THE announcement that the western and Saudi-Qatari backed ‘opposition’ in Syria is no longer committed to the UN Security Council-backed Annan ceasefire comes as no surprise.
In fact, it has never backed the ceasefire. The western powers’ propaganda machine, including the BBC, has been boasting that this ‘opposition’ movement has been killing up to 25 Syrian soldiers a day – so this has been some ceasefire!
The reality is that the Annan ceasefire was the most that the western powers could get Russia and China to agree to, in terms of intervention, and it has been used to organise a series of massacres which have served as propaganda, all around the world, to try to prove that Assad does not want a ceasefire and that further intervention must be carried out to save lives.
The fact that the answer to the question: ‘who gains politically and militarily from the recent massacres?’ is the Syrian opposition and the imperialist interventionists, has not hindered even for a moment the imperialist propaganda outlets – including the BBC – from unhesitatingly blaming Assad for the massacres, thus beating the drums for a greater intervention and a massive bloodletting.
This turn of events comes after the ‘opposition’, which is supposedly fighting for democracy, refused to take part in the recent Syrian parliamentary elections, with the full backing of the ‘democratic’ imperialist powers.
Now the opposition is seeking to follow the Libyan path. It is demanding a ‘no-fly zone’ and that the UN observer mission in the country be turned into a ‘peace enforcing mission’ by the international community who must take take ‘bold’ decisions – including an imperialist-defended buffer zone in which the ‘opposition’ can mass and train its forces.
What is envisioned is a US-organised cruise missile attack to destroy Syria’s missile defence system and air force, as a preliminary to a full-scale imperialist intervention on the ground by Jordanian, Saudi, Qatari and, of course, Israeli forces as well as the NATO powers.
The fact that this will lead to a full-scale war in the oil rich region – beginning with an Israeli attack on the Lebanon and Hezbollah and inevitably drawing Iran into the fray – is not being allowed to halt the plans of the imperialists, who want to see regime change not only in Syria and Lebanon but also in Iran.
This scenario is being pushed using the same type of lying propaganda that was used against Iraq. In this case, a non-existent but ‘fast approaching’ Iranian nuclear bomb replaces the mythical Iraqi wmds.
In the next few weeks there will be a major effort to attempt to force Putin and the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy onto its knees, telling it that it will have to choose between its western EU and US ‘partners’ (and some minor share in the spoils of war) and the Assad regime. It will be told to tell Assad to quit to allow a ‘new regime’, and to stop arms supplies to Syria or else face being locked out of the entire strategic region after a US-imperialist victory.
The reality is that the imperialist powers, driven by the devastating economic crisis of the capitalist system which is in its death agony, are prepared to drown the entire planet in the blood of the working class and the oppressed nations in their desperate attempts to maintain capitalism at any cost.
The workers of the world, including workers in the UK, must support the right of the Syrian people to decide who their government will be, free from imperialist attacks.
Workers must embrace the Leninist policy that their enemy is at home and use the imperialist crisis to overthrow US and UK imperialism with socialist revolutions as the only way to bring peace to the planet.
