Statement on foreign intervention following the overthrow of Assad

Rebel forces have driven out forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad who has appealed for aid from Russia and Iran

By Dilara Lorin 4,440 PEOPLE were killed in the earthquake in Turkey and Syria by the morning of 7 February. And the numbers continue to rise steadily. In addition, there are well over ten thousand people injured, some seriously. The humanitarian catastrophe affects the mass of the population in both countries, which are already suffering […]

IN JULY 2012, Kurdish armed forces took political control in the regions of Kobanê, Afrin and al-Hasakah in northern Syria. The transfer of power from the Syrian regime to the Kurdish organisations began during the Syrian Revolution of 2011. By July 2012, the regime had lost control of Homs, its third-largest city. On July 18, […]

Its lessons and legacy.

Open the borders to refugees, economic migrants, asylum seekers.

The Turkish-Russian agreement on the establishment of a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, which was negotiated in Sochi on 22 October, has fundamentally changed the balance of power in Syria

Turkish forces are pounding cities and towns in northern Syria/Rojava, including the region’s biggest city, Qamishli, as well as Kobane, still in ruins after the war to oust ISIS. Air raids and heavy artillery strikes have forced thousands of civilians to flee into arid open country where there is neither shelter nor food and water. […]

Donald Trump has just signaled a dramatic shift in US policy in northern Syria, betraying his erstwhile allies the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which the Kurdish YPG militia are the dominant force. The 60,000 SDF fighters had provided him – and Obama before him – with the boots on the ground that defeated the […]

By Katie Pelikanou THE SYRIAN regime is undertaking a thinly-veiled legal manoeuvre to punish the millions of refugees who have fled the civil war, and entrench the postwar sectarian redivision of Syria by repossessing their homes. The government of dictator Bashar Al-Assad enacted this law whilst the remnants of the Syrian army, along with Iranian […]

By Marcus Halaby “Why would Bashar al-Assad have gassed his own people when he was already winning the war?” This question is frequently asked by many in the West of a generally anti-war disposition, who see in it a repetition of the arguments made around Saddam Hussein’s alleged (and disproven) possession of weapons of mass […]

By KD Tait THE US, French, and British attack on the Syrian regime’s chemical warfare facilities, ostensibly in retaliation for the recent chemical attack in Douma, was little more than a cynical attempt by the Nato powers to avoid being made to look totally impotent by the Syrian dictator – whilst carefully avoiding a direct […]

By  Marcus Halaby  The overwhelming priority of the Labour movement today is to prevent Britain from taking any further military action in Syria, or from joining any new Trump-led escalations of conflict with Russia or Iran. And we can do that without pretending that Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad is anything other than a fascistic monster […]

THE OVERWHELMING priority of the Labour Movement today is to prevent Britain taking military action in Syria, or joining a Trump – led escalation of conflict with Russia. We can do that without pretending that Assad is anything other than a fascistic monster at war with his own people. We can do that without pretending […]

THE SYRIAN Observatory for Human Rights reports that Bashar al-Assad’s warplanes, artillery and barrel bombing helicopters have launched a major assault on the last extensive rebel-held region of Idlib, aided by their Russian allies. It is likely that the offensive aims to concentrate the population into a narrow pocket, subject them to final liquidation or […]

THE INTERNATIONAL workers' movement should take to the streets in solidarity with the justified resistance of the Kurds' against Turkish militarism

PRESIDENT DONALD Trump’s 20 May visit to Saudi Arabia, for a summit of the six Gulf Arab states and 49 other Arab and Muslim-majority countries

The attitude of the USA towards “regime change” in Syria has been a source of considerable confusion within the left and within the anti-war movement.

Donald Trump’s “surgical strike”, 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from two US warships in the Mediterranean, against the Syrian government’s Shayrat airbase on the night of 6/7 April should be condemned and all further actions by the US and its allies opposed. So too should the eager support this has drawn from Prime Minister Theresa […]

Tom Watson and Hilary Benn have taken advantage of Trump’s missile attack on Syria’s Shayrat airbase to launch their own attack on Jeremy Corbyn. This is the latest salvo in their war of attrition which they intend to wage until they finally remove him as the Leader of the Labour Party. Tom Watson, Deputy Leader […]

Statement published by the League for the Fifth International The US attack on a Syrian airbase near Homs marked a dangerous and dramatic escalation of the conflict in that country. In the night from 6 to 7 April, the US Navy launched up to 60 missiles and severely damaged the airbase. Trump’s order to attack […]

By Marcus Halaby THE SIEGE of Aleppo has entered its final hours. A cold-blooded and methodical massacre awaits the defenders and civilians who could not or would not escape. With the fall of Aleppo, a similar fate is being prepared for the remaining areas of the country not yet subjugated by the regime’s militias. Moscow and Damascus are […]

DONALD TRUMP’S election on 8 November was welcomed in Moscow and Damascus. It was taken as the green light to wipe out what remains of the resistance to the rule of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. A final, unremitting offensive was launched on the remaining rebel-held eastern portion of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. As before, this […]

By KD Tait A recent Open Letter (Speak Out on Syria) correctly calls on Jeremy Corbyn to “say clearly and unequivocally that the actions of Assad and Russia in Syria are barbaric war crimes and that [he] will seek to end them and hold their perpetrators to account”. We agree with this, and believe that […]

The brutal attack on Eastern Aleppo by Russian and Syrian warplanes, bombing with bunker buster, incendiary and barrel bombs, has already killed hundreds of civilians, creating a landscape many have likened to Stalingrad in 1942, Warsaw in 1944 or better, perhaps, given the same perpetrator is involved, the Chechen capital, Grozny, in 2000. The Syrian […]

AS WE go to press, the ceasefire in Syria agreed in Geneva on 9 September between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov seems to have taken hold on some fronts, though the bombardment of eastern Aleppo seems to be continuing. If the truce lasts for seven consecutive days and humanitarian […]

Beneath the rubble ordinary Syrians defend the democratic ideals of the revolution as western governments remain complicit in Russian bombing By Marcus Halaby Syrians in the rebel-held “liberated zones” marked the beginning of the US and Russian-brokered “cessation of hostilities” by coming out onto the streets in their tens of thousands, with anti-Assad rallies reported […]

Ceasefire will bring neither a just nor a lasting end to the civil war By Marcus Halaby RUSSIA’S bombing campaign in support of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship has created a new wave of refugees, with 35,000 stranded on the border with Turkey. Its purpose was to encircle Syria’s largest city Aleppo, before a US-Russian brokered “ceasefire” […]

By Marcus Halaby For all David Cameron’s boasting that he has 70,000 “moderate” Syrian oppositionists ready to act as boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS, there is precious little sign of them being brought into action. It now seems that they will only be usable after a “political process” has engineered a […]

LIKE Putin’s strategy in Syria, Britain’s and the USA’s also involves double-crossing old allies and co-opting new ones. The case that Cameron made for war included a reference to 70,000 “moderate opposition” fighters, whose existence many have been far too quick to dismiss, given the likely far larger size of the Syrian armed opposition. Cameron […]