Dear comrades,
On behalf of the Communist Front of Italy I would like to warmly greet all the participants in this meeting and, in particular, to thank the Communist Party of Türkiye for hosting it.
We are living in a world that is rapidly sliding into the abyss of an increasingly generalized imperialist war. War is intrinsic to capitalism in its final imperialist stage. The ripening of capitalism irreconcilable contradictions which leads to cycles of continuous economic crises, on the one hand, and the uneven economic development, on the other hand, exacerbate international competition for the control over markets, natural and human resources, energy, commercial routes and for the acquisition of geostrategic advantages. In particular, the uneven economic development under capitalism pushes the new emerging powers that have more dynamic economies than the declining ones to demand a new division of the world that takes into account their greater economic, political and military weight. This fight for supremacy within capitalist world has imperialist war as its unavoidable result.
This is what we are witnessing today with a striking analogy to the international situation immediately before World War 1: China, Russia and the BRICS are economically growing more and faster than the US and the EU and are no longer willing to stand the dominance of the US-led Euro-Atlantic bloc and the dollar, but demand a new division of the world under the slogan of “multipolarity”, as captivating as it is misleading. We say this because, as Lenin and Stalin taught us, under capitalism there can be neither a “just” division of the world, but only a temporary equilibrium based on strength and the largeness of capital, nor evenness of development even between allied countries. Under capitalism, the law of the strongest applies. In our opinion, these considerations are the key to understanding the events in the Middle East and allow us to find their connection with the war in Ukraine and the other ongoing armed conflicts. The harsh confrontation between imperialist powers multiplies wars.
Specifically on Syria. Syria has long been at the center of the attention of global and local imperialist powers not only for its own natural resources, but also because it is a transit point for at least three important gas pipelines of interest to, respectively, Russia and Iran, the US and Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Jordan. This last project includes, among other things, the illegitimate exploitation of the Palestinian EEZ in the sea before the Gaza Strip, with the involvement of the Italian hydrocarbon monopoly ENI. Because of this in 2011 Syria has suffered an imperialist aggression coordinated and funded by the USA, some EU countries, and other local powers such as Turkey and Israel. This was not a “civil war”, as imperialist media were depicting it, but an imperialist aggression from outside in form of “proxy war” carried out by the various militias of Islamic fundamentalism on behalf of the Euro-Atlantic imperialists, while Russia and Iran were supporting the Baathist regime. What is occurring now is the continuation of that aggression for the implementation of long-standing imperialist plans for the dismantlement of the Syrian state and sovereignty for both economic exploitation purposes and relevant geostrategic reasons in the confrontation between imperialist blocs.
The exultation of the Euro-Atlantic imperialists and the media at their service for the dissolution of Bashar Al-Asad’s regime is completely out of place. Far from being a factor of pacification and stabilization, the seizure of power by HTS with the support of Turkey adds new contradictions to the existing ones and is leading to the outbreak of new armed clashes in Syria and the wider region, with further suffering for the people. We identify the main contradictions as follows.
- Turkey’s neo-Ottoman hegemonic plans in Syria are in contradiction with the US and Israeli support for YPG and the Kurds in Rojava. The new HTS regime demands the complete disarmament of the Kurdish militias, does not intend to integrate them into the new Syrian army or grant them any territorial autonomy. This is also the line of Ankara, which has already threatened a military intervention as in Mosul in the event that Kurds insist on preserving their autonomy. Media already tell us of armed clashes between YPG and HTS military formations. In the meantime, the US are strengthening their military forces in Syria, including Rojava.
- Israel has supported HTS, the anti-Baathist forces and the Kurds in Syria with the specific aim of overthrowing a regime which was providing Palestinian military formations with asylum and support and was the connecting node, including logistical, between Hezbollah and Iran. Nevertheless Israel does not trust the new regime and keeps bombing the Syrian military infrastructures, now almost completely destroyed, because of the HTS puppet government’s subordination to Turkey. In these days we learned that Israel is taking into consideration the possibility to undertake military actions against Turkey after the latter broke off diplomatic relations due to the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. We can reasonably expect an increasing Israeli support for Kurds in order to hinder Turkish neo-Ottoman plans.
- The new HTS government has given Russia assurances about the retention of its military bases in Tartus and Khmeimim, but the EU and NATO are pressing for their expulsion from there, subordinating to it the cancellation of economic and trade sanctions against Syria. It is a matter of fact that Russia has already evacuated from Syria every sizable military high technology and a significant part of its navy that was stationed there.
In our opinion, these are the main contradictions, arising from the last developments in Syria, let alone the ones inside HTS and between HTS and the other jihadist and fundamentalist organizations.
We are not soothsayers and must rigorously stick to factual reality, as only time will show how the situation in Syria, the Middle East and the rest of the world will further develop. However, based on available information, we are able to draw some conclusions.
- Bashar al-Asad’s Baathist regime has very rapidly collapsed because it no longer had the support by the working class, the people and the army due to the liberal reforms it carried out that turned to be one of the causes, along with sanctions and the external aggression, of the crisis and the people’s suffering. This lack in consensus prevented Russia and Iran from intervening in its further support. In consideration of this fact we reject the position of those who see the collapse of the Baathist regime as the fall of a bastion of anti-imperialism forgetting its economic capitalist nature, as if opposing US interests alone were sufficient to define an anti-imperialist policy and not, rather, a manifestation of inter-capitalist confrontation. Such positions, widely spread inside the so-called “radical” left, are particularly dangerous, because they ultimately deny and even oppose the practice of the class struggle in those countries that they consider generically “progressive” or “antimperialist” regardless of their economic structure. An example of this wrong position is the stance of some “radical left” organizations towards the PSUV’s anti-workers regime in Venezuela.
- The events in Syria have refuted the positions of certain “radical” left far from Marxism-Leninism who, in the name of a generic “progressivism” and without any class analysis, have been supporting the Kurdish forces, the PKK and the YPG, who today are fully participating in the aggression against the Syrian people in alliance with the USA, the EU, the NATO and Israel.
- It is clear that not the Syrian people overthrew the Assad’s regime, but a military operation, long prepared, coordinated and supported by imperialist forces, namely by the USA, Turkey and Israel, in a seemingly paradoxical embrace of the Israeli government and jihadist fundamentalism, with the blessing of the outgoing Biden administration. Therefore we reject the position of those who see the jihadist coup in Syria as the victory of democracy. The seizure of power by the Syrian branch of Al-Qaida merged with survivors of the Islamic State, as its leader Al-Jawlani, is the victory of a reactionary and obscurantist gang of murderers, that remain such even if they change their name and wear double-breasted jackets. It is the victory, not free of contradictions, of those imperialist powers that aroused and supported the anti-Baathist coup. Their victory will result in further oppression and loss of sovereignty for the Syrian people.
- Despite any formal assurance, the international repositioning of Syria in respect of the competing imperialist powers and poles will have negative consequences not only for the Syrian people, but also for both the Palestinian resistance, whose military facilities hosted in Syria are already being expelled, and the Lebanese resistance, which is being deprived of an important point of connection with Iran and transit of support supplies from it.
- The bourgeoisie has artificially invented a false contradiction between “democracy” and “antimperialism” in order to entrap the proletariat with the false choice between an alleged “antimperialist dictatorship” and an equally alleged “pro-imperialist democracy”. This theorem, unfortunately, has found wide space also in organizations that define themselves as left-wing. Communists must neutralize this trap and reaffirm that only by developing autonomous revolutionary positions and fostering the class struggle for socialism-communism is possible to effectively fight imperialism and achieve real democracy for the people.
The Communists in Syria, and all over the Middle East and the Gulf region, are facing the extremely difficult challenge to hold out against both external imperialist attacks and internal reactionary bourgeois governments, to raise and lead the resistance. We, the Communist Front of Italy, express the Communist Parties of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran our proletarian solidarity and reiterate our commitment to be alongside them in our joint antimperialist struggle.
We as well reaffirm our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon, with their resistance and their right to fight with any means for the liberation of their homeland. In recent days we have learned the news on the agreement has been reached for a ceasefire in Gaza and the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons. We welcome this partial victory of Palestinian heroic endurance and resistance, but we have no illusions. This is just a temporary relief for the martyred Palestinian people. No definitive peace is possible without putting an end to the illegitimate occupation of the Gaza Stripe and the West Bank by the criminal bourgeois Israeli state and without the formation of a State of Palestine. The necessary condition for this to happen is a radical change in the ruling class in Israel, which ousts the fascist dominant rabbinic theocracy and puts an end to the Israeli colonial policy of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, apartheid, racism and segregation on an ethnic-religious basis. The Communist Front of Italy will enforce its commitment and struggle against the genocide of Palestinian people, that risks to be continued by “peaceful” means despite the ceasefire, against the aggression on Lebanese people and the occupation of further Syrian territories by Israel, for the formation of a really free, secular and sovereign State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES’ ANTIMPERIALIST STRUGGLE!
PROLETARIANS ALL OVER THE WORLD, UNITE!