Such is the intensity of the crisis on a world scale that political instability, economic turbulence, social unrest, turmoil and wars have become convoluted. The Middle East, an epicentre of the continuum of violence and oppression for more than a century is a prime example of this phenomenon as it now enters into an even bloodier cycle of devastation, and Syria is the main theatre of these seemingly endless internecine wars and mayhem. Syria is in the throes of fundamentalist terror, imperialist aggression and the interventions of regional powers insanely pulverising society for their brutal hegemonic ambitions. These are wars of attrition with peace talks and negotiated settlements becoming farcical.
Once again, so-called peace talks on Syria’s future have collapsed, even before they began. Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab army of Bashar al-Assad and its allies, backed up by Russian aerial bombardment, are crushing the western and Saudi/Gulf supported jihadis in several regions. As the balance of forces shifts in the war, none of the parties on the ground have any reason to take serious steps in the talks.
The US and EU would like to see a speedy resolution to the conflict that is having a destabilising effect on both; the warring parties on the ground have no interests in leaving the battlefield as it is. Russia, Assad and their allies are making steady progress, and ‘moderate’ rebel groups, supported by Turkey Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar are being forced to retreat. These traditional ‘allies’ of the US now want the superpower to step in and save the forces they have been backing but for the US these allies are becoming more of a liability than the supposed ‘enemy’. US imperialism is in its deepest crisis ever and has completely lost control of the situation in the Middle East.
Vladimir Putin and Ayatollah Khamenei have suddenly become the ‘go to guys’ in Syria, and the Americans must dance to their music. Meanwhile, resentment has been building up in the US camp as Erdogan and King Salman sink deeper into their existential struggle. The Russian entry into the war theatre is a ‘game changer’. The Assad regime, which only a few months ago seemed to be on the verge of collapse, has been reinvigorated by Russian support and is now taking back territory from the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ backed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the CIA. After a series of highly publicised but abysmally failed offensives last year, they are showing significant signs of weakness in the face of slowly advancing regime forces.
It is also becoming clear that the moderate rebels have lost the support of the Jordanian regime. Besides the lack of trust in the competency of the rebels, Jordan is in serious danger of destabilising under the weight of the 600,000 Syrian refugees. This could even lead to a deal with Assad to send some of the refugees back in return for an end to support for proxy groups.
The Syrian regime has also made some gains against Islamic State (IS), in particular in the Eastern Aleppo countryside. Russian intervention has in general managed to turn the situation around. The regime has strengthened its supply routes and consolidated its hold on strategic areas. This in turn has allowed it to gradually advance on the various fronts. Meanwhile, all attempts at counter-attacks by western-backed Islamist groups have been repelled with relative ease.
Only one year ago the situation was completely different. After the sectarian decay of the initial revolutionary movement, Syrian public opinion swung behind the Assad regime, which was seen by many Syrians as preferable to the barbaric alternative offered by the Islamists. In 2014, in the elections, we saw an increased mass participation, notwithstanding their rigged nature. In spite of the support for the anti-islamist campaign, however, the army was not gaining significant ground.
One year ago, the Syrian army was routed from the whole governorate of Idlib, leaving behind a huge amount of arms, artillery and armoured vehicles. Shortly afterwards it lost the small town of Palmyra to advancing IS forces. These humiliating defeats, clearly the result of incompetency of the officer corps, accelerated the collapse of morale in the army and amongst regime supporters. In spite of having full domination of the skies, one of the world’s largest tank fleets and a technically far superior army, the regime was unable to push back the lightly armed Islamists.
Years of corruption, nepotism and the arrogance of a dictatorship corroded the Syrian armed forces, particularly at the top. The incompetence of the officer staff, whose appointments were based more on kinship and connections than any kind of merit, meant that easy victories were lost and basic retreats turned into routs. On top of meagre wages and bad treatment, defections became endemic and draft dodging accelerated. The desperate attempts at hunting draft dodgers and punishing them only made matters worse.
Iranian and Hezbollah officers embedded in the army did not help either as these come from mainly defensive armies with little combat experience in a setting such as the one in Syria. The Russian intervention — placing Russian tacticians at key positions in the chain of command — has transformed the army. Patient and intelligent advances have replaced headless offensives with high levels of casualties and aimless barrel bombing of urban neighbourhoods has been replaced by close support on the ground and targeted bombings of key logistic routes and hubs. Morale has also been raised as a consequence.
However, the utter failure of US strategy in Syria stands exposed. None of the groups supported by the US have any interest in seriously fighting IS with whom many of them are sympathetic. The main goal of the increasingly radicalised Islamists is to overthrow the Assad regime. This is a perspective the US is increasingly at odds with because the removal of Assad, who is the key person holding the state apparatus together, would mean the collapse of the whole state and the overrunning of Syria by Islamic fanatics. The crisis of capitalism asserts itself at all levels — economic, social and political — but also on the military and diplomatic levels, which in turn feed back into the general situation. The Syrian civil war embodies this crisis at all levels. The jihadist insurgency, even if it loses all its territory, will continue for years as regional powers will continue to use them to intervene inside Syria. The newly empowered warlords and tribal leaders, in particular in northern and central Syria, will play a similar role while the Assad regime will crack internally. Years of instability, as experienced by Lebanon, will haunt the Syrian people.
The mass movement has been pushed very far back by these events. A whole generation is shell-shocked and there is no perspective of a new movement in the short term. The only salvation for Syria would be another revolutionary wave developing across the whole region.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]