Last December, the Baath Party regime in Syria fell. Bashar al Assad
fled to Moscow on a Russian military flight. The prison doors were
opened, statues were torn down and portraits of the dictator were
defaced. After 13 years of war, bombings of cities, massacres,
deportations, a phase of history is coming to an end for Syria. ---- For
years, the media have depicted Syria as an inextricable tangle of
geopolitical clashes, sectarianism, infinite acronyms, names, factions.
A chessboard in which the various global and regional powers have
conducted war policies on multiple levels. But that's not all. Between
2010 and 2011, in a period of crisis and major movements that crossed
the Mediterranean and other parts of the world from shore to shore, many
regimes born at the end of the colonial era between North Africa and the
Middle East were shaken by major protest movements that in some cases
had an insurrectional outcome. These movements originated from profound
social inequalities and in particular from the conditions of oppression,
unemployment and poverty of the younger generations. In Tunisia, Libya
and Egypt, regimes fell. In Syria, the conflict between the government
and the opposition movement soon moved to the military level and
transformed into a civil war. As had already happened in Libya, the
intervention of other states, and in particular of global and regional
powers, was decisive in consolidating the military capacity of the
factions and therefore in the chronicization of the conflict.
As in Tunisia and Egypt, also in Syria in 2011 new spaces opened up that
were previously unimaginable for the anarchist movement as well as for
other revolutionary tendencies. Particularly well-known in Syria was the
contribution of the anarchist Omar Aziz, who returned to the country
with the beginning of the protests and was personally involved in mutual
aid activities, he put forward the proposal of creating councils as a
form of self-management of communities outside of state control, putting
this project into practice in some places. Arrested by the regime's
forces on October 20, 2012, he died on February 16 in prison at the age
of 63. Thus the possibilities of political and social transformation
from below were soon closed, tightened on one side by the violence of
the regime and on the other by the growing role of Islamist groups that
intend to impose new authoritarian forms of government.
At the same time, in the North East of the country, in the area that the
Kurds call Rojava, Western Kurdistan in Syrian territory, the YPG/YPJ
(People's/Women's Protection Units) militias of the PYD (Democratic
Union Party, part of the KCK, which also includes the PKK) on 19 July
2012 had taken military control first of the city of Kobanê and then of
the areas in the region from which government troops were withdrawing.
In the power vacuum left by the regime, a political process of
self-government was initiated, based on the paradigm of democratic
confederalism. The construction of communes, councils, assemblies was
born at the instigation of the umbrella movement TEV-DEM. This process
of self-government between 2014 and 2016 probably reached its most
advanced experimentation, so much so that faced with the risk of
contagion of revolutionary ideas in neighboring Turkey, Ankara adopted a
policy of war both internally and externally, also with the support of
the Islamic State and other groups. Thus the military plan assumed ever
greater centrality with the creation of the SDF and the capture of
Raqqa. But long years of war can only cause popular protagonism to take
steps backwards. And a symptom of this is partly represented by the
progressive structuring of an administration. Of course, the basic
structures, the communes, the cooperatives are still alive and dynamic.
But today, at least here in Italy, when we talk about the communes and
cooperatives in Syria, we talk about how to defend these experiences,
not how they can serve to develop a revolutionary process.
What are the prospects for Syria now? The horizon seems very bleak. The
Assad regime did not fall because of the revolutionaries. It was the
troops of the authoritarian Islamist religious government of Idlib,
HTS[see UN No. 38 of 1/12/24]that overthrew the regime and formed a
provisional government together with elements of the previous
government. While the provisional government claims to want to respect
the cultural plurality of the country, individual members of the cabinet
express blatantly conservative positions. In this context, the
Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (DAANES) that
governs Rojava is attempting through talks with the provisional
government to be included in the process of building the new Syrian
state while maintaining its autonomy. In the same perspective, it has
opened a dialogue with the KRG, the autonomous Kurdish state in northern
Iraq. But DAANES is at the same time under direct attack from Turkey and
the militias supported by Ankara. It should be considered that the role
of the imperialist powers in the country has not been scaled down by the
new government. Only Russia is in difficulty even if it still maintains
its bases and has started formal relations with the new authorities in
Damascus. The USA, which has various bases in the country, has deployed
a contingent in Kobanê, once again placing the safety of the population
of the city and of Rojava in general under heavy threat.
In this complex situation, it seems clear that the window for a
revolutionary process in Syria has closed, probably for a while. This
does not take away the fact that there are experiences and positions of
a revolutionary nature and that it is important to support them, but the
constitution of a provisional government made up of old and new
reactionary elements and the situation of the country after thirteen
years of war do not seem to leave any space, at least for the moment.
D.A.
https://umanitanova.org/siria-che-fine-ha-fatto-la-rivoluzione/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
fled to Moscow on a Russian military flight. The prison doors were
opened, statues were torn down and portraits of the dictator were
defaced. After 13 years of war, bombings of cities, massacres,
deportations, a phase of history is coming to an end for Syria. ---- For
years, the media have depicted Syria as an inextricable tangle of
geopolitical clashes, sectarianism, infinite acronyms, names, factions.
A chessboard in which the various global and regional powers have
conducted war policies on multiple levels. But that's not all. Between
2010 and 2011, in a period of crisis and major movements that crossed
the Mediterranean and other parts of the world from shore to shore, many
regimes born at the end of the colonial era between North Africa and the
Middle East were shaken by major protest movements that in some cases
had an insurrectional outcome. These movements originated from profound
social inequalities and in particular from the conditions of oppression,
unemployment and poverty of the younger generations. In Tunisia, Libya
and Egypt, regimes fell. In Syria, the conflict between the government
and the opposition movement soon moved to the military level and
transformed into a civil war. As had already happened in Libya, the
intervention of other states, and in particular of global and regional
powers, was decisive in consolidating the military capacity of the
factions and therefore in the chronicization of the conflict.
As in Tunisia and Egypt, also in Syria in 2011 new spaces opened up that
were previously unimaginable for the anarchist movement as well as for
other revolutionary tendencies. Particularly well-known in Syria was the
contribution of the anarchist Omar Aziz, who returned to the country
with the beginning of the protests and was personally involved in mutual
aid activities, he put forward the proposal of creating councils as a
form of self-management of communities outside of state control, putting
this project into practice in some places. Arrested by the regime's
forces on October 20, 2012, he died on February 16 in prison at the age
of 63. Thus the possibilities of political and social transformation
from below were soon closed, tightened on one side by the violence of
the regime and on the other by the growing role of Islamist groups that
intend to impose new authoritarian forms of government.
At the same time, in the North East of the country, in the area that the
Kurds call Rojava, Western Kurdistan in Syrian territory, the YPG/YPJ
(People's/Women's Protection Units) militias of the PYD (Democratic
Union Party, part of the KCK, which also includes the PKK) on 19 July
2012 had taken military control first of the city of Kobanê and then of
the areas in the region from which government troops were withdrawing.
In the power vacuum left by the regime, a political process of
self-government was initiated, based on the paradigm of democratic
confederalism. The construction of communes, councils, assemblies was
born at the instigation of the umbrella movement TEV-DEM. This process
of self-government between 2014 and 2016 probably reached its most
advanced experimentation, so much so that faced with the risk of
contagion of revolutionary ideas in neighboring Turkey, Ankara adopted a
policy of war both internally and externally, also with the support of
the Islamic State and other groups. Thus the military plan assumed ever
greater centrality with the creation of the SDF and the capture of
Raqqa. But long years of war can only cause popular protagonism to take
steps backwards. And a symptom of this is partly represented by the
progressive structuring of an administration. Of course, the basic
structures, the communes, the cooperatives are still alive and dynamic.
But today, at least here in Italy, when we talk about the communes and
cooperatives in Syria, we talk about how to defend these experiences,
not how they can serve to develop a revolutionary process.
What are the prospects for Syria now? The horizon seems very bleak. The
Assad regime did not fall because of the revolutionaries. It was the
troops of the authoritarian Islamist religious government of Idlib,
HTS[see UN No. 38 of 1/12/24]that overthrew the regime and formed a
provisional government together with elements of the previous
government. While the provisional government claims to want to respect
the cultural plurality of the country, individual members of the cabinet
express blatantly conservative positions. In this context, the
Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (DAANES) that
governs Rojava is attempting through talks with the provisional
government to be included in the process of building the new Syrian
state while maintaining its autonomy. In the same perspective, it has
opened a dialogue with the KRG, the autonomous Kurdish state in northern
Iraq. But DAANES is at the same time under direct attack from Turkey and
the militias supported by Ankara. It should be considered that the role
of the imperialist powers in the country has not been scaled down by the
new government. Only Russia is in difficulty even if it still maintains
its bases and has started formal relations with the new authorities in
Damascus. The USA, which has various bases in the country, has deployed
a contingent in Kobanê, once again placing the safety of the population
of the city and of Rojava in general under heavy threat.
In this complex situation, it seems clear that the window for a
revolutionary process in Syria has closed, probably for a while. This
does not take away the fact that there are experiences and positions of
a revolutionary nature and that it is important to support them, but the
constitution of a provisional government made up of old and new
reactionary elements and the situation of the country after thirteen
years of war do not seem to leave any space, at least for the moment.
D.A.
https://umanitanova.org/siria-che-fine-ha-fatto-la-rivoluzione/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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