BY crushing the Syrian revolutionaries and leaving only Assad and ISIS standing, Putin hopes to force the West to accept that Assad’s regime (with or without Assad at the top of it) is their least worst option. Putin’s claim to stand for the “unity of the Syrian state” actually means restoring the rule of the […]
By Marcus Halaby A COMMON view in the anti-war movement is that the current war in Syria is effectively a repeat of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with Syria’s as-yet undefeated revolution against the Assad dictatorship simply the product of a US-led attempt at “regime change”. But in some ways it more closely resembles the […]
At 10pm Parliament will vote on whether to send British planes to join the US-led bombing of Syria. David Cameron’s drive to war has nothing to do with protecting civilians and everything to do with maintaining Britain’s status as the USA’s principal ally. A vote to bomb Syria will mean RAF jets killing civilians they […]
ONE of the most important factors in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign was his opposition to the war in Iraq, and to any future wars in the Middle East. The lies and spin that took us to war in Iraq under Tony Blair still weigh heavily on the minds of millions. Ed Miliband’s refusal to give […]
DAVID Cameron is threatening to put a series of votes to the Commons that would radically up the tempo of the war drums. First there is his stated aim to expand the UK’s theatre of operations in the Middle East to include bombing Syria. Labour has already, two years ago, thwarted this aim, when the intended […]
By Marcus Halaby and Sam Copley 11 August 2015 A large part of the Western left and radical media have written off the struggle against the totalitarian Assad regime in Syria as irretrievably lost. Effectively, for them, the counterrevolution has triumphed. And alongside them, there are also those who never supported the revolutionary uprising against […]
By Marcus Halaby As the Western powers bomb Iraq and Syria under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State, attention has been drawn to the struggle of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to defend the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Kobane. On the border with Turkey, Kobane has been besieged by the ultra-reactionary IS for […]
By Marcus Halaby The liberated zones of the Syrian Kurds in Rojava have inspired debate and praise, but now hundreds of thousands are fleeing Islamic State terror. Marcus Halaby examines their role in the Syrian revolution and the ideology of their leading party Much of the international left has hailed the emergence of autonomous Kurdish […]
By Marcus Halaby US President Barack Obama took office in 2009 promising to end the US occupation of Iraq. Today US warplanes are bombing Iraq and Syria with the aim of “degrading and destroying” the Islamic State. Pentagon press secretary Adm. John Kirby said. “We know we are at war with ISIL [ISIS or Islamic […]
By Marcus Halaby Three years ago this month, 15 schoolchildren in Daraa – encouraged by events in Egypt and Tunisia – were arrested and tortured for painting anti-regime graffiti on the wall of their school. Their treatment would be the spark for demonstrations of at first a few hundred and then a few thousand […]
By KD Tait We are now approaching the third anniversary of the Syrian people’s revolution for dignity and democratic rights, rights that every people in the world deserves. Syria In The Context of the Arab Spring, a conference held in London on 15 February, was therefore an event that was long overdue. This conference drew […]
In the first part of a two part article, Marcus Halaby examines the regional and international context of the Arab Revolutions, the role played by the crisis of leadership, and the need for working class political independence in the form of a revolutionary workers’ party, making the case for the strategy of permanent revolution. […]
By Martin Suchanek, Gruppe Arbeitermacht “A huge victory for the international community” – that is what US President Barack Obama called the 27 September United Nations Security Council Resolution 2118 on chemical weapons in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also praised the document to the skies, while German Foreign […]
By Dave Stockton The defeat of the Cameron-Clegg coalition in the House of Commons on Thursday 29 August by 285 votes to 272 was a historic occasion: the first time a British government was defeated on the issue of making war in over three centuries. It was also the first time the Parliamentary Labour […]
This is a joint statement supported by the International Socialist Network, Socialist Resistance, Workers Power and the Anticapitalist Initiative The defeat of the government pro-war resolution in Parliament is important. Even though Labour voted against the Tory motion, it too had submitted a pro-war resolution, albeit calling for a pause until after the report from […]
By Marcus Halaby / 30 August 2013 On 21 August, reports emerged that hundreds of people had been killed in a chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held agricultural region just outside of the Syrian capital Damascus. With reports of up to 1,700 dead, this atrocity is just the latest in a long series […]
The League for the Fifth International totally condemns the preparations by the US administration, warmly supported by the British and French imperialists, to launch missile attacks on Syria. We call on the labour movements and progressive forces of all countries to mobilise to prevent such attacks and to make the perpetrators pay heavily for it […]
This motion was proposed by Workers Power members and passed by Lambeth Left Unity branch on 27 August 2013. Lambeth left Unity condemns the preparations by the US Administration and the British Government for missile attacks on Syria. We also condemn in the strongest terms the Assad regime¹s use of chemical weapons in Ghouta on […]
By Marcus Halaby The Stop the War Coalition (StWC), led by Counterfire, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) called a protest in central London for 15 June to “Stop Western Intervention in Syria”. Originally formed to oppose the “War on Terror” declared by the United States under President George […]
By Marcus Halaby “To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and […]
A member of the League for the Fifth International’s German section interviewed Thaer, a resident of Yarmouk, Syria’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, located in Damascus. He escaped the camp, currently besieged by the Assad regime’s forces, in December 2012. LFI: How is life in Yarmouk going now? Thaer: There are 125,000 residents in Yarmouk, and […]
By Marcus Halaby Causes that you are on record as supporting sometimes have a habit of following you around. And so it proved to be with the Syrian revolution in Tunisia. I didn’t, I might add, go to the World Social Forum in Tunis with the sole intention of attending events on Syria; probably like […]
Marcus Halaby analyses the great – and as yet uncompleted – Arab revolutions of 2011, debunking a number of myths and proving the relevance of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution today.
As the rival imperialist powers manoeuvre to gain an advantage from the mass uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, Marcus Halaby examines the regime’s strategy and tactics as it struggles, if not for outright victory, then at least to cling on to some vestiges of its power. One of the historic claims to legitimacy of Ba’athism, […]
As sectarian militias roam the countryside seeking to drown the Syrian revolution in blood, Marcus Halaby argues that the only progressive solution is one based on class After the massacres in Houla on 25 May and in Qubair on 6 June, anyone on the left who still opposes the Syrian revolution should be treated […]
The Arab Spring of 2011 inspired millions around the world through its acts of heroism. But now the revolutions have stalled. In the spirit of solidarity with these movements and communist internationalism, Marcus Halaby takes a critical look at the far left in these countries and Syria in particular One of the most noticeable […]
The future of Syria is being fought out town by town as the resistance grows against Assad’s regime. Marcus Halaby looks at how imperialist governments are doing all they can to conservatise and control the Syrian revolution.
Despite president Bashar al-Assad’s promises not to shoot protesters, his regime has continued to kill civilians, most recently in Damascus and Homs. The Arab League’s week-long talks to produce a peace plan made his regime hypocritically issue an amnesty for those carrying arms. But the uprising itself remains largely unarmed, while most armed civilians belong […]
The Syrian uprising continues despite the murderous violence from the Assad regime, writes Marcus Halaby