters that like the early support of Israel, or the French communist party supporting the french occupation of Syria. The Ba’ath party emerged instead as an Arab implementation of socialism, where Arab liberation was centered, and dependence or blind following of foreign bodies was rejected. It was only opposed to Communism in that sense. If you look at the Ba’ath congress of 1966, you’ll see it was even more revolutionary than the communists.
I never really thought that Baathism, at least in Syria, was opposed to Communism.
However, I think the reason the Baathist gov’t failed had a lot to do with sectarianism (Alawite minority rule) and neoliberalization (Bashar Al Assad was trying to pull off a Gorbachev or Yeltsin), which is typical to the fledgling national capitalist class, once the national liberation movement is done, and all is left to do is create a typical bourgeois state, with Global South characteristics.
That doesn’t mean the sanctions and war didn’t have an effect, but it did accelerate those contradictions
