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<h1 class="entry-title">The Syrian Revolution and the crisis
of the anti-war movement</h1>
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<p><em>Suddenly, everyone is talking about Syria. <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1047978998546751/">Saturday’s
demonstration</a> 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. </em></p>
<p><em>However, as the UK government and <a
href="https://rs21testblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/afac9-bomb2bsyria2bfor2baylam.jpg">mainstream
media</a> attempt to divert public sympathy for Syrian
refugees into a panic about “jihadists” and support for
bombing campaigns and <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/drone-british-citizens-syria-uk-david-cameron">drone
killings of British citizens</a> in Syria, it is
important that we have solidarity and anti-war movements
fit for purpose.</em></p>
<p><em>As part of an ongoing discussion, <strong>Mark
Boothroyd</strong>, 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.</em></p>
<br>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Western intervention </strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>all</em> 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 <a
href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/6515/how-libya-kept-migrants-out-of-eu-at-any-cost">partnership
with the EU</a>, built detention camps in Libya to
detain migrants and prevent them crossing the
Mediterranean to Europe.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, <a
href="http://www.voanews.com/content/rights-group-detentions-syria/2563705.html">215,000</a>
are still detained in regime prisons, 200,000 are missing,
and between <a
href="https://www.sams-usa.net/foundation/images/PDFs/Slow%20Death_Syria%20Under%20Siege.pdf">650,000
and 1,000,000</a> people are under <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/30/us-syria-crisis-hunger-insight-idUSBRE99T07I20131030">starvation
siege</a> by the regime in rebel towns and cities.
Bombings of civilian areas by the regime are a daily
occurrence, <a
href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/5/9265621/syrian-refugee-charts">4.5
million</a> Syrians are refugees, and 8 million, almost
half the remaining population, are internally displaced.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.ibtimes.com/what-non-lethal-aid-what-americas-60-million-could-buy-syrian-rebels-1107563">$60
million</a> of aid from the US , and been <a
href="http://www.dw.com/en/eu-denies-syrian-rebels-weapons-offers-non-lethal-aid/a-16608528">denied
access</a> to weaponry by the EU. The aid they did
receive was only <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-syria-crisis-us-idUSBRE91R0KM20130228">non-lethal
aid</a> consisting of food, medicine and vehicles. From
<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html">2012
onwards</a> the CIA was involved in <a
href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/house-report-says-cia-monitored-arms-shipments-to-syria/">monitoring
weapons shipments</a> to Syria; its role was to <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&">stop
them receiving</a> the anti-air missiles and heavy
weaponry that could have neutralised Assad’s airforce and
armour and hastened the downfall of the regime.</p>
<p>When the US did finally begin to arm and train rebels in
2014, it was tightly controlled to a <a
href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/covert-cia-mission-to-arm-syrian-rebels-goes-awry-1422329582">ridiculous
extent</a>. In contrast the regime has $3.5 billion
worth of contracts for <a
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-02/putin-defies-obama-in-syria-as-arms-fuel-assad-resurgence">arms
from Russia</a>, and <a
href="http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-syrias-banker-and-arms-supplier/">loans</a>
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.</p>
<p><strong>Selective Anti-Imperialism</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This was defended by Stop the War national officer John
Rees on the grounds that <a
href="http://www.counterfire.org/theory/157-international/15938-syria-empire-and-revolution-a-reply-to-the-critics-of-the-anti-war-movement"><strong><em>“the
main enemy is at home”</em></strong></a>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/10/help-syria-now-tomorrow-too-late">Yassin
Al-Haj Saleh</a>, Syrian human rights activist <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/razan-zaitouneh/syrians-want-freedom_b_998118.html">Razan
Zaitouneh</a> or Palestinian intellectual and former
Knesset member <a
href="http://pulsemedia.org/2012/08/18/history-will-not-be-kind-to-the-syrian-regime/">Dr
Azmi Bishara</a> were ignored.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241314026709762.html">online
polls</a> to choose the <a
href="https://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/every-friday-new-slogans-of-the-peoples-revolution/">main
slogan</a> 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:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>20: July 29, 2011 – “Your Silence Is Killing Us”<br>
26: September 9, 2011 – “International Protection”<br>
38: December 12, 2011 – “The Buffer Zone is Our Demand”<br>
51: March 2, 2012 – “Providing Weapons for the Free
Army”<br>
53: March 16, 2012 – “Immediate Military Intervention”<br>
67: June 22, 2012 – “Governments Let Us Down, Where Are
the People?”<br>
74: August 10, 2012 – “Arm Us with Anti-Aircraft
Weapons”<br>
82: October 5, 2012 – “We Want Weapons, not Statements”<br>
91: December 7, 2012 – “No to Peacekeeping Forces in
Syria”<br>
99: February 1, 2013 – “The International Community Are
Partners to Al-Assad in His massacres”<br>
128: August 23, 2013 – “The Terrorist Bashar Kills
Civilians with Chemical Weapons While the World Watches”<br>
131: September 13, 2013 – “The Murderer Is Under the
International Community’s Protection”<br>
146: December 27, 2013 – “Death Barrels with
International License”<br>
206: February 20, 2015 – “The World Failed us, God Give
Us Victory”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<br>
<p><strong>The 2013 Vote: Obama’s red herring</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-23892783">lost
narrowly</a>. Rather than intervene immediately, the
Obama administration put the decision to a vote in
Congress. This was also lost and no intervention took
place.</p>
<p>Instead, on the recommendation of Russia (and as it was
admitted later, <a
href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-15/israel-helped-obama-skirt-red-line-on-syria">Israel</a>)
a deal was done with the Assad regime for it to hand over
its chemical weapons in exchange for no military strikes.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://medium.com/war-is-boring/french-bombers-were-loaded-up-syrian-rebels-were-deployed-all-awaiting-obamas-okay-to-attack-69247c24253f">war
planes were waiting</a>, in expectation of an American
attack, when Obama personally contacted President Hollande
to inform him he <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/31/syrian-air-strikes-obama-congress">would
not attack</a> without Congress’ approval. The French
government decided not to intervene without American
support.</p>
<p>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. <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/qusai-zakarya-syria-activist_n_4904062.html">Qusai
Zakarya</a>, spokesperson for Moadamiyah, one of the
Damascus towns hit by the sarin attack reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“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.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We should <a
href="http://www.nfz-debate.org/2015/06/no-fly-zone-dangerous-illusion.html">not
support US or UK intervention</a> 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 <a
href="http://sn4hr.org/blog/2014/05/01/the-international-community-must-save-aleppo/">2,500
people</a>, displaced hundreds of thousands and turned
the rebel held half of the city into a ghost town.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Inconsistency</strong></p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://5pillarsuk.com/2013/08/29/stop-the-war-must-support-the-syrian-revolution/%29">Salwa
Amor</a> 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.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://eaworldview.com/2015/08/syria-daily-why-did-us-led-coalition-bomb-rebels-near-turkish-border/">Jaysh
Al-Sunna faction</a>. The bombing killed 25 civilians
including 5 girls <a
href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-led-coalition-kills-8-civilians-atmeh-1783446219">from
the same family</a>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The Iranian government’s involvement in Syria is well
documented, coming in the form of enormous financial aid
through <a
href="http://www.naameshaam.org/naame-shaam-releases-report-on-role-of-iranian-regime-in-syria-war/">loans,
oil and asset deals</a>, and military aid with as many
as 6,000 Iranian Revolution Guard Corp <a
href="https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565123-iran-revolutionary-guards-reportedly-pull-back-in-syria">troops
and military advisors</a> in Syria. Alongside these
troops, Iranian government funding and training aided the
formation of the <a
href="http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/12/16/iran-transformed-syrias-army-into-a-militia-that-will-help-assad-survive-another-year/">National
Defence Force</a>, a 150,000 strong <a
href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/syria/ndf.htm">loyalist
militia</a>. 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 <a
href="http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/8/27/iran-recruiting-afghan-refugees-to-fight-in-syria">recruited</a>
with promises of citizenship and a regular salary, and
sent directly to the frontlines.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Islamophobia</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In a Stop the War article against the <a
href="http://stopwar.org.uk/news/no-way-to-defeat-isis-10-reasons-to-oppose-us-uk-bombing-of-iraq-and-syria">bombing
of Syria and Iraq</a> as a solution to problem of ISIS,
there was <strong><em>no</em></strong> <strong><em>mention
at all</em></strong> 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.</p>
<p>This failure can also be seen in the way Stop the War has
written about the <a
href="http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/instead-of-brutality-hate-and-hypocrisy-refugees-from-war-deserve-our-shelter-and-support">Syrian
refugee crisis</a>, 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.</p>
<p>As an example, here is a paragraph from an article
published on the <a
href="http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/confused-about-what-s-happening-in-ukraine-you-re-not-alone">Stop
the War website in April 2014</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="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">48%
of those surveyed</a> 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”.</p>
<p><strong>International solidarity and anti-imperialism</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Exemplary solidarity work has been carried out by some; <a
href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/ae-in-the-war-zone">Dr David
Nutt</a> 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 <a
href="http://www.channel4.com/news/syria-british-charity-workers-tauqir-sharif-racquell-hayden">to
volunteer with relief efforts</a>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<a
href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/10/25/report-british-attitudes-defence-security-and-arme/">60%
supporting airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_7263"
style="width: 970px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><br>
</div>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.532111003552381.1073741869.403718986391584&type=3">Syrian
community protested</a> 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 <a
href="http://stopwar.org.uk/events/stop-the-war-events-national/10-sep-london-public-meeting">with
no Syrians on the platform</a> and no mention of the
regime’s violence.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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