WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY SICILY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #455 - Syria: what is the outlook after Assad? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On Friday 27 December at the Laboratorio Andrea Ballarò in Palermo,

organised by Palermo Solidale con il Popolo Kurdo, Assemblea NoGuerra
and the Laboratorio Andrea Ballarò, a crowded and well-attended assembly
was held entitled: Syria: war - Jihadism - democratic confederalism.
---- The assembly was attended in person by Amir Abbara, an anarchist
comrade of Syrian origin, in an online connection by Heval Zilan of the
Kurdish women's movement, Yilmaz Orcan, representative of the UIKI
(Kurdistan Information Office in Italy) and Paolo Andolina (Pachino),
international fighter of the YPG (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, People's
Protection Units). The assembly debate, which lasted for at least three
hours, saw the interventions of the four speakers and several
participants in a heated exchange of questions and answers. In a global
way, the political situation in Syria was taken stock, starting from a
historical excursus on the civil war that has lasted 13 years, which
broke out against the despotic regime of the Ba'ath Party led by the
Assads. It was recalled that the civil war in Syria began way back in
2011 and was triggered by the violent and bloody repression carried out
by the Syrian regime against popular demonstrations that were demanding
greater freedom and a radical reform of the state system. A brutal
repression of dissent carried out against defenseless crowds. Bashar
al-Assad's army used armored vehicles, artillery and air force against
the demonstrators to crush the renewal movement that could have put at
risk the authoritarian regime that had dominated Syria since 1970.
Police and army violence has produced thousands and thousands of deaths
and thousands of arrests in Homs, Hama, Latakia, Aleppo, Dar?a, the
southern outskirts of the capital and in many other inhabited centers.
The bloodbath led to the escalation of the conflict and the birth of the
Free Syrian Army, also formed by thousands of soldiers who chose to
desert to side with the revolting population. The violent and blind
repression contributed to radicalizing the protest movement and to
giving a foothold to the most extremist jihadist components that in a
short time would take the lead of the opposition movement, causing the
struggle to slide towards a sectarian conflict, and marginalizing the
secular and progressive components. This turning point is supported
economically and militarily by protagonists external to Syria, who for
various reasons have an interest in reducing or bringing down the regime
of Bashar al-Assad. The United States, Qatar, Turkey and Israel itself
are working to increase the jihadist movements in Syria, colliding with
the interests of Shiite Iran and the geostrategic interests of Russia,
another imperialist power present in that war theater, which has had,
since 1971, in north-west Syria the only naval base in the Mediterranean
at Tartus and the air base at Chmejmim (Latakia). Erdogan's Turkey, in
particular, has intervened massively by supporting the jihadist
militias, seeing in the collapse of the Ba'athist regime the possibility
of realizing the project of a great neo-Ottoman Turkey. Israel itself is
interested in consolidating its presence in the Golan and neutralizing a
historic antagonist in that Middle Eastern quadrant.

In recent years, Bashar al-Assad's regime has been kept alive by the
massive intervention of the Shiite militias of Hezbollah, by the Iranian
Pasdaran, who since 2012 have supported the Syrian army bled dry by mass
desertions, and since 2015 by the direct intervention of the Russian air
force and the Wagner militias.

The Shiite militias have been countered by the massive presence of
al-Qa?ida and ISIS formations. The role of local and Western powers in
the growth of Jihadism and the construction of ISIS itself is
undeniable. The so-called Islamic State has served to create terror and
to precipitate society into a medieval climate pervaded by chaos. It was
no coincidence that the ISIS offensive was directed towards the
territories liberated by the Kurdish militias of North-East Syria, who
since 2011, with a thousand difficulties, have been trying to build a
new model of society based on Democratic Confederalism, a form of
non-state political administration, a stateless democracy, flexible,
multi-cultural, anti-monopolistic, consensus-oriented, with secularism,
feminism and environmentalism as its central pillars. A society where
women are the main protagonists, based on libertarian municipalism,
where the society of capitalist modernism is overcome in favor of a
society of free and equal men and women, with true gender equality and
maximum respect for nature.

ISIS jihadism was stopped by the popular struggle, by the militias of
the YPG, the YPJ (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, Women's Protection Units) and
the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) who at the cost of thousands of
deaths managed to defend Kobane and conquer Raqqa, the capital of the
Islamic State. Kurdish women were on the front lines in the fight
against jihadism.

The collapse of the Damascus regime, melted like snow in the sun, marks
a new course in the Middle Eastern panorama. The new Syrian rulers,
armed and protected by Turkey and cleared by the entire capitalist West,
come from the ranks of ISIS and al-Nusra (heir to al-Qa?ida). If we can
only rejoice for the collapse of the Ba'athist regime, responsible for
brutal crimes against the Syrian people, we must be cautious about the
future prospects of Syria and the dangers of direct confrontation
between the imperialist powers interested in this geo-strategic quadrant.

In the chaos generated by the collapse of the Damascus regime, the
jihadist militias of the Syrian National Army, armed and led by Turkey,
have begun a decisive attack against Northern and Eastern Syria, forcing
the SDF, the YPG and the YPJ into direct confrontation in both Aleppo
and Manbij. The martyr city of Kobane itself is in danger, the attacks
of the jihadist militias are supported by intense bombings by the
Turkish army throughout Rojava.

The Executive Council of North and East Syria celebrated the fall of the
regime by raising the green, white and black flag on public buildings, a
symbol of the revolution against Assad, and at the same time called for
the formal recognition of political and administrative autonomy and the
formulation of a democratic and secular confederal constitution for Syria.

The outlook is bleak, the risk of balkanization and the outbreak of a
global conflict is real.

Today, the defense of the revolution in Syria, and the defense of
Democratic Confederalism is the main task of the democratic and
progressive components both in Syria and throughout the world.

Renato Franzitta

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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