Introduction
The chlorine bombing in Douma Syria, by the Assad forces during the Syrian Civil War was another horrifying episode of Assadite fascism. But several sources of mis-information (In an older time this was known as lies) have tried hard to obscure the underlying truth. The events at Douma did not take place in an abstract isolation. The Syrian army committed innumerable massacres on behalf of Assad. Russian imperialist agencies were complicit in this. In the face of this, the smaller particular incident in Douma should be of far less concern to the left. But the April 2018 bombing in Douma was given a huge significance as a so-called ‘false flag’. This was done precisely to confuse and divide the left and liberal opposition to Assad.
The underlying question was always the brutal and vicious civil war launched by a fascist dictator on the Syrian people. But the intense misinformation campaign conveniently shrouded this from view, sponsoring a deliberately misleading ‘debate’. This questions whether Assadite forces or the anti-Assad forces had launched the attack. We place Douma into context, to examine claims that Douma was a so-called ‘false flag’ planted by the rebels themselves. Such claims, I argue, do not stand up to scrutiny, and the Syrian air force and Assad bear full responsibility not only for the Douma bombing – but all the intense brutality waged on the Syrian people. We have to understand where Bashar came from.
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- The fascist state built by Assad
Syria is a ‘hereditary’ fascist state – that was ‘bequeathed’ to Bashar Assad from his father, Hafiz Assad. [1] Because the word ‘fascist’ is too loosely thrown around, I must be explicit. The Assads erected a corporate state which enriched a landlord and nascent bourgeoise, and suppressed all independent working-class activity or organisations including trade unionism. In this case, the strategy was adopted by a weak and late developing bourgeoisie trying to raise a capitalist infrastructure, against imperialism.
Hafiz Assad took sole power in 1970, and increasingly turned to an open fascism. Under ‘Land Reforms’, the Ba’ath Party increased the land-mass of the richest peasantry, to enable leading landlords to transform themselves into a capitalist class. This consolidated an otherwise weak national bourgeoisie. This state shouldered the burden of building an infrastructure, to allow capitalist accumulation. But still the national bourgeoisie were forced into a dependency on other dominant nations. For a time the state of Syria was a comprador state to then-revisionist USSR imperialism. Later after the USSR formally renounced any socialist pretensions in 1991, Syria was forced to rely again on Western imperialism. 1 Latterly during the period of the Civil War, it has again become subservient to a new ruling class in Russia – that represented by Putin.
In the diverse communities of Syria, Hafiz Assad welded a sectarian state to enable corporate state development. One leading historian of the area – David Hirst – wrote:
“It is not in any real sense, the Ba’athists who run this country. It is the ‘Alawites… In theory they run it behind the party, but in practice it is through their clandestine solidarity within the party and other important institutions… Behind the façade, the best qualification for holding power is proximity – through family, sectarian, or tribal origins – to the country’s leading ‘Alawaite, President Assad.” [2]
Many other sources agree, including Sam Daher who conducted substantial interviews with leading exiled members of Assad’s circle. [3] Any dissent was clamped down by declaring a state of emergency, which has been in place from 1963 on:
“The state of emergency… was a basic tool of the state’s repressive apparatus, effectively suspending constitutional rights, legalising surveillance and media censorship, and awarding the security services the right to detain those deemed to ‘threaten public security and order’. Special courts were established to deal with issues ‘relating to national security’. Those accused by these courts had no right to representation and no right to appeal. Furthermore, civilians could be tried in military courts. Such exceptional powers had led to the incarceration of thousands… Torturers acted with impunity, protected by Legal Decree No. 14, a 1969 law which prohibited the prosecution of any General Intelligence Division employee for crimes committed in an official capacity. In 2008, Bashar extended the law to cover all members of the security and police apparatus.”[4]
This sectarian fascism was not passively accepted, as the Syrian record of rebellions show. In particular Assad’s fury was unleashed upon the Sunni minority, as in Hama:
“The Baathist army suppressed urban uprisings in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1973, 1980 and 1982, culminating in the massacre at Hama, the most traumatising of repressions, when much of the Old City was destroyed and up to 20,000 people were killed.” [5]
These rebellions were re-lit during the short lived so-called ‘Syrian Spring’. That outpouring was a reaction to an intensified exploitation as Bashar Assad violently swung into a harsh neo-liberal austerity. Characteristic of the Assad strategy of ‘rule and divide’ the sectarian embers were brought into flames
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[1] Hari Kumar The Class Character of Syria – From an Oriental Despotic State to Neo-Colony to Fascist Dictatorship to Civil War -Part One”; May 24, 2018; ML Currents Today at: http://ml-today.com/2020/11/24/the-class-character-of-syria-assad/
[2] Hirst , D; Guardian; 26 June, 1979; Cited by Van Dam Nicholas: “The Struggle for power in Syria. Politics & Society Under Assad & the Ba’ath party”; London 1997 p. 100
[3] Sam Dagher, ‘Assad Or We Burn the Country’; New York 2019.
[4] Yassin-Kassab, Robin, and Leila Al-Shami. Burning Country : Syrians in Revolution and War, London, 2018. p. 18; 23
[5] Yassin-Kassab, Robin, and Leila Al-Shami. ‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’, London, 2018. p.13-14; 16
