Syrian workers have suffered from tyrannical oppression long before the current war between opposing capitalist, nationalist forces. For centuries they have been exploited by colonial and imperialist masters, or by homegrown dictators controlled by external powers. But like other workers in the Middle East, working class in Syria has yet to build a revolutionary movement that could lead them to a better life. Time and again, it has been manipulated by local and international rulers — from Turkey and France to Russia, Iran, and China today. As a result, the history of Syria is one of religious and ethnic divisions, with workers fighting workers against their own best interests.
For four centuries, from 1516–1918, Syria was
a province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. During World War I (1914-18), the British and French were anxious to wrest control of the Middle East from Turkey as a counter to Russian influence and also to protect newly discovered oil reserves. They encouraged Arab nationalism, on the rise since the late 1800s, and enlisted Arab armies by promising them independence after the war. In October 1918, Arab troops within the British Army were the first to reach Damascus. They declared a Syrian Arab state to be ruled by Emir Faisal. The new state’s territory was to include Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.
British, French Imperialists Divide Spoils
The victorious troops were unaware, however, that the British and French had already signed a secret agreement, the Sykes-Picot treaty, to divide the Arab world between them after the war. In the Balfour Agreement, ratified by the League of Nations in 1920, Britain also promised the Zionist movement a Jewish state in Palestine. Syria and Lebanon were declared under French control, with the British taking Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. This effectively ended the Arab nationalists’ dream of incorporating Palestine into Greater Syria. It also created substantial anti-Zionist sentiment.
The Arab leader King Faisal, who had signed off on the Balfour Agreement in the hope that a Jewish state would dilute French control of the region, was removed by the French from Damascus after a series of small failed rebellions. The following year, in 1921, he was installed by the British as ruler of the newly created country of Iraq. Meanwhile, Syria and Lebanon were administratively separated by the French, with separate nationalist movements growing in each territory.
The French were harsh colonial masters in Syria. Political activity, civil rights, and news media were suppressed. The urban elites were favored and harsh treatment meted out in the rural areas. In 1925, the Great Syrian Revolt became the largest and longest-lasting anti-colonial insurgency in the inter-war Arab East. Mobilizing peasants, workers, and army veterans, rather than urban elites and intellectuals, it was the first mass movement against colonial rule in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it was based on nationalist rather than class ideology. The French maintained military and economic dominance of Syria until 1946, when they left the country under pressure from the United Nations, a body controlled by the U.S. and the Soviet Union (USSR).
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two strongest competitors for power and influence around the globe. The Middle East, a vital source of oil, was of strategic importance to both camps. In 1948, in an attempt to reduce British influence in the area, the USSR supported the creation of the state of Israel. Arms from Czechoslovakia, a Soviet ally, were instrumental in the Israeli victory in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.  But as Israel became a firm Western ally, the USSR switched sides and condemned Zionism. Seeking a stronger foothold in the energy-rich region, the Soviets allied with nationalist regimes in Syria, Egypt, Libya and Iraq.
In 1955, Moscow invited Syria and Egypt to join a pro-Soviet pact. Turkey, a U.S. ally, attempted to dissuade Syria by mobilizing troops along their common border. When the USSR threatened to respond with military force, however, Turkey backed down. Over the next five years, the USSR provided Syria with more than $200 million in military aid to cement the alliance and counter U.S. influence. The Soviet bloc was countered by a U.S. bloc of pro-Western governments: Israel, Iran (prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution), Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
In 1958, Syria joined Egypt in the United Arab Republic (UAR), a pan-Arab union dominated by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. It withdrew three years later because of Egyptian domination. After another period of instability, the secular and nationalist Baath Party took power in Syria just one month after doing the same in Iraq.
In 1967, when Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt were defeated in war with Israel, Syria lost the Golan Heights to the Zionists. Although Moscow didn’t back its allies militarily, the Soviets pledged $2.5 billion in aid to Syria and severed diplomatic ties with Israel. In 1971, the Soviets established a naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus. One year later, Syria and the USSR signed a peace and security pact that paved the way for more than $135 million in Soviet arms deliveries to Damascus. By then, a Baathist minister of defense named Hafez al-Assad had seized power in a bloodless coup.
Threaten Nuclear War?
In October 1973, Syria and Egypt launched another war against Israel. Initially taken by surprise, the Israelis battled back and even crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt. When Israel gained the upper hand, the Soviets panicked. Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev threatened to send Soviet troops into the theater of war. A Soviet naval vessel allegedly bearing nuclear arms awaited his instructions in the Egyptian port of Alexandria. In response, U.S. President Richard Nixon reportedly increased the national security warning to DEFCON 3 and placed the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet on high alert in the Mediterranean Sea. With U.S. assistance, Israel emerged victorious. To maintain leverage in the region, Moscow agreed to compensate the defeated Arab states with new long-range missiles and high-tech aircraft. In return, Syria pledged not to turn to the U.S. for assistance.
The 1975 civil war in Lebanon strained the Soviet-Syrian relationship. With Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, Druze and Palestinians all fighting one another, Assad sent troops to protect the Christians. Fearing a victory by anti-Baathist Muslim fundamentalists, the Syrian leadership made a temporary alliance with Israel. The Soviets supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Muslim groups, hoping their victory would transform Lebanon into a friendly state. A ceasefire imposed by the Arab League in 1976 left the Syrian Army as a large “peacekeeping” (read: occupying) force in Lebanon. When Israel invaded its northern neighbor, Lebanon, in 1982, hoping to drive out the PLO and gain more territory, Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters were the main force that eventually defeated Israel. Although Iran depended on Syria to cross fighters and weapons into Lebanon, the superior military prowess of Iran’s proxy forces essentially left Iran in control there.
Soviet opposition to the Syrian presence in Lebanon grew with the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. He wished for a diplomatic resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict and opposed Syria’s desire to become a military equal with Israel. Soviet arms shipments and advisors to Syria were cut in half by 1989. As Russian influence in Syria waned, the U.S. made peace overtures to Assad. But he rejected the offers and continued to support Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance, Iran and the Iraqi insurgency.
With Vladimir Putin and Assad’s son, Bashar al-Assad, both coming to power in 2000, Russia and Syria grew close once again. By 2012, Russia accounted for 78 percent of Syrian arms purchases. Putin’s commitment to increasing Russian naval power has heightened the significance of its only naval base outside its own territory — in Tartus, Syria. Within the China-Russia-Iran axis fighting for control over Middle Eastern resources, Russia faces significant competition from China, now Syria’s third-largest importer.
‘Communist’ Party Not Too Communist
A communist party was founded in Syria in the 1920s. Like other communist parties in the region, it was closely tied to Moscow. The “socialist” Baath Party, representing Syria’s national ruling class, fell in line with the Soviets’ goal to promote local anti-Western nationalism; the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) was ordered to ally with the Baathists in the 1950s.
Today the SCP supports Assad in his fight against Western imperialist interests. These phony communists offer little criticism of Assad’s anti-worker, neoliberal economic policies, or of the corruption and cruelty of a regime that has impoverished millions of Syrians. But as CHALLENGE has pointed out, the “rebel” forces are no better. Some of them represent Islamic fundamentalism tied to Sunni Muslim states like Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Others are aligned with Al Qaeda or with secular nationalists aligned with Western interests. None of the leading rebel forces represent the working class in Syria.
For centuries, religious and nationalist hatreds in the Middle East have served successive sets of rulers in their effort to weaken potential opposition to their grab for power and resources. Workers in Syria — like workers in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Jorda
n and Lebanon — can flourish only when they overcome the divisions built by religion and nationalism. They will thrive only when a new communist movement based on class solidarity is built without capitalist borders. Our Progressive Labor Party group in Israel/Palestine, which unites Jewish, Arab, and migrant workers, is a small but vital step in this direction.

The growing carnage in Iraq — 8,868 workers slaughtered in 2013 (Washington Post, 1/12) — is the result of the U.S. invasion that has left the country in ruins. This is typical of all wars under capitalism. In the current era, U.S. imperialism has become the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. In Iraq it has killed and displaced millions since 1991. They are the victims not of “sectarian violence,” but of the inter-imperialist rivalry for control over energy resources.
Because of insufficient cash for costly occupations and a shortage of GI boots on the ground, U.S. rulers have had to modify their strategy for controlling oil-rich Iraq. After pursuing failed military occupations from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, the Pentagon would find it politically difficult to send troops to overturn al Qaeda’s capture of Fallujah. Instead, they are fostering infighting and a potential civil war among Iraqi locals, even as they plan for larger wars worldwide.
With the demise of the Soviet Union and its huge military, U.S. rulers thought they could invade smaller countries unhindered. But the Afghanistan and Iraq quagmires have shown they cannot control the world’s oil and gas resources with the one percent of the U.S. population that now enlists in their military. And they cannot raise the additional troops needed unless they somehow win over the war-weary U.S. working class to support their profit-driven bloodbaths.
This is the central problem for the U.S. ruling class: a lack of support from the domestic population. That’s why National War College professor Michael Mazarr warns, “In the future, the United States is likely to rely less on power projection and more on domestic preparedness” (Foreign Affairs Journal, Council on Foreign Relations).
U.S. Capitalism: Murder, Inc.
But this raises another problem for the capitalists. Their racist, imperialist system is not only murdering millions in wars worldwide and leaving billions destitute, from Bangladesh to the Middle East and beyond. It is also destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of working-class families within the United States. Massive, long-term unemployment, poverty-level wages, unaffordable health care, millions losing their homes to bankers’ foreclosures — all of these are crises endemic to capitalism. They fall even more heavily on black, Latino and Asian workers, since the capitalists use racism to produce the super-profits they need to survive.
But this heightened exploitation also has consequences for the bosses. Class struggle is escalating throughout the world. Mass anger is on the rise in a working class ripe for rebellion. Tens of thousands are already fighting back in Cambodia, Palestine-Israel, Greece, Spain, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. But the fightback cannot win unless it aims to eliminate capitalism, the root of workers’ problems.
The Progressive Labor Party must give leadership to organize a communist revolution and eliminate the bosses and their brutal system. Only a society run by and for the working class can end the destructiveness of capitalism. Our Party is planting its roots in a score of countries to organize that revolution.
Using al Qaeda in Fallujah
Iraq is emerging once again as a focal point for U.S. rulers. Consider their deceitful response to al Qaeda’s recent take-over of Fallujah, a city that U.S. imperialists brutally stormed twice in 2004. Then they killed thousands of working-class Iraqis, many of them civilians, along with hundreds of working-class GIs to “secure” Anbar Province, the country’s largest. Today, however, President Barack Obama is vowing not to send in the Marines. “It’s their fight,” says Secretary of State John Kerry.
Don’t believe him. U.S. bosses remain locked into Iraq’s petroleum-soaked politics. In fact, “How the Fall of Fallujah Could Be Good for the U.S.” was published last week (1/10/14) on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank funded largely by ExxonMobil.
The article calls the terrorist triumph in Fallujah “a bright spot of opportunity” that will frighten shaky allies into embracing the U.S. war machine, which is “accelerating…foreign military sales deliveries and…looking to provide an additional shipment of Hellfire missiles” and “more surveillance drones [for the Iraqi government],” according to White House spokesman Jay Carney (BBC, 1/6).
The CFR hopes that anti-al Qaeda sentiment will inspire unity among Iraqi, U.S., Afghan and Saudi rulers, and deter hostile Iran and Russia:

For the first time since 2011, when U.S. troops left Iraq, Washington has leverage with recalcitrant leaders like [Iraq’s] Maliki....This spreading war makes U.S. coercive diplomacy critical not just to dealing with Iraq, but also to pressuring Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia (which is contracting with Iraq to sell arms) to cooperate. With increasingly desperate partners in Baghdad and Kabul, Washington now has its chance.

Oil, the Crucial Factor
The deadly Iraq intrigue involves ExxonMobil up to its elbows. The company’s vast and growing operations in the country are aimed at controlling Iraqi oil sources of which rival Chinese bosses need more every day. Exxon is also seeking to destabilize the troublesome Nuri al-Maliki regime. In particular, the company is undermining the Baghdad regime by cutting oil-pumping deals with Iraq’s self-governing Kurdish bosses in the north. The plan is to ship Kurdish crude through Turkey, which war secretary Chuck Hagel is courting as an ally in future global wars.
“ExxonMobil has spudded [begun drilling — Ed.] at the Pirmam block in Erbil province and has erected a rig in preparation for drilling at the al-Qush block in Ninewa province, breaking ground for the first time in the super major’s six-block deal with the autonomous Kurdistan region” (Iraq Oil Report, 1/10/14).
“A Kurdish export deal may be just the tip of a broader wedge that could split Iraq in two” (Oil Price, 1/5/14). The Obama administration is working hand-in-glove with arch-imperialist Exxon in weakening Maliki. Vice President Joseph Biden has become a salesman for Exxon (just as Obama is shilling for Boeing, see page 4):

In a phone call with the Kurdish Regional Government’s President, Masoud Barzani...U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden also addressed the issue, encouraging the regional leader to find a common way forward on oil exports [through Turkey] and revenue sharing. An agreement also stands to benefit oil firms that have bet on Iraqi Kurdistan, despite drawing the ire of Baghdad. Major oil companies led by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. have followed wildcatters like London-listed Genel Energy PLC into the region.

It’s not just Kurdistan that makes Exxon and Maliki enemies. Exxon has a majority stake in Iraq’s largest southern oil field, West Qurna 1 — the main prize of the Bush wars and Clinton sanctions that killed millions. But in Exxon’s eyes, the terms at West Qurna are too favorable to Baghdad. Unlike the Kurdish production-sharing agreement, under which Exxon owns much of the oil it pumps, the West Qurna deal is strictly a service contract. Baghdad’s would-be billionaires pay Exxon less than $2 per barrel to extract oil that Iraq’s bosses are then free to sell. For two years Exxon has been threatening to pull out of southern Iraq, where its technological expertise is indispensable to the Maliki gang’s profits, unless it gets a piece of the pie. Maliki “needs a real air force to fight the Qaeda occupiers” (CFR). The U.S. will arm him only if he toes the Exxon line on oil ownership.
Inter-Imperialist Rivalry vs. Communist Revolution
The worldwide fight over energy resources has intensified inter-imperialist rivalries. In opposition to the U.S. rulers’ maneuvers, great swaths of the former Soviet Union have morphed into an anti-U.S., Russian-led armed coalition under Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, China’s economic rise puts it on a military collision course with the U.S. from the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea.
These rivalries spell death for the world’s workers, who have no stake in any side of the inter-imperialist fight. PLP says there is only one side for workers in the class war. It’s the side that produces all the wealth that the bosses steal from our labor. Our side is the working class. And our answer to imperialist war is a communist revolution that destroys capitalism and puts workers in power.

AMIENS, January 14 — Facing the mass layoff of all 1,173 workers, over 200 invaded the Goodyear tire plant here on January 6 and held two senior bosses captive in an attempt to force negotiations for huge severance pay before the closing of the plant. They rolled giant farm-tractor wheels in to block the room holding the bosses. The enraged workers then set off a huge bonfire of tires at the plant and vowed to occupy it until demands were met. They are occupying the factory and blocking a warehouse containing 240,000 tires worth hundreds of millions of euros.
On the second day of the standoff cops freed the two bosses, threatening the workers with hordes of police from Paris to “whack the workers” and jail them under a law prescribing a 5-year prison term and a $102,000 fine for each worker. Last March, a protest by these workers left 15 cops injured.
There is no clearer example of the use of the state by the capitalist class to enforce the exploitation of the working class.
François Hollande, the Socialist president of France, “pushed through…labor laws…making it easier for companies to fire workers, [and] reduce their pay and work hours” while introducing $27 billion worth of tax breaks for businesses….The imminent closing of the Goodyear plant [is] the latest in a series of mass layoffs at large companies across France….For the nine months ended September 30, Goodyear had net income of $372 million” (New York Times, 1/8).
Demand $130 Million Severance Pay
The workers are demanding severance packages of $110,000 each plus $2,500 for each year worked. “It will take years for these workers to find new jobs, and the older ones will have almost no chance,” declared a French economics professor (NYT).
The workers’ main union, the CGT, which supported Hollande in the last election, has fallen to the “strategy” of looking for a new capitalist buyer to bail out the President. Throughout the year since the plant closure was announced, Goodyear ignored legal proceedings on workers’ hygiene, safety and working conditions, while accusing the workers of “vandalism” and “theft.” Of course, throughout the years it is Goodyear bosses who have stolen billions in profits from the workers’ labor. It is notable that Goodyear is a U.S.-based transnational company and that when it’s in their class interests, the bosses and their governments act together to screw the workers. Workers must show support and solidarity across borders in order to fight the bosses at the point of production.
The militancy of the workers is to be lauded, but unfortunately — as can be seen from the adjoining workers’ proclamation — under capitalism conditions are stacked against the working class. The bosses use both the former right-wing government of Sarkozy and the current Socialist government of Hollande to oppress our class, which creates everything of value in society and yet the profit system enables the bosses to steal the value of what we produce.
It is only a communist revolution that can end this horror, not the mis-leadership of unions like the CGT nor the phonies who call themselves “communist” while betraying the workers in one bosses’ election after another. This requires a communist party — which still needs to be built in France — to turn the anger and militancy of the working class to lead to the overthrow of capitalism and establish a society run by and for the workers.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Issawiyeh, December 28 — PL’ers came to show solidarity with the released Palestinian political prisoner, Samer Tariq Issawi. Issawi, a left-wing Palestinian fighter. He was first arrested in 2002 under allegations of manufacturing bombs and firing on Israeli citizens, and was convicted of membership in an illegal organization, possession of explosives, and attempted murder based on very flimsy evidence. He was sentenced to 26 years in prison. In October 2011, he was released in the deal between Israel and Hamas for the release of the Israeli POW Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas.
However, in July 2012, Issawi was arrested once more for violating the (very strict) terms of his release, sentenced to eight more months in prison and threatened with the re-activation of his old jail sentence, which would put him behind bars for almost two more decades. In response, he went on an intermittant hunger strike, between August 2012 and April 2013, demanding his release.
Massive protests sprung up around Israel-Palestine and abroad to demand his release. The protest brought results, and in April 2013 a deal was agreed upon between Issawi and the regime, ending his hunger strike and allowing for his release after his eight month jail term.
In December 2013,  he was finally released to his home village of Issawiye, after enduring the horrors of imprisonment. The real reason for his imprisonment is political; the evidence of any “crimes” committed by him are flimsy at best.
He was arrested as part of the Israeli regime’s harassment of Palestinian political fighters, especially those of working-class background and left political alignment. However, the resolute, multi-ethnic struggle against his unjust imprisonment forced even this fascist state to capitulate and grant him his freedom.
Two PL’ers visited Issawi and his family tiday. We have been very well-received by the locals, and Challenge (in English and Arabic) was enthusiastically welcomed. As communists, we stand shoulder to shoulder with all those who fight against apartheid and fascism. Only by a united, multi-ethnic struggle, can we smash the racist, capitalist Zionist system and replace it with a communist workers’ state from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean, as a stepping-stone toward a red Middle East and a red, borderless world.