Stop the War on Syria

Article by Serge Jordan

Donald Trump’s administration, now supported by Theresa May and Macron, has now undertaken another round of missile strikes against regime targets in Syria. This could trigger an explosive chain of events potentially leading to a more serious military conflagration between major international and regional powers in the Middle East. Moscow has responded to Trump’s open threats by saying it would target US units involved in any attack on Syrian soil.

Both Trump and British Prime Minister, Theresa May, are going through turbulent political times, and are in need of diverting attention away from the woes of their administrations. In Britain, it has been very convenient for May that the alleged chemical nerve attack, with no concrete evidence provided, took place in the run up to this crisis. Along with France, where President Emmanuel Macron grapples with a new wave of working class action, and Saudi Arabia that has offered facilities to support the other three, all are ratcheting up their rhetoric and flexing their muscles against Assad’s regime and its supporters in the Kremlin. They are cynically using the pretext of an alleged recent chemical attack in Douma, the main city of Eastern Ghouta in the suburbs of Damascus, for this purpose.

This abhorrent attack, which has allegedly killed dozens of people, is blamed, without as yet any substantiated evidence, on Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its foreign backers. To be sure, Assad’s regime has defended its corrupt rule over the years through rivers of innocent people’s blood. The CWI does not give an inch of support to this brutal reactionary regime, nor to its Russian and Iranian patrons. Yet why would the Syrian army launch a chemical attack now, bringing down the wrath of the western imperialist powers? While not ruled out, the tactical logic behind such a decision is not obvious. Military victory in Eastern Ghouta was indeed within the regime’s grasp, entrenching Assad’s hold over most of Syria’s urban centres. Some commentators have speculated that this recent attack might have been initiated by “rebel” jihadist forces in order to draw US imperialism deeper into the conflict.

Regardless of who is responsible for this attack, the urge to use it as an excuse for another imperialist intervention in the Middle East should be rejected and resisted outright. Fifteen years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, millions of people remember the lies of ruling politicians and their friends in the pro-establishment, pro-corporate media at the time in order to justify that calamitous war. Justifiably, many are hence not ready to uncritically lap up the official version of events presented now by western governments and mainstream media outlets. Other western interventions into Afghanistan, Libya have also been a disaster for the peoples of the area and have only worsened the crisis.

Get involved locally in building the anti-war movement and come along to this weeks meeting of the Leicester Socialist Party, “Opposing the War on Syria, and How we can build a movement to end all capitalist oppression,” on Wednesday night (at Leicester Secular Hall on Humberstone Gate) from 7.30pm.