Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad (left) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) with their country flags in the background. Photo: The Independent/file photo.
By Justin Podur – Dec 4, 2024
After years of equivocation, Turkey colludes with the US and Israel to join the genocide coalition, attacking Syria at a crucial moment.
Editorial Note: This article was written four days before being republished by Orinoco Tribune and analyzes the Syria situation using a chronological approach. It was written before the radical change of scenario reported on Sunday, December 8, with the resignation of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad; however, it still provides an important historical background about the imperialist regime-change operation affecting Syria in recent history.
Historical background from colonialism to 2000
Before it fell under 20th century Anglo-American colonialism, Syria was the core of the Levant, encompassing (today’s) Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, the site of multireligious, multicultural cities between which people traveled and traded freely. In the countryside, peasants and herders tended an agricultural and pastoral landscape of olive and orange trees, pasture, forest, and drylands. This region was under the control of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years (perhaps Erdogan’s dream is to take some of it back. He’s been accused of “neo-Ottoman” fantasies). England seized Palestine from Turkey during WWI. After that war, the rest of the Ottoman Empire was carved up and this region partitioned into English and French colonies. England kept Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, and gave France Syria and Lebanon.
After WW2, these colonies were further carved up and given nominal independence. Palestine was partitioned and given to the Israeli colonizers. Lebanon was carved off from Syria and given a special sectarian structure to ensure France would be able to continue to interfere through a neocolonial relationship (they’re still at it). Syria got its independence from France in 1946. In the final year of its mission civilisatrice, France bombed Damascus at the same time as Syria’s prime minister was speaking at the first meeting of the United Nations in the US.
After independence, Syria, like Iraq and Egypt, had a nationalist, developmentalist ideology and an alliance with the USSR. Egypt under Anwar Sadat switched to the Western camp after 1973. But Syria and Iraq maintained alliances and military cooperation with the USSR until its collapse. When Yeltsin announced to the US that Russia was going to abandon all of its allies – Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia – the US took the opportunity to destroy all of these states (intensified attempts were made on Cuba too, but it hangs on). Under Putin, Russia’s foreign policy changed from Yeltsin’s. Russia’s decision to support Syria has been persistent, even as it has tried to maintain good relations with two major powers seeking Syria’s destruction – Israel and Turkey.
From the military history perspective: in every one of Israel’s major wars – 1948, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and all the Gaza wars – Syria was on the side of the resistance to Israel.
In the Zionist colonizing ideology, all of Greater Syria (plus part of Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, and the Arabian peninsula) is part of the colonizer’s dream of Greater Israel.
In practice, postcolonial Syria has been a major check on US/Israel’s ambitions, as Patrick Higgins documented in his article “Gunning for Damascus”, and has paid a heavy price in lives and in economic destruction.
In the 1967 war that Israel has been trying to repeat ever since, Syria lost the Golan Heights, a strategic position from which it has been impossible to dislodge Israel (and from which, indeed, it should have been impossible for Israel to dislodge Syria). In the 1973 war, Syria fought well but Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat had a treacherous plan to abandon the fight against Israel and US imperialism in the region. Throughout Lebanon’s civil war that began in the 1970s, the Israeli intervention and occupation from 1982-2000, Syria supported the opposition to Israel. After Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and even after the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005, Syria remained a supporter of Hizbollah.
Iraq’s destruction has also had an impact on Syria. Bush Sr. destroyed Iraq in 1990/1 and Clinton sharpened the sanctions weapon on that country; Bush Jr. invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003 as part of a broader project of recolonizing the whole region. The destruction of the Iraqi state made way for the current dispensation in Syria’s neighbouring country: the establishment of al-Qaeda and then the Islamic State there, the stationing of a large number of US bases there, and a renewed alliance between Iran and resistance organizations in Iraq who fight al-Qaeda and are also part of the so-called Axis of Resistance.
From 2006-2019
Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon has numerous echoes in 2024.
With the Americans in Iraq, the West Bank reoccupied, the post-2005 withdrawal period of intensified Gaza genocide just beginning, and Syrian troops having left Lebanon in 2005, Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 intending to repeat the 1982 occupation and destroy Hizbollah.
They were unable to do so: they were, as Matt Matthews’s now-famous paper argued, “caught unprepared”. When the Israeli military retreated, the Americans tried to help them win through peace what they couldn’t win in war, by engineering an agreement between Israel and Lebanon that made the Lebanese Army responsible for the disarming of Hizbollah and the United Nations responsible to ensure Israel’s safety by patrolling south Lebanon for Hizbollah presence. That was the basis of UN Resolution 1701, back when wars ended with UN resolutions. Having a UN Resolution that ends a war seems like a relic of a lost civilization now.
Once they’d engineered a deal to leave the UN and the Lebanese state holding the bag, the US and Israel moved on to try to destroy Syria (sound familiar?). If a friendly regime could be installed there, Israel could take what it felt like in Lebanon and continue its genocide of Palestinians without distraction. The uprising, documented, e.g., in Tim Anderson’s book, The Dirty War on Syria, a series of essays by William van Wagenen, and elsewhere, was duly produced through careful adherence to the US color-revolution playbook: the sponsorship of local opposition from political training through to arming and equipping forces for a coup; the amplification of their narratives back and forth from Western media and back to make them look larger and better supported than they were; the use of violence and of “false-flag” operations; an attempt to force an unfavorable political deal on the regime that would later be violated by the opposition…
When the regime didn’t fall after a few sharp blows, the US, with Turkish help, decided to plunge the country into destruction through fomenting a civil war, the resurrection of al-Qaeda, then the Islamic State, the sponsorship of Syrian Kurdish organizations to fight the Islamic State that the US had sponsored in the first place.
This kind of pressure had been enough to destroy the Libyan state, which has never recovered. It brought Syria to the brink of destruction before Syria was saved by Hizbollah and Iran. From Lebanon, Nasrallah explained patiently and repeatedly the existential nature of the battle for Syria and why Hizbollah had to intervene; he also warned against those he called takfiris, those who decided their ideology gave them the right to label other Muslims as unbelievers, stirring up sectarian conflict that only served imperialists.
The US redoubled its efforts and nearly destroyed Syria again, before Russia intervened in 2015 and turned the tide decisively in Syria’s favor. The Syrian government would not fall. But nor was it able to recover the territory carved out of it by the Americans and their proxy forces.
From 2019-2023
Russia’s solution to the Syrian conflict was to push the Turkey- and American-backed al-Qaeda forces into the northwest corner of the country in Idlib, where they were allowed to do what they wanted. This was called “freezing” the conflict. The American-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were also left in place, also “frozen”. And the US occupation also reaches the joint border with Jordan and Iraq. The “frozen” conflict left Syria destroyed, its economy unable to recover because of starvation-level sanctions, as written up by Charles Glass in May 2023, its state unable to access its own energy resources (as these are occupied by US proxies). The first time Aleppo was held by Turkey’s takfiris, its entire advanced industrial base was dismantled and trucked off to Turkey (Aleppo is Syria’s main industrial city). In addition, Israel bombs Syria at will, knowing that devastated Syria does not have the ability to exercise its right to self-defense.
After October 2023|
When Israel began the current genocide in October 2023, it did so counting on the knowledge that broken, partitioned Syria could not oppose it the way it had done before 2011. When Israel began its war on Lebanon in September 2024, it used intelligence it had been developing since 2012 on Hizbollah commanders who’d gone to save Syria. It also had perhaps hoped that the destruction of Syria and the frequent bombing of the supply routes from Syria to Lebanon had left Hizbollah short of resources: this proved not to be the case.
But, as in 2006, frustrated after an unsuccessful invasion of Lebanon, the US and Israel have once again turned, with Turkish help, to the plan of destroying Syria. The US and Israel have reached the same conclusion in 2024 as they did in 2006: that destroying Syria through a Turkish-sponsored war would help them isolate Lebanon, which would help them isolate Palestine. The specific goal is to cut Palestine off from its demographically, scientifically, and (potentially) economically largest ally: Iran. (This is also a repeat – in the early decades when Palestine’s biggest ally was Egypt, successful efforts were made to turn Egypt into a Western ally and traitor to Palestine.) Tactically speaking this means the takfiris taking control of all the Syrian routes into Lebanon, besieging the country.
Who’s to blame?
After an shocking week of surprise successes by Turkey’s takfiris it is natural to try to find out whose errors led to this outcome. How come Syria didn’t see this coming? Why didn’t Russia see it coming? Why didn’t Iran? How could the Syrian Army have retreated collapsed like a house of cards? Why didn’t Syria finish off the takfiri enclave in Idlib when they had a chance in 2019 instead of freezing the conflict?
The short answer is: in this conflict, the imperialists have most of the advantages. The Western empires have centuries of experience of colonial subversion and have all the resources that centuries of theft could give them.
The weaker side doesn’t have to make huge errors to suffer greatly. The decapitation of Hizbollah in September 2024 was not the result of Hizbollah’s errors – they were following sound security protocols that had worked for decades – Israel just achieved surprise. The fall of Aleppo doesn’t mean that anyone, Syria or allies, did anything really stupid either. The nature of a surprise attack is that the timing and scale is chosen by the enemy. Knowing in general that an attack will come one day isn’t enough to remove the element of surprise. As for the freezing of the conflict being a mistake: it’s likely that Syria in 2019, like Hizbollah in 2024, needed the freeze as much as the Turkish proxies and Israelis did.
The genocide coalition are formidable and ruthless and the surprise attack is one of their favorite tricks. Turkey spent the past year fueling and feeding Israel for genocide, arming Ukraine with drones, while proclaiming interest in BRICS and in detente with Russia – their committing to the genocide coalition was going to be a surprise whenever it happened.
Any power that equivocates – notably Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar here – maintains an ability to backstab either side. Restoring trust after making the kind of commitment Turkey’s just made will be difficult.
As for those targeted by the West, what are they likely to do? Syria, the Palestinians, Lebanon, Iran, and Russia too – have signed up to ceasefire after ceasefire only to have them violated by the other side. They’ve repeatedly shown the willingness to let up on military pressure when the chance to end a war arose. They know their side – the weaker side – suffers more in war, especially a war with the depraved opponents of the West. While it is only human to fear that the alliance might break under pressure, every member of the alliance has very good reasons to support the others and nothing to gain by defecting to the other camp. The alliances between Russia, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Resistance are durable and likely to hold. These are core elements of how they do things that very likely will continue as the war continues.
As for the US, Israel, and Turkey: the US-Israel’s goal is a forever genocide, and the destruction of the alliance that has gathered to stop it. For the US-Israel, the best outcome is the overthrow of Assad. The second best is having Turkey’s takfiris envelop Lebanon and finally close off Hizbollah’s supply routes, leaving Lebanon unprotected and therefore unable to help the Palestinians. The third best is just to keep the Syria war burning forever, sapping Iranian and Russian resources and preventing Syria from getting back to its feet. Especially if Turkey is paying for it, which they are. Israel’s army and economy are still in bad shape and the takfiris, with their new Ukrainian drones, will nonetheless for now have to make do without an air force, since if the US, Israel, or Turkey wants to be their air force they might have to fight an air war with Russia.
The takfiris have so far been stopped on a front line at Hama. The Russian air force is hitting them in both Aleppo and Idlib. Reinforcements have arrived from Iraq and Lebanon. Next, Syria and its allies will attempt to reorganize and turn the tide.
Reading list
• Tim Anderson, The Dirty War on Syria
• Charles Glass, Syria Burning
• Ali Kadri, Imperialism with Reference to Syria
• Patrick Higgins, “Gunning for Damascus”, Middle East Critique
(Substack)
Justin Podur
Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer and a writing fellow at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. You can find him on his website at podur.org and on Twitter @justinpodur. He teaches at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies.
