By Andy Yorke
The fall of the hated dictator Bashar al-Assad last year has left Syria devastated by fourteen years of war, prolonged and deepened by the rival regional powers, the US and Russia. As always it is women who bear the brunt.
Ninety per cent of Syrians now live below the poverty line. Three-quarters of the six million in dire need of food assistance women and girls. Over half the population – 12-15 million – are internally displaced or refugees, and 80% of those refugees are women and children. This social collapse has been borne by women in other ways too, from higher unemployment and gender violence to rising child marriage as a response to poverty.
Armed groups control much of the politically fragmented country. Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took power with his Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is busy consolidating his grip. Al-Sharaa insists he is committed to a democratic transition and rights for minorities and women. But many believe he is just buying time to convince Western powers to lift sanctions, key to refloating the economy.
While Joe Biden renewed sanctions on Syria for another five years in January, the US main ally among the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, is emerging as a key financier for Syrian reconstruction. Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Saud is a renown human rights violator, especially when it comes to women – and Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, is barely any better.
However, for the Syrian people the revolution has brought a welcome period of relative peace and legality, the first in decades, sparking an outpouring of political discourse and organising. Workers, women, youth all have a stake in ensuring no return to war and the fullest democracy, to organise for their class demands and against new oppressive laws.
And that is a real danger. Al-Sharaa says it could be four years before elections are held, and a promised (but not yet convened) National Dialogue Conference will be consultative only.
The sole female minister, for women’s affairs, supports Sharia law and threatens to exclude feminist groups that don’t agree. A government spokesman, meanwhile, has stated that women are unsuited to be judges due to their ‘biological and psychological composition’ – 30% of judges are currently women. Videos from 2015 have emerged showing justice minister Shadi al-Waisi overseeing the execution of two women for prostitution in his time as minister in Idlib for al-Nusra Front, forerunner to HTS.
To spread the regime’s writ throughout Syria, HTS fighters and allies are violently imposing order, subduing rivals, remnants of the old regime and criminal gangs. Largescale intimidation, harassment and arrests, and summary executions have been reported. In the city of Homs 35 were killed in three days according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Socialists report gay and transgender people being arrested in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities at gunpoint, while a peaceful protest by democratic campaigners in Tartous on 9 February was attacked by a pro-HTS group.
‘One, One, Syrian Workers Are One’
Meanwhile the provisional government is pushing through free market policies, promising to privatise state-owned oil refineries, cotton farms, furniture factories and ports. It is inviting private capital to rebuild infrastructure. One-in-four government workers face the sack, hitting unionised sectors that employ many women. The raising of the minimum wage by 400% still only covers one-eighth of the cost of living for a Syrian family, after years of hyperinflation.
The job cuts have sparked the first workers’ protests against the regime. The sacking of 700 workers from the Daraa Health Directorate’s hospitals and clinics saw hundreds join a sit-in protest. In the following weeks doctors at the Aleppo University Hospital and al-Nafis hospital in Damascus took strike action over the lack of protection from attacks.
In the past month, a Workers’ Association for Democratic Change has been formed out of a network of oppositionist trade unionists formed in 2012 at the beginning of the Syrian revolution. They called their first coordinated action on 15 February with sit-ins outside the official trade union buildings in Damascus, Aleppo, Suwayda, Latakia and Homs. The WADC plans weekly action to follow.
They are organised in nine provincial coordination committees, each of which includes ‘delegates’ from sectors like electricity, health, the media, banks, and textile industries. A national coordinating committee sits in Damascus. Their list of demands includes a minimum wage, permanent contracts, pensioner support and the reopening of state enterprises shuttered by the war.
Courageous grassroots activism has seen women tackling gender violence and deprivation brought on by war. Women have joined the protest movements in Suwayda and elsewhere since 2023. But many have been forced into exile, organising NGOs whose activity is restricted by international donors.
The Syrian Women’s Political Movement held a conference in Damascus on 9 January, one of the biggest political gatherings since Assad’s downfall. It announced the results of its consultation with the major sectors of the opposition. However, given the bourgeois nature of most of its participants, they could not even agree on rejecting sharia law!
Workers, women and the poor cannot afford such bourgeois blueprints for democracy, even if HTS were to listen. Syria’s reconstruction costs are estimated at $250-400bn. There is no way to refloat Syrian capitalism without making workers pay the price and women carry the heaviest load.
Assad’s crony capitalists, Iran and the oil-rich Gulf States, USA and Russia should be forced to pay reparations. Al-Sharaa won’t do this. Spreading the workers’ committees and launching a working class women’s movement, fighting against poverty and for full democratic rights, including the Kurds’ right to self-determination, are the only way to contest this.
This means reigniting the Syrian revolution from below and refusing to accept a new dictatorship, which will only end up looking like the old one.
