By Jeremy Dewar
Ahmed al-Sharaa announced the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on 8 December, only 11 days after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched their offensive from Idlib in the northeast of Syria.
Though it was a coalition of opposition forces that took Damascus, it was HTS, the largest and most effective fighting force, who initiated and co-ordinated the seizure of power, and quickly formed a provisional government.
The ongoing revolution
Assad’s defeat was facilitated by Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and Iran’s militia, and by Russia’s preoccupation with its war in Ukraine. It was not, however, the result of a US-Israeli-Turkish conspiracy to remove a stalwart of the Axis of Resistance against the Zionist state. His fall merely confirmed that his brutal dictatorship was almost entirely dependent on the support he received from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
In fact Assad’s overthrow was a continuation of the revolution that erupted in March 2011. That uprising quickly spread to all parts of Syria, even the cruelly repressed Kurdish areas (Rojava) and the Alawite religious minority, up to then considered Assad’s social base. Their grievances were both social, the oppression of women and the Kurds for example, and economic, mass unemployment and poverty wages inflicted on 85% of workers, etc. It was not restricted to students and the intelligentsia but mobilised the urban poor, many of whom came from rural areas where the Ba’athist regime had handed over the land to crony landlords.
The people quickly formed Local Coordinating Committees to plan actions and deliver immediate supplies and services in the liberated zones. As the regime withdrew, White Helmets took over the tasks of first response and civil order duties, while local councils were elected or appointed to run the administration. As the repression increased, conscripts and commanders of the Syrian Arab Army defected, forming brigades of the Free Syria Army, though they were only loosely coordinated.
This phase of the revolution was marked by a spirit of unity amongst the various religions and sects, under the popular slogan, ‘One, one, one Syria’. The participation of women and solidarity with the Kurdish rebels were pronounced. Unsurprisingly, religion was not absent, seen in the popular slogan, ‘Syria, Allah, Freedom’, to which pro-regime forces countered with, ‘Syria, Allah, Assad’. Religion, as Marx said, is ‘the heart of a heartless world’ and flourishes in conditions of extreme poverty and repression.
Nevertheless, political Islamist forces soon emerged, particularly as militias, pushed out of Iraq took root in Syria. The most important were those of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who broke with al-Qaeda and formed the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) in March 2013. Turkey and, to some extent, the Gulf monarchies supported these forces as a means of punishing Assad. As they became better armed, they began to displace the FSA, through assimilation or by force.
The exception was Rojava. Here, the dominant force was the Turkish-based Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), known in Syria as the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Their ideology had shifted significantly away from Maoism towards the ‘libertarian municipalism’ of the US anarchist Murray Bookchin.
As the YPG militia liberated areas, they installed local councils that carried out various democratic reforms, particularly aimed at the liberation of women. However, other opposition forces in Rojava demonstrated against the PYD’s authoritarian rule and the lack of free elections. The PYD’s Kurdish nationalism led them to do deals with the regime against other revolutionary forces. Increasingly, they stood aside from a Syrian revolution and Assad left them alone.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
The turning point came in August 2013, when Assad attacked the Ghouta suburb of Damascus with chemical weapons, killing over 1,000. Although Barak Obama had declared this a red line which, if crossed, would lead to direct US involvement, there was no US response. This signalled that their priority was defeating ISIL, not regime change in Syria. The PYD took this opportunity to make a de facto alliance with the US, renaming its militia the Syrian Defence Forces to avoid sanctions.
Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians heightened sectarian tensions, as this was viewed (correctly) as an attack on the Sunni population. Ahmed al-Sharaa (then calling himself Mohammad al-Jolani), the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, which had broken from ISIL but was still affiliated to al-Qaeda, declared an ‘eye for an eye’ policy of massacring Alawites and other minorities. As a result, Christians, Druze and Shi’ites fled to areas where their communities were in the majority, increasing sectarian divisions, in direct contradiction to the revolutionary democrats’ early aspirations.
Hezbollah, Iran and Russia increased their support for Assad, knowing that they would largely escape US reprisals. The regime and its allies now made steady progress, culminating in the fall of Aleppo at the end of 2016, pushing the opposition into the northwestern province of Idlib.
This defeat prompted al-Nusra to reassess and adapt its ideology and strategy. It had already broken from ISIL; now it shed its ties with al-Qaeda, renaming itself Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Committee for the Liberation of Syria) in January 2017.
Its spiritual leader, Abu Jaber al-Shaykh, described HTS as an ‘independent entity’ aiming for the liberation of Syria. They adopted the flag of the Syrian revolutionaries, with its three stars, and set up a civilian Syrian Salvation Government (SSG). When Shaykh died in October 2017, Jolani took over and deepened this turn, nurturing a strong alliance with Turkey and Qatar.
Through splits, fusions and bloody battles, HTS became the dominant military force in Idlib by 2019, fusing the disparate Islamist militia into a disciplined force. The SSG extended its power across the province, rebuilt civil institutions, started reconstruction and collected taxes. Externally, it projected an image of Islamic rulers who tolerated and protected religious minorities and elevated the role of women in society.
However, it established its own religious police force and security service, which enforced Islamic codes of dress, requiring all female students to wear the niqab. There were numerous examples of religious persecution and destruction of holy sites. HTS was hostile to Kurdish independence or federalism within Syria. Most importantly, the SSG defended the right to private property and capitalist profit in its contracts for reconstruction.
Where next?
Despite the leading role of HTS, the overthrow of Assad’s dictatorship represents the re-emergence of forces that can revive the long Syrian revolution for democracy and social justice. The initial 2011 demand for the ‘downfall of the regime’ has been achieved and democratic spaces have emerged as a result. Now, the provisional government of Ahmed al-Sharaa is the main threat to the fulfilment of the revolution’s democratic demands.
His vision is a Syria that is wedded to capitalism, has friendly or at least tolerant relations with Erdogan’s Turkey, and is thus hostile to the Kurds’ struggle for liberation. He is appealing to the wealthy absolute monarchies of the Arabian peninsula and the Egyptian military dictatorship for support while conciliating both US and Russian imperialism.
Such influences are a threat to democratic advance. The temptation will be to eliminate all opposition, prevent multiparty democratic elections to a Constituent Assembly, repress any reborn independent working class movement and even rival Islamists. The aim of all revolutionary forces in Syria must be to stop this counter-revolution in its tracks.
The local coordinating committees and White Helmets must re-emerge from their underground existence and take to the streets to demand:
The election in every urban and rural district of councils of delegates to control distribution of food, the return of exiles, reconstruction
Free trade unions and workplace committees fighting for a living wage and income for the unemployed, the elderly and those with long term illness and disability.
Full equality for women, including their participation at all levels of public life
As soon as is practicable, the holding of elections to a sovereign constituent assembly
A democratic national emergency plan for reconstruction, under the control of workers and with social ownership
Workers’ management of all abandoned enterprises and the confiscation of capitalist property
Equal rights for all religious and ethnic minorities
A free press and broadcasting
Self-determination for Rojava, including the right to secede from Syria
Reparations, aid without strings, from all the interfering regional and imperialist powers that have used the Syrian revolution for their own narrow and reactionary aims.
Full support and aid to the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation from the chains of the Zionist settler state.
Last, but not least, the Syrian revolution will not fulfil its democratic aspirations unless the working class rebuilds its trade unions and forges a revolutionary political party that can contend for power and pose the need for a socialist Syria as part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
