[D66] The Syrian Revolution and the crisis of the anti-war movement

[J.N.]

  The Syrian Revolution and the crisis of the anti-war movement

rs21 <http://rs21.org.uk/author/revsoc21/>onSeptember 10, 2015
<http://rs21.org.uk/2015/09/10/the-syrian-revolution-and-the-crisis-of-the-anti-war-movement/>/3
comments
<http://rs21.org.uk/2015/09/10/the-syrian-revolution-and-the-crisis-of-the-anti-war-movement/#comments>


/Suddenly, everyone is talking about Syria. Saturday’s demonstration
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1047978998546751/> will be in
solidarity with all refugees, but a Syrian refugee is one of the key
organisers. Campaigners from the Syria Solidarity Movement UK and Stop
the War Coalition are among those involved in the planning, along with
many other organisations. Everyone should welcome this commitment to
unity against the government’s treatment of refugees and other migrants. /

/However, as the UK government and mainstream media
<https://rs21testblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/afac9-bomb2bsyria2bfor2baylam.jpg>
attempt to divert public sympathy for Syrian refugees into a panic about
“jihadists” and support for bombing campaigns and drone killings of
British citizens
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/drone-british-citizens-syria-uk-david-cameron>
in Syria, it is important that we have solidarity and anti-war movements
fit for purpose./

/As part of an ongoing discussion, *Mark Boothroyd*, who was a founding
member of the Syria Solidarity Movement UK, argues that the mainstream
anti-war movement has failed Syrian revolutionaries struggling against a
brutal dictatorship./


The beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010-2011 will be remembered as one
the defining periods of the early part of this century. Simultaneous
protest movements developed across the entire Arab world calling for
freedom, democracy and social justice, blossoming into full blown
revolutions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. The toppling of not one
but several decades old dictatorships through the active movement of
tens of millions of people remains an incredibly inspiring event which
gave hope to so many who struggle for human freedom around the world.

The Arab Spring threw the entire established order in the Middle East
into flux. It greatly unsettled the US, Russia and Israel as their
preferred dictators were toppled or put under immense pressure by
popular protest. It gave hope to millions who saw a real possibility of
the end of tyrannical rule across the Arab world. But it also
disorientated the anti-war movement, built in an earlier period where
US/UK aggression, not popular revolution, was the main factor driving
events.

The main organisations and activists responsible for mobilising millions
in opposition to war and in solidarity with those in the Middle East
affected by imperialism, remained passive throughout these momentous events.

*Western intervention *

While the leadership of Stop the War Coalition was initially supportive
of the Arab revolts when they toppled US-backed dictators like Ben Ali
of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt, when the revolts spread to the regimes
of Qaddafi and Assad – Cold War era opponents of the West – the
enthusiastic support began to cool.

A layer of activists in the movement saw these countries as opposed to
imperialism, so-called “anti-imperialist” regimes that were part of an
“axis of resistance” which merited them support, regardless of their
brutality. This was despite the fact that /all/ dictatorships in the
region were dealing with US/EU imperialism; Assad’s regime tortured
prisoners for the CIA during the Bush Presidency, while Qaddafi’s
regime, in partnership with the EU
<http://www.theweek.co.uk/6515/how-libya-kept-migrants-out-of-eu-at-any-cost>,
built detention camps in Libya to detain migrants and prevent them
crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

The revolt initially threw the plans of the Western imperialist powers
into disarray; the US was still praising Mubarak while millions marched
in the streets calling for his downfall, the French government was split
over how to deal with Ben Ali, while then Secretary of State Hilary
Clinton green lighted vicious repression in Bahrain to put down the
uprising.

Eventually they rallied and tried to ride the revolutionary wave, taking
advantage of the turmoil created by the revolts. The first target for
intervention was Libya. Stop The War called protests against western
intervention, painfully alongside pro-regime figures who were supporting
crackdowns on protesters. These protests proved ineffectual and the US,
UK and France bombed Libya, disabling Qaddafi’s air force and provided
arms to the rebels. Libya’s revolutionaries held out against Qaddafi’s
armed forces in Misrata and Benghazi, organised an uprising in the
capital and took control by the end of August 2011. Qaddafi was captured
and executed in October 2011.

In reaction to this, the Russian and Iranian governments stepped up
financing and arming the Syrian regime to ensure it did not suffer a
similar fate. The Syrian revolt against the Assad regime is now in its
fifth year, the death toll from the conflict has surpassed 330,000 with
over 1 million wounded, 215,000
<http://www.voanews.com/content/rights-group-detentions-syria/2563705.html>
are still detained in regime prisons, 200,000 are missing, and between
650,000 and 1,000,000
<https://www.sams-usa.net/foundation/images/PDFs/Slow%20Death_Syria%20Under%20Siege.pdf>
people are under starvation siege
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/30/us-syria-crisis-hunger-insight-idUSBRE99T07I20131030>
by the regime in rebel towns and cities. Bombings of civilian areas by
the regime are a daily occurrence, 4.5 million
<http://www.vox.com/2015/9/5/9265621/syrian-refugee-charts> Syrians are
refugees, and 8 million, almost half the remaining population, are
internally displaced.

In all this time there was no direct western intervention in Syria
against Assad. No bombs were dropped on Syria by Western powers until
mid-2014, the fourth year of the revolution, and these were targeted at
ISIS, not the regime. Not a single bomb has been dropped on regime
military installations by the Coalition air force.

All the hype and warnings notwithstanding, Western aid to the rebels has
been very limited. By mid-2013 the Free Syrian Army had received only
$12 million of a promised $60 million
<http://www.ibtimes.com/what-non-lethal-aid-what-americas-60-million-could-buy-syrian-rebels-1107563>
of aid from the US , and been denied access
<http://www.dw.com/en/eu-denies-syrian-rebels-weapons-offers-non-lethal-aid/a-16608528>
to weaponry by the EU. The aid they did receive was only non-lethal aid
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-syria-crisis-us-idUSBRE91R0KM20130228>
consisting of food, medicine and vehicles. From 2012 onwards
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html>
the CIA was involved in monitoring weapons shipments
<http://freebeacon.com/national-security/house-report-says-cia-monitored-arms-shipments-to-syria/>
to Syria; its role was to stop them receiving
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&>
the anti-air missiles and heavy weaponry that could have neutralised
Assad’s airforce and armour and hastened the downfall of the regime.

When the US did finally begin to arm and train rebels in 2014, it was
tightly controlled to a ridiculous extent
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/covert-cia-mission-to-arm-syrian-rebels-goes-awry-1422329582>.
In contrast the regime has $3.5 billion worth of contracts for arms from
Russia
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-02/putin-defies-obama-in-syria-as-arms-fuel-assad-resurgence>,
and loans
<http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-syrias-banker-and-arms-supplier/>
to pay for it. With Syria’s domestic weapons industry too small to
produce enough arms to sustain a protracted conflict, the imperialist
intervention which has kept the conflict going and maintains it to this
day is from Russia.

*Selective Anti-Imperialism*

The revolutions exposed that for many in the anti-war movement,
opposition to imperialist intervention only extended to opposition to
imperialist intervention by the UK, US, EU, and their allies. There was
no opposition to the imperialist actions of the Russian government, or
the crucial support given by the Iranian government to the Assad regime.

This was defended by Stop the War national officer John Rees on the
grounds that */“the main enemy is at home”/*
<http://www.counterfire.org/theory/157-international/15938-syria-empire-and-revolution-a-reply-to-the-critics-of-the-anti-war-movement>,
and that US imperial power was still the over determining factor in the
Middle East. As a British based organisation Stop the War’s role was
just to oppose the imperialist actions of the British government.

Too many leading figures in the British anti-war movement chose to view
all these revolutions through their relation to the US/UK and its
intentions. This approach erased the agency of the oppressed Syrian
people engaged in struggle with the regime, and gave no responsibility
to the role of imperialist powers like Russia in propping up the
dictatorship. It served to obscure the complex reality of the
multi-polar world system, split between competing imperialist powers,
with no single dominant power overwhelmingly determining the course of
events.

Instead of analysing the actual relationships of regional and global
powers that were thrown into flux by the Arab Spring, the approach of
the anti-war movement was shaped by a framework of Cold War power
relations, massaged to fit leftist prejudices and domestic alliances
developed during opposition to the “War on Terror” and Iraq War.

Syrian and pro-revolution Arab voices have been marginalised, while
outright apologists for the Assad regime like George Galloway have been
central to developing it and propagating the position of Stop the War.
The contributions of supporters of the revolution like Syrian Marxist
Yassin Al-Haj Saleh
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/10/help-syria-now-tomorrow-too-late>,
Syrian human rights activist Razan Zaitouneh
<http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/razan-zaitouneh/syrians-want-freedom_b_998118.html>
or Palestinian intellectual and former Knesset member Dr Azmi Bishara
<http://pulsemedia.org/2012/08/18/history-will-not-be-kind-to-the-syrian-regime/>
were ignored.

Meanwhile, across Syria people held weekly Friday protests, asking for
solidarity and support in their struggle. These hundreds of thousands of
voices were ignored. Every week tens of thousands of Syrian activists
voted in online polls
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241314026709762.html>
to choose the main slogan
<https://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/every-friday-new-slogans-of-the-peoples-revolution/>
for the Friday demonstrations. Some called for intervention, some for
weapons, many asked simply for help, and to spread awareness of their
struggle. Reading through the slogans you can chart the disillusionment
of the protestors as their calls for solidarity went unanswered:

    20: July 29, 2011 – “Your Silence Is Killing Us”
    26: September 9, 2011 – “International Protection”
    38: December 12, 2011 – “The Buffer Zone is Our Demand”
    51: March 2, 2012 – “Providing Weapons for the Free Army”
    53: March 16, 2012 – “Immediate Military Intervention”
    67: June 22, 2012 – “Governments Let Us Down, Where Are the People?”
    74: August 10, 2012 – “Arm Us with Anti-Aircraft Weapons”
    82: October 5, 2012 – “We Want Weapons, not Statements”
    91: December 7, 2012 – “No to Peacekeeping Forces in Syria”
    99: February 1, 2013 – “The International Community Are Partners to
    Al-Assad in His massacres”
    128: August 23, 2013 – “The Terrorist Bashar Kills Civilians
    with Chemical Weapons While the World Watches”
    131: September 13, 2013 – “The Murderer Is Under the International
    Community’s Protection”
    146: December 27, 2013 – “Death Barrels with International License”
    206: February 20, 2015 – “The World Failed us, God Give Us Victory”

When the reality of the Syrian revolution did not fit with the
frameworks and alliances that dominated the British anti-war movement,
its demands were simply ignored. A narrative was constructed where the
US and British governments’ desire to topple Assad was presented as the
main threat to Syria, in the process rendering Syrian revolutionaries
guilty-by-association of a political crime.


*The 2013 Vote: Obama’s red herring*

A decisive turning point in the Syrian struggle were the votes against
intervention by the British Parliament and US Congress in August and
September 2013. The votes were to decide whether to intervene militarily
following the regime massacre of over 1400 people with sarin gas in the
Damascus suburbs and Eastern Ghouta on the night of 21 August.

Use of chemical weapons by the regime was supposedly Obama’s “red line”,
justifying intervention. In preparation for intervention, Cameron put
the vote to Britain’s parliament, and lost narrowly
<http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-23892783>. Rather than intervene
immediately, the Obama administration put the decision to a vote in
Congress. This was also lost and no intervention took place.

Instead, on the recommendation of Russia (and as it was admitted later,
Israel
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-15/israel-helped-obama-skirt-red-line-on-syria>)
a deal was done with the Assad regime for it to hand over its chemical
weapons in exchange for no military strikes.

This decision was hailed as a great victory for the anti-war movement.
Stop the War took credit for having stopped the bombing of Syria,
claiming that strong anti-war sentiment was a major factor in persuading
MPs to vote against intervention. This was only part of the truth.

Just two years before those same MPs had voted to authorise military
strikes on Libya, despite strong anti-war sentiment. The idea that
imperialist States will halt or alter important geopolitical decisions
like military intervention simply based on public opinion, is not credible.

The response of the French governments to the Ghouta sarin attack is
rarely mentioned, but instructive. After the Ghouta massacre French and
American military planners had begun working on plans for co-ordinated
strikes on regime military targets. Despite the UK parliament no vote,
on 30 August the French government ordered their war planes to prepare
for military strikes on Syrian regime targets. The war planes were
waiting
<https://medium.com/war-is-boring/french-bombers-were-loaded-up-syrian-rebels-were-deployed-all-awaiting-obamas-okay-to-attack-69247c24253f>,
in expectation of an American attack, when Obama personally contacted
President Hollande to inform him he would not attack
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/31/syrian-air-strikes-obama-congress>
without Congress’ approval. The French government decided not to
intervene without American support.

Making the overthrow of a government dependent on a vote are not the
typical actions of warmongering imperialist powers. Syrian activists on
the ground were acutely aware of what this meant. Qusai Zakarya
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/qusai-zakarya-syria-activist_n_4904062.html>,
spokesperson for Moadamiyah, one of the Damascus towns hit by the sarin
attack reported:

    “I felt so disappointed… I learned enough to know that when an
    American president wants to make a military strike, he just do it
    without telling anyone. We seen it in Iraq, we seen it in
    Afghanistan, we seen it in Somalia, we seen it all over the world.”

Go forward two years, and it has been revealed that 20 British pilots
have been flying sorties over Syria with the US air force. That the
government was willing to have British pilots clandestinely bombing
Syria shows their willingness to defy parliament when it’s expedient.
There are deep rooted imperial interests, and not just public opinion,
which has shaped military intervention, or its absence, in the region.

Sections of the US and British ruling class had good reasons to think
the greatest threat to their interests in Syria was not the Assad
regime, but the popular revolution. Following the votes in Parliament
and Congress, anything which would have hastened Assad’s demise and
allowed the popular movement to take power has been systematically
avoided, at great cost to the Syrian people.

We should not support US or UK intervention
<http://www.nfz-debate.org/2015/06/no-fly-zone-dangerous-illusion.html>
in Syria, but we must recognise the tragic irony that what has been
claimed as a victory by the anti-war movement has only been a victory
for the Assad regime. Assad had tested Obama’s “red line”, killing over
1400 people, and had received approval to continue killing by
conventional means. His regime did just that, subjecting Aleppo to a
daily barrel bomb campaign which killed over 2,500 people
<http://sn4hr.org/blog/2014/05/01/the-international-community-must-save-aleppo/>,
displaced hundreds of thousands and turned the rebel held half of the
city into a ghost town.

This has been the actual imperialist strategy of the US and UK over
Syria: let the country bleed by depriving the popular revolt of the
weapons and support it needs to win, hoping that exhaustion and the
devastation caused by vicious repression forces the rebellious
population to accept a political settlement that preserves the regime’s
state apparatus.

*Inconsistency*

The anti-war movement has not even been consistent in its opposition to
imperialist intervention. The only large scale activity Stop the War
organised around Syria was the “Hands off Syria” demonstration in August
2013. As British-Syrian journalist Salwa Amor
<http://5pillarsuk.com/2013/08/29/stop-the-war-must-support-the-syrian-revolution/%29>
writes: “Holding placards that say ‘No intervention and hands off Syria’
appears to Syrians that you are on Russia’s side” – when Syrians are
facing a dictatorship backed up by imperial intervention from Russia.


Meanwhile, the movement has been largely silent and organised few public
protests against the ongoing bombing of Syria by the US-led Coalition
against ISIS. These bombings, ostensibly to aid the Kurdish People’s
Protection Units (YPG) against ISIS, have also aided the regime. Bombs
were dropped by the coalition in and around Deir Ezzour City, where
there are only regime and ISIS forces on the frontlines. The open
collaboration this indicates between the regime and the Coalition has
not warranted a mention by Stop the War.

Even when coalition bombings have killed civilians and targeted camps
for internally displaced persons, there have been no protests. On 11
August the US-led Coalition bombed Atmeh refugee camp in Idlib province,
targeting a weapons factory run by the Free Syrian Army aligned Jaysh
Al-Sunna faction
<http://eaworldview.com/2015/08/syria-daily-why-did-us-led-coalition-bomb-rebels-near-turkish-border/>.
The bombing killed 25 civilians including 5 girls from the same family
<http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-led-coalition-kills-8-civilians-atmeh-1783446219>.
This is one of dozens of air strikes which have targeted Syrian rebel
groups over the past year, while not a single regime military
installation has been targeted in over a year of US-led Coalition
attacks. None of these bombings have merited protests by the anti-war
movement.

Another inconsistency is the different approach to Saudi Arabia and Iran
by the mainstream anti-war movement. Stop the War has rightly criticised
the bombing of Yemen by the Saudi Air Force. But this raises the
question of why its leadership cannot criticise Iranian intervention in
Syria.

The Iranian government’s involvement in Syria is well documented, coming
in the form of enormous financial aid through loans, oil and asset deals
<http://www.naameshaam.org/naame-shaam-releases-report-on-role-of-iranian-regime-in-syria-war/>,
and military aid with as many as 6,000 Iranian Revolution Guard Corp
troops and military advisors
<https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565123-iran-revolutionary-guards-reportedly-pull-back-in-syria>
in Syria. Alongside these troops, Iranian government funding and
training aided the formation of the National Defence Force
<http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/12/16/iran-transformed-syrias-army-into-a-militia-that-will-help-assad-survive-another-year/>,
a 150,000 strong loyalist militia
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/syria/ndf.htm>. Iranian
government funding also paid for thousands of Afghani mercenaries to
bolster the regime’s numbers. Many of these Afghanis are poor refugees
and migrants in Iran who were recruited
<http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/8/27/iran-recruiting-afghan-refugees-to-fight-in-syria>
with promises of citizenship and a regular salary, and sent directly to
the frontlines.

The rationale appears to be geopolitical: Saudi Arabia is seen as an
ally of the US and UK, while Iran is not. For those people suffering at
the hands of Iranian intervention in Syria, the distinction means
nothing. Moreover, alliances between imperial powers and client
dictatorships change (and are currently changing). Meanwhile, the
mainstream British anti-war movement’s approach just reeks of hypocrisy,
and undermines the principles of opposition to imperial and colonial
agendas that it ought to stand for.

*Islamophobia*

There is a further tragedy. One of the anti-war movement’s main
successes during the opposition to the “war on terror” was that it was
built with and within the Muslim community, it defended them against
racism, and provided an organised outlet for angry and alienated British
Muslim youth who wanted to take action against the massive injustices
they witnessed abroad, and faced at home.

This outlet has not exist over Syria. The mainstream anti-war movement’s
stance has alienated a large part of the Muslim community which is
actively and heavily involved in supporting the Syrian revolution and
the civilian population affected by the war.

While the majority of people in Britain have only been shown the
occasional glimpse of regime atrocities, there has been no filter
between Muslim communities and the slaughter. Broadcast nightly on
Al-Jazeera, circulated on Youtube, spoken about in mosque sermons, full
exposure to the horrors has galvanised thousands to action.

Many British Muslims piled their energy into community and mosque lead
humanitarian relief work, aid collections and convoys. These efforts
have been enormous, with millions of pounds collected annually, and up
to 12 aid convoys a year going to Syria from Britain with ambulances,
food, medical supplies and clothes.

As the situation became more dire and bloody in Syria, and in the
absence of a political mass movement to pour their energies into, other
British Muslims joined the armed struggle. A duty of Islamic solidarity
towards Syrians was felt personally by many, who couldn’t ignore the
sectarian atrocities they witnessed daily via social media. Many
initially joined Free Syrian Army or Islamic brigades. With the rise of
Islamic State, it’s targeting of Muslims in the West with propaganda and
its international jihadist ideology providing a justification for
volunteers, many alienated Muslim youth flocked to it. A phenomenon seen
previously in Iraq and Afghanistan, “foreign jihadists” became a global
issue over Syria.

The absence of most anti-war activists from solidarity campaigns with
the Syrian revolution meant they couldn’t advance the single clearest
argument about ISIS: that its rise was due to devastating and barbaric
government repression of the popular revolution, and the isolation and
abandonment of the Syrian people by the world’s governments.

In a Stop the War article against the bombing of Syria and Iraq
<http://stopwar.org.uk/news/no-way-to-defeat-isis-10-reasons-to-oppose-us-uk-bombing-of-iraq-and-syria>
as a solution to problem of ISIS, there was */no/* */mention at all/* of
the Assad regime’s violence, of the relentless bombardment of towns and
cities which has killed tens of thousands, driven millions of Syrians to
flee and become refugees, crippled the oppositions ability to govern,
and created the conditions of desperate poverty, lawlessness and
oppression in which ISIS has grown.

This failure can also be seen in the way Stop the War has written about
the Syrian refugee crisis
<http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/instead-of-brutality-hate-and-hypocrisy-refugees-from-war-deserve-our-shelter-and-support>,
saying only that Syrian refugees are fleeing civil war, and not
mentioning Assad or his regime’s role in continuing the slaughter for 5
years. Tragically, this rhetoric has fed into the racist discourse about
what is happening in Syria. With no mention of the civil opposition, no
condemnation of Assad, and the maligning of rebels as western-backed
jihadists, there has been little challenge to the dominant mainstream
narrative that Syria’s revolution had become a sectarian war between a
“secular” government and “western-backed” extremists, rather than a
revolutionary struggle that militarised in the face of barbaric
repression, and which still struggles to this day despite all the force
that has been deployed against it.

As an example, here is a paragraph from an article published on the Stop
the War website in April 2014
<http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/confused-about-what-s-happening-in-ukraine-you-re-not-alone>:

    “Syria too is rather baffling. We were and are told that radical
    Islamic terror groups pose the greatest threat to our peace,
    security and our ‘way of life’ in the West. That Al-Qaeda and other
    such groups need to be destroyed: that we needed to have a
    relentless ‘War on Terror’ against them. Yet in Syria, our leaders
    have been siding with such radical groups in their war against a
    secular government which respects the rights of religious
    minorities, including Christians.

    When the bombs of Al-Qaeda or their affiliates go off in Syria and
    innocent people are killed there is no condemnation from our
    leaders: their only condemnation has been of the secular Syrian
    government which is fighting radical Islamists and which our leaders
    and elite media commentators are desperate to have toppled”

It is deeply disturbing that campaigners can organise conferences
against Islamophobia, but see no contradiction with carrying this
material on their websites. To lump all Syrians resisting the regime
into the camp of “Al-Qaeda or their affiliates” or “radical Islamists”
simply echoes the anti-Muslim racism heard so often from proponents of
the “War on Terror”; that any Muslim or Islamic organisation taking up
arms against oppression or dictatorship is “Al-Qaeda” and a terrorist.

Stop the War is looked to by tens of thousands of activists in Britain
as the leading voice on issues of war and imperialism. Articles like
this have greatly shaped their understanding of what is happening in
Syria. When even the largest anti-war organisation has done no
solidarity work for Syrians, and actually propagates this racist
narrative about their revolution, is it unconnected that until recently
public opinion has been so viciously turned against Syrian refugees and
the Syrian revolution? Opinion polls earlier this year showed 48% of
those surveyed
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nearly-half-of-britons-believe-refugees-should-be-turned-away-from-the-uk-research-reveals-10319284.html>
saying refugees should be turned away. Demonstrations such as the one
planned this Saturday show a promising counter-trend, but it is clear
the government is seeking ways to divert this mood into support for
military actions against “jihadists”.

*International solidarity and anti-imperialism*

There was a different course that could have been taken. The anti-war
movement could have responded to the uprisings of 2011, by moving beyond
narrowly focused, selectively anti-intervention campaigning, to building
international solidarity with the new revolutionary movements in the
Middle East. Organisations such as Stop the War could have used their
many groups across Britain to organise solidarity protests for the Arab
Spring, to tour Tunisia, Egyptian, Libyan and Syrian revolutionaries
round universities and communities.

The pro-revolution Syrian community protested every single week in
London for the first three years of the revolt, before exhaustion and
disillusionment set in. The wider anti-war movement could have lent its
activists and networks to help with these efforts, and supported the
fundraising and aid collections for Syria. Solidarity protests and
awareness raising campaigns could have challenged the mainstream
narrative about the revolution, and mobilised much needed support for
the democratic civil opposition pursuing non-violent resistance to the
regime.

Exemplary solidarity work has been carried out by some; Dr David Nutt
<http://www.channel4.com/programmes/ae-in-the-war-zone> has travelled to
Aleppo multiple times to perform emergency surgery on the wounded.
Salford cabby Alan Henning joined his Muslim co-workers in driving aid
convoys to Syria, until he was tragically murdered by ISIS for his
solidarity work. Hundreds of people, Muslim and non-Muslim have
travelled to Syria to volunteer with relief efforts
<http://www.channel4.com/news/syria-british-charity-workers-tauqir-sharif-racquell-hayden>,
driving ambulances, distributing aid, teaching in refugee camps or
running clinics for the wounded. This all took place outside the
framework of the anti-war movement, with no support from its organisations.

Assisting these efforts this would have drawn in a whole new generation
of activists into the anti-war movement. Young people inspired by the
Arab Spring, and especially young Muslims radicalised by the revolutions
and mass movements for freedom who now had a clear progressive
alternative to nihilistic terrorism or Islamic armed resistance movements.

Combining international solidarity with principled and consistent
anti-imperialist politics could have rebuilt the anti-war movement in a
new form, with a new generation of activists able to take forward the
international struggle for freedom, against war and oppression in all
its forms.

Instead the anti-war movement stood aside. This stance will have
consequences for years to come, in Britain and in the Middle East. The
forsaking of Syrians, and resulting rise of ISIS has created the perfect
bogeyman for further attacks on civil liberties, and reinvigorated
anti-Muslim racism. It has destroyed the political opposition to
intervention among the general public, with 60% supporting airstrikes
against ISIS in Syria and Iraq
<https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/10/25/report-british-attitudes-defence-security-and-arme/>.

The legacy of the war will last for decades. There are millions of
Syrian children who are living in refugee camps, who have missed years
of crucial education, and have had to endure terrible poverty and
horrific sectarian violence. They’ve grown up watching their country
being destroyed while the world has remained silent. A deep well of
bitterness has been sunk, which will take many decades to dry up, and in
the meantime will be a ready source of recruits for violent reactionary
movements.


The damage has been done by what Stop the War has said and done over
more than four years of brutal war in Syria. The Syrian community
protested
<https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.532111003552381.1073741869.403718986391584&type=3>
at the Stop the War annual event in 2013 demanding they protest against
Assad’s violence and support the revolution. These pleas fell on deaf
ears. There has been no change in Stop the War policy. They still hold
meetings against the bombing of Syria with no Syrians on the platform
<http://stopwar.org.uk/events/stop-the-war-events-national/10-sep-london-public-meeting>
and no mention of the regime’s violence.

Those who are active in the anti-war movement, or count themselves as
supporters, must do what they can to alter this practice. If they cannot
change the Stop the War Coalition, they must change their own practice,
and build new movements of international solidarity so that no peoples
are abandoned as the Syrian people have been these past four and half years.

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