Washington's Long War on Syria

Stephen Gowans Stephen WASHINGTON’S Stephen Gowans Long War on Syria “Gowans’ book is a timely and indispensable resource for those seeking to understand recent events in Syria.” Eva Bartlett W When President Barack Obama demanded formally in the summer on Syria War Long ashington’s of 2011 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, it was not the first time Washington had sought regime change in Damascus. The United States had waged a long war against Syria from the very moment the country’s fiercely independent Arab nationalist movement came to power in 1963. Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad were committed to that movement. Washington had waged long wars on all the leaders of the Arab nationalist movements. These included Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria’s Assads. To do so, the US often allied with particularly violent forms of political WASHINGTON’S Islam to undermine its Arab nationalist foes. By 2011, Syria was the only remaining pan-Arabist state in the region. Long War on Syria Stephen Gowans examines the decades-long struggle for control of Syria and demolishes each and every argument Washington, its allies, and the mainstream media have advanced to justify the unjustifiable regime change in Syria. STEPHEN GOWANS runs the popular and widely read What’s Left webzine. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. $24.95 www.barakabooks.com isbn 978-1-77186-108-3 Washington’s essais.indd 1 2017-02-20 10:04 Syrie.indd 2 2017-02-14 14:01 WASHINGTON’S LONG WAR ON SYRIA Syrie.indd 3 2017-02-14 14:01 Syrie.indd 4 2017-02-14 14:01 Stephen Gowans WASHINGTON’S LONG WAR ON SYRIA Montréal Syrie.indd 5 2017-02-14 14:01 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, record- ing, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. © Baraka Books ISBN 978-1-77186-108-3 pbk; 978-1-77186-113-7 epub; 978-1-77186-114-4 pdf; 978-1-77186-115-1 mobi/pocket Book Design and Cover by Folio infographie Editing and proofreading: Renée Picard, Robin Philpot Cover photos : iStock Legal Deposit, 2nd quarter 2017 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Library and Archives Canada Published by Baraka Books of Montreal 6977, rue Lacroix Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4 Telephone: 514 808-8504 [email protected] www.barakabooks.com Printed and bound in Quebec We acknowledge the support from the Société de développe- ment des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) and the Government of Quebec tax credit for book publishing administered by SODEC. Trade Distribution & Returns Canada and the United States Independent Publishers Group 1-800-888-4741 (IPG1); [email protected] Syrie.indd 6 2017-02-14 14:01 CONTENTS FOREWORD 9 INTRODUCTION 11 CHAPTER ONE THE DEN OF ARABISM 37 CHAPTER TWO REGIME CHANGE 89 CHAPTER THREE THE 2011 DISTEMPER 117 CHAPTER FOUR THE MYTH OF THE MODERATE REBEL 141 CHAPTER FIVE THE BA’ATHISTS’ ISLAMIC ALLY 161 CHAPTER SIX WASHINGTON’S STATE ISLAMIC ALLIES 169 CHAPTER SEVEN DIVIDE ET IMPERA 183 CHAPTER EIGHT ECHOES OF HITLER 197 CHAPTER NINE WALL STREET’S EMPIRE 207 CONCLUSION 225 BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 NOTES 257 Syrie.indd 7 2017-02-21 15:40 Are wars of aggression, wars for the conquest of col- onies, then, just big business? Yes, it would seem so, however much the perpetrators of such national crimes seek to hide their true purpose under ban- ners of high-sounding abstractions and ideals. Norman Bethune, 1939 Syrie.indd 8 2017-02-14 14:01 FOREWORD This book was completed late in 2016, at a point the Islamist insurgency in Syria, backed by the United States and its Arab monarch allies, was in its fifth year. It is less an account of the events that marked the conflict from 2011 through late 2016, and more an examination of the processes that shaped it. It is also an inquiry into three political forces which have vied for control of the Syrian state, not only from 2011, but from the end of World War II; these forces are secular Arab nationalism, Sunni political Islam, and U.S. imperialism. A lapse of a period of four to five months between completion of the book and its publication presented a risk that what was current at the time of its writing might no longer be current at the point the book was released. This posed no trouble from the point of view of the analysis. The focus of the book was on the sweep of events over many decades, and the passage of a few months would hardly alter the account. But a problem arose in relation to the verb tense in which events would be described. Writing in the present tense, as if events of the ground and the balance of forces in the war that prevailed late in 2016 would continue to prevail indefinitely, carried with it the risk that the book would appear dated from the very first moments of its release, depending on what happened in the interim period between completion of the book and its publication. This, of course, was the challenge of how to write about an event of con- temporary significance that was still in progress. To deal with Syrie.indd 9 2017-02-14 14:01 10 WASHINGTON’S LONG WAR ON SYRIA the challenge, I chose to write the book retrospectively, with events and processes that were current as late as the final months of 2016 treated as history, as indeed they would be, technically, by the time the book appeared in print. Syrie.indd 10 2017-02-14 14:01 INTRODUCTION On behalf of Wall Street, the United States’ most politically influential sector, successive U.S. governments waged a war on Arab nationalist Syria, not to support the spread of democracy, which Syria’s Arab nationalists had developed to a far higher degree than had Washington’s prized Arab allies, but to elim- inate opposition to a Washington-led global economic order which prioritized the pursuit of profit above all other considerations. From 1963, Syrian governments in which Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party members Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar played principal roles, were committed to the Arab nationalist values of freedom from foreign domination and Arab socialism. Syria’s secular Arab nationalist governments forged alliances with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which, likewise, rejected integration into the U.S.-superintended global economic order, and valued economic and political independence. They also established alliances with the Soviet Union (leading hardliners in Washington to label Hafez al-Assad an Arab communist) and, after the USSR’s dissolution, with Russia. Both countries were considered by U.S. strategists to be “peer competitors” of the United States, and the Assads’ alliance with them only added to the enmity Washington felt for the Arab nationalist leaders. The values which the Assad-led Syrian governments embraced were inimical to the U.S. foreign policy goal of creat- ing highly favorable business climates for U.S. corporations, bankers and investors around the world. In place of pandering Syrie.indd 11 2017-02-14 14:01 12 WASHINGTON’S LONG WAR ON SYRIA to Wall Street, Syria’s Arab nationalists sought to free Syria— and as an ultimate goal, the entire Arab world—from the political and economic agendas of foreign powers. In the spring of 2011, upheavals shook the Arab world. The distemper became known as the Arab Spring. Riots broke out in Syria in March 2011, and quickly turned into an insurgency. Washington almost immediately called for its old Arab nem- esis, Bashar al-Assad, to step down. U.S. president Barack Obama declared that Assad had lost legitimacy, citing the armed rebellion as proof. Throughout the Western world, Washington’s opposition to Assad—who U.S. state officials portrayed as a brutal dictator— and its support for the armed opposition, were seen to be motiv- ated by distaste for tyranny and love of democracy. But considerations of promoting democracy played no role in Washington’s decision to back the opposition to the Assad government. This was evident in multiple ways. Washington’s allies on the ground in the fight against the Syrian government were Islamists, not democrats. The Islamists’ goal was to create a Sunni Islamic state, similar to Saudi Arabia, in which the Quran, not democratic decision- making, would be the basis of law. Even the Free Syrian Army, touted in the early days of the rebellion as a sort of liberal democratic movement, not only included Islamists, but was Islamist- dominated.1 The Associated Press reported that “Many of the [Free Syria Army’s] participating groups” had “strong Islamist agendas.” Most of the Free Syrian Army groups were ideological cognates of the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of al- Qaeda and Islamic State.2 The Wall Street Journal pointed out that not only was the Free Syrian Army “dominated by Islamist groups” it was also “in close coordination with al-Nusra,”3 the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Moreover, the group had no program for the establishment of a multi-party democracy, or of any sort of democracy, for that matter. Its aims were purely negative, defined by a single goal—toppling the secular Syrian government. The idea, then, that even the so-called “moderate” and Syrie.indd 12 2017-02-14 14:01 INTRODUCTION 13 “relatively secular” Free Syrian Army was not Islamist was mistaken.

Load more