Vol. 77/No. 38      October 28, 2013

“The U.S. military remains poised, ready and in position to strike the Assad regime in Syria,” Military.com, a news site edited by former Navy Commander Ward Carroll, reported Oct. 10.

Four U.S. destroyers — the USS Barry, USS Ramage, USS Gravely and USS Stout — are deployed off Syria’s Mediterranean coast, and the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group is nearby in the Red Sea. Each destroyer harbors up to 96 Tomahawk missiles and the carrier group has Osprey and Harrier fighter planes as well as H-60 helicopters.

The two-and-a-half-year civil war was touched off with the regime’s bloody crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in 2011 made up of working people, youth and others, pressing for political rights and against decades of dictatorial rule. Thousands of Syrian army troops defected in solidarity with the demonstrators, forming the backbone of what became the armed forces of the bourgeois opposition.

Over the course of the unfolding conflict, elite Syrian air force and tank unit forces have been reinforced by thousands of Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, Iraqi militia volunteers and tens of thousands of paramilitary National Defense Force troops organized and led by counterinsurgency officers from Iran’s Quds Force.

On Oct. 9 pro-government forces overran Sheikh Omar, a southern suburb of Damascus, killing dozens in an effort to maintain military supply lines.

At the same time, Washington and Moscow — with opposing interests — are working to bring the government and parts of the opposition to a U.N.-brokered “peace” conference in November.

The governments of Russia and Iran are looking to keep the Assad regime in power. Washington, backed by London and Paris, wants a regime that is more pliable to its interests, while keeping a lid on the struggles of workers and farmers.

“We had been living under 40 years of Baathist dictatorship,” Omar Al-Ismail said in a phone interview Oct. 8, explaining what led to the explosion of protests two years ago. Al-Ismail had been a student and anti-Assad activist in Aleppo before he was forced in 2005 to flee to Greece where he worked as a carpenter before making his way to Sweden via Turkey.

“The role of the Iranian and Russian regimes helped deepen the violence against the people,” Al-Ismail said, commenting on the government’s swift repression against the budding protests in 2011. “This corresponded with the aims of many Arab countries to block the extension of the Arab Spring,” he said, referring to the mass anti-government protests that began in Tunisia in December 2011 and soon spread to Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

There are still some protests in Syria today, Al-Ismail said. “But these kinds of actions are not widespread right now.”

Al-Ismail described some of the efforts to reorganize in areas where Assad’s troops have been forced out. “School teachers have been trying to organize, in particular to reopen schools,” he said. “But the bombings cut across this work. In fact, the regime has targeted reopened schools for shelling.”

“The U.S. and Russia do not want a victorious revolution in Syria,” he said. “They are joined by other foreign powers and Arab regimes. They both fear the impact of such a victory.”

Imperialist embargo eases

The easing has opened up the import of wheat, which the government has wielded as a weapon, offering free or subsidized bread in the areas under its control and blocking distribution to areas where the opposition is strong.

Bread supplies some 40 percent of Syrians’ caloric intake. Because of the civil war, the wheat harvest this year is expected to be the worst in decades.  
 
 
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