By Liv from Sweden Published 09 January 2025
This is the transcript of the introduction by Liv to the discussion on the global situation held during the meeting of the PRMI on 14 December 2024. It has been slightly edited for stylistic reasons.
I am going to focus on developments in the Middle East. I think all comrades have been observing and been moved by the scenes of joy, relief, celebration, and liberation from Syria.
Only a stone could remain unmoved watching the grip of fear losing its hold on thousands and thousands of people in the streets. Or the grief, as people have looked for their loved ones, some who have been lost for decades, or have been thought dead. Looking for them amongst the thousands who have been streaming out of the torture houses and prisons of the Assad regime, where an estimated 13,000 people were killed over the last 13 years.
At the same time, as we share the joy and welcome the breathing space, we of course, have no trust in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [HTS]. It doesn’t reassure us when its leader, Al Julani, puts up this rebranded image of a more civil, a more western-palatable statesman. As we mentioned in the article, the HTS has been running Idlib province for the last years, running it as you know as a right-wing Islamist, dictatorship, where over a 180 people were disappeared last year, where torture, executions, and repression against protests are standard.
But protests have been happening, something barely reported on in the Western media, a significant protest movement from February this year running up at least until September with women, young people being amongst those playing important roles. They are protesting against torture and effective executions by the HTS in power and calling specifically for Al Julani’s resignation.
Whatever the aspirations of Al Julani and the opportunistic hopes of the various imperialists and regional powers are at this point, there is nothing automatic about developments ahead of us. No certain scheme that we can rely on in predicting them.
And while our familiarity with the situation on the ground in Syria and in the Middle East generally is very weak, to put it mildly, it’s really necessary to recognise that the key factor is the role of working-class people, of oppressed peoples, not least women and gender oppressed people, and of the massive contingent of young people in this region.
The people who are out on the streets celebrating today are a factor that can disturb the plans, the trajectory that would see the HTS establish a right-wing Islamist regime across Syria in cooperation with or tolerated by the western powers, or as a cooperation between Al Julani and the various regional powers. The old inter-imperialist framework is not as simple as a chess game where we can declare, as some on the left seem to be doing, that this offensive by the HTS was a US, Israeli or Turkish orchestrated manoeuvre.
Of course, geopolitical contradictions will also be a factor in creating unpredictability and complications for HTS as we see with Israel’s offensive and the Turkish offensive against Kurdistan. I will definitely not repeat the points that we made in the article that we rushed together. But we cannot boast about having foreseen this lightning offensive and the fall of Assad. Like most we were caught by surprise, caught very much behind on developments.
We have not discussed world perspectives on an international level for at least a year. And that points to this discussion being quite initial and underlines the need for urgency in catching up, but also patience with where we are at. I hope that today and going forward, we can really help one another clarify and deepen our understanding, which has many, many gaps. Not only because we have not been discussing perspectives, but because the way we were doing them has had a number of weaknesses that we need to be reviewing as we go.
So my lead off, and further pieces from other comrades, is not going to be covering nearly a fraction of what we want to cover and what we need to aim for going forward. But I still hope that it can be useful.
I’m going to quote some of the things that were being said and chanted in celebrations across Syria, in the last couple of days. Someone who just had their family member let out of prison after decades kept repeating that what has just happened shows that “nothing is forever”. I don’t feel particularly confident in predicting any precise developments in the Middle East in the next weeks or years. But one thing that is certain is that this region after the last week is in motion. And what seemed fixed and hopelessly immovable can collapse. And just the levels of violence and suppression in Syria and across this region are an important factor in themselves.
The violence pressing down on millions of super-exploited workers, on the discarded unemployed millions, on young people, who feel the only future they have is dystopian. Especially as millions are massively oppressed as women, as racialized people, as gender nonconforming people, as ethnic minorities and religious minorities, this is bound to be pushed back at some point.
Another thing that was being chanted yesterday, in Friday prayers and celebrations in Syria was “the people want to bring down the regime”, the slogan of the 2011 revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East. Although what we have just seen in Syria has not been a revolution with the masses setting the scene, it is part of the aftermath of 2011 playing out. In our recent articles, we’ve been quoting this political analyst whose name I cannot remember, but saying that there’s no doubt about it, that a second so-called Arab spring is coming.
He points to all the factors still being present – the inequality, the poverty, the oppression. I can’t mention too many examples here at all, but comrades have probably seen that Tunisia has seen unrest as well as repression in recent months. So has Morocco. You know the brutal situation in Iran.
In Egypt, discontent is brewing under the tightly controlled surface where Western imposed austerity has been felt for the last eight years. Massive inflation and the very difficult to bear cost of survival issues, as well as fuel prices which were raised dramatically just a few weeks ago.
Although it’s not the same as 2011 or 2019, the factors from then are still there fired by a qualitatively new situation in the region and in the world. I don’t have much time to go into some of the things I wanted to around Gaza. But want to note that one of the key factors that is making things different now is the mass accumulation of grief, rage, and radicalizing lessons from the ongoing genocide. Words cannot describe what we are observing being done to the people of Gaza.
But just to mention a couple of things, the violence that is done to children. Apart from death and various forms of physical trauma, 96% of children in Gaza believe that death is imminent. And 49% wish for it. The level of dystopia in this world shown by the fact that at the same time Benjamin Netanyahu is being nominated for person of the year is just stunning. Another important indicator of this nightmare is that miscarriages are up 300% since October last year. And we now have over 100 children born during the genocide having been killed in it.
It’s very hard to just grasp the perspective of what this immense trauma will mean for the next few generations. And then there is the desperation. Apparently quite often, spontaneous celebrations, misguided celebrations break out across Gaza in response to rumors of a ceasefire. These are today being fueled by the Biden administration, claiming it would be an opportune time for Netanyahu to deal with Syria, and declare his “absolute victory”.
My take is that Netanyahu’s addiction to this so called war is a long term one with what we have now seen for the last two months in particular — the general’s plan in action — in northern Gaza. And in the escalation of the last year, an attempt to militarily conclude what had not been fully satisfactory completed through diplomacy and the Abraham accords.
I have left out many, many points of what I wanted to include. While it’s difficult to predict the situation, I haven’t mentioned the opportunism of various imperialist powers like the US and Turkey. And while our absence on the ground is quite overwhelming here, the lack also of independent working class and left organizations is even more daunting. Just the fact that we are dealing with populations that are young, that have little to lose, and at the same time, have strong elements of layers that have lived through the experience of actual revolution is a really important thing to register. The process of revolution and counterrevolution has remained alive under the surface, and will come more into the open into the space that is opening up now. And while things can go many different ways, these events will be in the minds of millions, not just in the Middle East and in North Africa, but across the world