What Lenin told comrades at Sverdlov University, the “firsthigherschool in theUSSRfortrainingpartycadresandworkers in thesoviets,” on July 11, 1919 about the U$ when talking about the state as an entity.
This is an expanded version of what I wrote on /r/fullstalinism last night, to which no one responded, which is part of the reason I am posting it here. Any errors in that post have been corrected here.
Let’s start with the State of the Union itself by the orange menace. The whole first part is tooting his own horn of “accomplishments,” a sorta call for bipartisanship, and clear jingoistic claptrap to “choose greatness” for the U$, along with pointing out how he favored the capitalist class (with his tax cuts, removal of estate tax, etc). He also applauded, like Obama, that the U$ is “number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world” and U$ global hegemony. Of course, he also sneered at “foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations,” basically saying investigations of him are tantamount to war. He again tooted his own horn on past “criminal justice reform,” told the story of a guest he invited, called for bipartisan unification against undocumented immigrants by saying it is a “moral issue” while making his typical legal/illegal distinction with undoubted dog whistles, saying he is fighting the “political class”…by being racist? After a long racist rant against immigrants, coupled with praising racist anti-immigrant structures like ICE, he called for a wall on the U$-Mexico border, touted “economic progress,” and had Democrats join in the jingoism by chanting “USA! USA! USA!”…which is somehow supposed to be “resistance.” He then pivoted to his trade war with China, aimed at punishing them, continuing inter-imperialist confrontation with China, followed by talking about his new NAFTA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the USMCA) replacing NAFTA, and pushing Congress to legalize trade war (“I am also asking you to pass…[a law] so that if another country places an unfair tariff on an American product, we can charge them the exact same tariff on the exact same product that they sell to us”). After that, he talked about infrastructure, lowering cost of prescription drugs and healthcare costs, efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, and fight against childhood cancer, although these were broad pronouncements without a plan outlined. After giving another story, he advocated for “School Choice for Americans’ children” (clearly a pro-charter school bill), included a proposal for “nationwide paid family leave” in his budget, an effort to ban late-term abortions (currying to evangelicals), and efforts to expand the U$ military…and strengthen NATO.
It is no surprise what followed this was defending the U$ withdrawing from “a treaty with Russia in which we agreed to limit and reduce our missile capability,” which allows the U$ to build more nuclear missiles…starting a new arms race with Russia! He then brought up minor successes in the detente with the DPRK, saying that there would have been “a major war with North Korea” if he had been elected (a possibility due to Democrat warmongering), that the work “remains to be done” will begin when he and Kim Jong Un “meet again on February 27th and 28th in Vietnam.” What followed this? Further recognition of the illegitimate president of Venezuela Juan Guaidó, declaring that the U$ condemns “the brutality of the Maduro regime” and it’s policies. This endorsement, again, of the coup attempt in Venezuela, was followed by his sneering at what he claimed were “new calls to adopt socialism in our country” (not true), again asserting jingoism, and declaring that “America will never be a socialist country” even though there is no prospect of this at all.
After this he embraced the relocating of the U$ embassy in Jerusalem, further supporting Zionist claims. And while he said that “great nations do not fight endless wars,” praising past “efforts” to fight Daesh, he only focused on ending one war…which is not in the Mideast…in Afghanistan. After vowing continued “anti-terror” action (despite the fact there are indications that the U$ may be collaborating with Daesh to “approach the strategic bordering regions with Iran” and that “the US is planning long-term presence in al-Tanf region [of Syria] to maintain security of terrorists”), he sneered at “the radical regime in Iran,” and praised his withdrawal from the Iran deal supported by moderate U$ imperialists, while also claiming that the Iranian government is anti-Semitic and incorrectly saying the religious reactionaries (Principalists) are in control of Iran, as it is more the pro-Western reformists represented by Rouhani. He then transitioned to condemning anti-Semitism, talking about the horrible shooting in Pittsburgh (not recalling the shooter was a supporter of him), praised a Holocaust survivor wgich was followed by telling another story. He then ended with another jingoist call, calling for great unification of everyone together.
This brings us to the the Democratic response by Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams. She also harps on jingoism, declaring that those in the U$ “live in a nation where opportunity is possible,” saying she loves “our country and its promise of opportunity for all” and that “together, we are coming for America, for a better America.” While she rightly condemned the shutdown engineered by the orange menace, she does not seem to understand its significance of the problem with the Democratic position. This is clear as she too makes a call for bipartisanship, working to realise American dreams, condemning what she calls the “timid” administration response to gun violence (not accurate as it was more pro-gun than “timid”) and appealing to those who want to be in the petty bourgeoisie (“middle class”). Apart from focusing on economic issues within the U$, saying we “owe more to the millions of everyday folks who keep our economy running,” she also says that “Democrats stand ready to effectively secure our ports and borders” which is a racist position. Furthermore, she appeals to jingoism with talk of the U$ as a “great nation” (sounds like the campaign slogan of the orange menace), has typical liberal points of taking “action on climate change…defend[ing] individual liberties with fair-minded judges…[and] the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote.” While you can say this is positive, the fact it is a jingoist position as she claims the U$ has “free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders – not where politicians pick their voters” which establishes U$ “moral leadership around the globe” (how does the murderous empire have any moral standing at all?).
Her response goes onto whitewash struggles of U$ history (“America has stumbled time and again on its quest towards justice and equality; but with each generation, we have revisited our fundamental truths, and where we falter, we make amends”), makes a bland anti-racist statement about holding “everyone from the very highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds,” and even says that the orange menace should “tell the truth…respect his duties and the extraordinary diversity that defines America” (why would you ever trust him to do that?). She then says that “with a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America, together” which sounds like class collaboration, which is never good and helps the bourgeoisie. She again goes with a jingoist call that “America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies: foreign and domestic” and ends the speech just like the orange menace, saying that “may God bless the United States of America.”
Some might think that the response of social democrat Bernie Sanders would be better, in that he says (rightly) that the orange menace lied. But, he acts like the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie are in the same economic boat…when they aren’t. He does rightly talk about income inequality or even distortions caused by trade wars, along with the infrastructure plan posed by the orange menace, even the anti-immigrant rhetoric, or reproductive rights, he ends up praising the orange menace at one point: “Tonight, Donald Trump correctly talked about the need to address the opioid crisis.” He grumbles that the orange menace did not mention climate change and a number of other topics including the Russophobic charge of “Russian cyberwarfare” (buying into the faulty Russiagate narrative, proving Democrats are the new McCarthyites and adding to a recent sentiment by Richard Burr (a Democrat): “Based on the evidence to date…we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia”), the war in Yemen, and then throws a bunch of poll numbers. Not sure what those percentages are supposed to do other than overwhelm us with unnecessary information, but it is followed by a need to fight the “billionaire class” (what he should say is the capitalist class) by…building up the petty bourgeoisie…how the hell would that work?
Further comments
The responses by Abrams and Sanders should be no surprise. As the managing editor of Black Agenda Report recently put it about a house bill aimed to cripple the Green Party (in his opinion), he wrote that “Democrats are a capitalist party, they are a government party, and this is how they govern.” What he is writing about is only part of the bill (Title V), but it still important to highlight. It also should be no shock that neither Sanders nor Abrams even mentioned Venezuela in their responses. A similar perspective was given by the executive editor of Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford, who wrote that “for the entirety of the 21st century the Lords of Capital have offered nothing but deepening austerity and endless war to the “home” populace of the imperial countries,” adding that despite what the orange menace said, “there are no organizations of socialists even remotely positioned to threaten the rule of the Lords of Capital in the U.S.” He further said, rightly, that “This is what passes for “socialism” in the U.S., and although such programs are not designed to overthrow the rule of capital,” saying that the orange menace he calls a “billionaire arch racist…littered his remarks with vague references to repairing “crumbling infrastructure,” lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and a promise to sign a bill for nationwide paid parental leave after childbirth,” saying this all “just hot air for the occasion.” He also noted that while the orange menace bragged about huge military spending, “Democratic leadership is just as wedded to war and austerity as Trump and his Republicans…the Democrats are running on a “we are not Trump” platform, the same as Hillary Clinton did the last time around,” claiming that Bernie “slammed into Trump’s fantasy world like a growling gray bulldozer” even though this is an utter joke. He ended by saying that “much of the phony left has found common cause with Trump in the crime” of supporting the coup in Venezuela (only citing Ro Khanna, Ilhan Omar and Tulsi Gabbard as condemning the coup), adding that “it is possible that AOC will grow an internationalist consciousness, without which one is no socialist. But it’s way too late for 77 year-old Bernie Sanders…The real resistance can only be nurtured outside the Party. Bernie Sanders’ job…is to explode the Democrats by running on a platform that supermajorities of people support – and to be publicly crucified for it.”
We then get to the resident revisionist of Black Agenda Report, Danny Haiphong, wrote in a recent article, “the so-called Democratic Party “resistance” to Trump has largely been silent on the issue of Venezuela. Self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have declined to comment on whether the Trump Administration is in fact waging a coup against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro” while also noting that “just days before Washington set the attempted coup into motion, the Democratic-controlled House voted for the NATO Support Act…[including] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and the rest of the “progressive” Democrats voted “yes” to NATO.” He praised “Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar” as voicing “any kind of opposition to the Trump Administration’s coup against Venezuela from the Democratic wing of the ruling class. None of them have mounted a challenge to the power of NATO over U.S. imperial policy.” His article ended by saying that “Democrats have moved so far to the right that its so-called “resistance” to Trump has done little except provide vital assistance to the empire. Even the most progressive-sounding of the Democratic Party brass has sworn its allegiance to NATO and the endless aggression that the U.S. imperial state wages around the world.” Haiphong generally makes good points, but not when it comes to Sanders opposition to the coup. This is proven by his statement on January 24 on Venezuela which endorses the reasons for the coup but not the coup itself, which is utterly disgusting:
The Maduro government in Venezuela has been waging a violent crackdown on Venezuelan civil society, violated the constitution by dissolving the National Assembly and was re-elected last year in an election that many observers said was fraudulent. Further, the economy is a disaster and millions are migrating. “The United States should support the rule of law, fair elections and self-determination for the Venezuelan people. We must condemn the use of violence against unarmed protesters and the suppression of dissent. However, we must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups – as we have in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. The United States has a long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American countries; we must not go down that road again.
You can grumble about Boots Riley all you want, when he said that Maduro did “fucked up shit” (I’ve been planning a follow-up to this set of tweets on there) without explaining what he meant (he says he will do so when the coup attempt is over), but that is nothing in comparison to Bernie’s literally imperialist statement. “Shock therapy” as it is called, may be on the agenda if Guido takes power, if Ben Norton’s article on the subject has any validity or whether Rosneft (a Russian oil company) is right that turmoil in Venezuela is “only temporary.” Haiphong was right that “black, working and poor people can expect no relief from Democrats, who will continue to divert the nation’s resources to foreign wars and coups.”
You can praise Omar, noted earlier, who said that “a US backed coup in Venezuela is not a solution to the dire issues they face. Trump’s efforts to install a far right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region. We must support Mexico, Uruguay & the Vatican’s efforts to facilitate a peaceful dialogue,” Ro Khanna for saying that “the US should not anoint the leader of the opposition in Venezuela during an internal, polarized conflict. Let us support Uruguay, Mexico, & the Vatican’s efforts for a negotiated settlement & end sanctions that are making the hyperinflation worse,” or Tulsi Gabbard for tweeting that “the United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders–so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.” You can say, sure, these are noble sentiments. But saying the Venezuelan people should “determine their future” still opens the door to U$ imperial subversion, which might not be a coup or what happened during the Iran-Contra scandal, but is terrible regardless. No doubt it is better than what Occasio-Cortez, who has branded herself as “AOC,” declared to Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “What we need to realize is happening is this is an issue of authoritarian regime versus democracy. In order for him to try to dissuade or throw people off the scent of the trail, he has to really make and confuse the public. And I think that that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.” [1] Did she miss (or ignore) the recent evidence revealed by the Venezuelan government which “showed evidence of the plan of attempted coup d’état carried out by the rightwing against constitutional President Nicolás Maduro, with the participation of the governments of the United States and Colombia”? What AOC says clearly amounts to an imperialist endorsement of the coup, going even further than Bernie, showing that the neo-progressives in Congress will be the saviors of nobody anywhere. [2]
Then there is the budget of the orange menace. Vox, an annoying liberal website which brings no value to the world, summarized the budget in a recent article titled “Trump’s 2019 budget: what he cuts, how much he cuts, and why it matters.” What did they show? That, based on an analysis from a “centrist, pro-balanced budget group,” that there will be “$1.75 trillion in new spending and tax cuts, $3.7 trillion in deficit reduction that’s overwhelmingly the result of spending cuts, $800 billion in reduced spending on wars and disaster recovery, and $300 billion in savings due to lower interest payments on less debt.” More specifically, there will be a cut of over 40% to non-military spending, including cuts to the EPA (33.7%), State Department, Head Start, supposed “law enforcement” by the FBI and DOJ, NIH (National Institutes of Health), and NSF (National Science Foundation). There will also be subsequent sizeable cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers (22.2%), the Labor Department (21.4%), Medicare (7.1% cut by 2028 due to “reforms”), “Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies by 2028” (22.5%), SNAP/Food Stamps (27.4%), Section 8 Housing assistance (20.1%), transportation spending (28.6%) while boosting defense spending by $777 billion over the next ten years. If that isn’t enough of a giveaway to the bourgeoisie, the individual and estate tax provisions of the GOP’s tax bill last year will be made permanent, while there will be $199 billion allocated “over 10 years for a new infrastructure program meant to generate $1 trillion through private partnership spending.” This budget would also screw students by eliminating “loan forgiveness for students who go into public service” and “subsidized Stafford loans” while establishing a “new, unified income-based repayment plan for student loans” under which those borrowing would need to “pay 12.5 percent of their discretionary income every month and have their balance forgiven after 15 years (for undergraduate debt) or 30 years (for graduate school debt),” which supposedly saves billions, but does this really help students at all?
Additionally, is it any mistake that the orange menace called one of the country’s “greatest strides” being “abolition of civil rights”? [3] I would say not.
With that, I end this post and look forward to your comments.
Notes
[1] Her statement to ABC News (“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez welcomes Trump’s ‘socialism’ jab, says he’s ‘scared'”) didn’t make it better, when she added that she thought the orange menace condemning socialism was “great. I think he’s scared I thought it was fabulous because it shows that we’ve gotten under his skin. He sees that everything is closing in on him. He knows that he’s losing the battle of public opinion when it comes to the substantive proposals that we’re advancing to the public. And frankly he has no substantive proposals to counter, he has no vision for this country. Everything is about what he doesn’t want, everything is about the bogeyman.” The same can be said of what she told another MSNBC host (as noted by a Salon article titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fires back at Trump for slamming socialism in State of the Union address”), Rachel Maddow, another Russophobe: that “I think that the president was unprepared. I don’t think that he did his homework. We’ve seen State of the Union addresses delivered by many presidents, Democrat and Republican. They almost always have substantive policies that are offered. I agree with Sen. Klobuchar there that there was no plan. There was no plan to address our opioid crisis, there was no plan to address the cost of health care, there was no plan to increase wages. I had to ask myself: ‘Is this a campaign stop or is this a State of the Union?'” There is some validity there, but to say that the orange menace was unprepared plays into the idea he is bumbling, which is an utter lie.
[2] This should be no surprise because as a February 4th article in Politico (“‘There Is Going to Be a War Within the Party. We Are Going to Lean Into It.’”) noted, those who work for AOC (which the article says is part of “the closest thing to a new celebrity Congress has had in years”) believe that “radical conservatives in the Democratic Party” are holding them (and the Democrats) back, and that “There is going to be a war within the party. We are going to lean into it” as the head of a group called the Justice Democrats that AOC is part of, the same group that once were a bunch of Berniecrats. The article says that this group wants to overturn the whole Congress, legislatively, with a whole bunch of people like AOC, with one person calling her rise “a Cinderella story, a bartender who goes against the machine and wins,” with the Justice Democrats among the “various groups that emerged in big numbers out of the 2016 election, including Democratic Socialists of America, Indivisible, Brand New Congress, Swing Left and the Sunrise Movement, just to name a few.” The power of AOC is not as strong as it would seem, as Pelosi said thatthe Green New Deal (a green capitalist plan) will be “one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” (as noted in a CNN article titled “Nancy Pelosi just threw some serious shade at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal'”). She also said, in the Politico interview (“‘Too hot to handle’: Pelosi predicts GOP won’t trigger another shutdown”) which CNN linked to, that another shutdown by the GOP would be “too hot to handle,” adding that the speech of the orange menace is “theatrics, this is not government. We just take this in stride” (not realizing her own theatrics like leading people to say USA! USA! USA! as was acknowledged by a recent article in Business Insider titled “The most powerful moment at the State of the Union was a win for Democrats that Trump had no control over”) also defending King Russophobe Adam Schiff, saying that “we honor the institution in which we serve, the Congress of the United States. I hope he would honor it, too.” By the end of the article she says that she prays for the orange menace “all the time. And I say to him, ‘Mr. President I would never ask you to do anything that is not in your interest,’” which is pretty disgusting. I would say it is justified to criticize CNN for featuring “former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in a [upcoming] town hall” despite his low support at the present.
[3] William Cummings and John Fritze, “President Trump’s gaffe touts ‘abolition of civil rights’ at National Prayer Breakfast,” USA Today, Feb 7, 2019.
One of the newest developments in what has happened in recent days
Two days ago, on January 4th, an article by Pete Dolack, who describes himself as an “activist, writer, poet and photographer,” but likely leans toward anarchism, was published (if you want to read such garbage) in CounterPunch, a reprint of a post on his own personal blog, Systemic Disorder, on January 1st. There’s no need to rehash what I noted on Twitter, where I interacted with a number of fellow users, beginning my criticism of his argument and giving me the thought of writing this post. Without further adieu, the article begins, structured with quoting directly from the article and responding to it.
Dolack’s comment #1:
Lost in the discussions of Donald Trump’s abrupt announcement of the withdrawal of United States troops from Rojava is the possible fate of the democratic and cooperative experiment of the Syrian Kurds. Threatened with annihilation at the hands of Turkish invaders, should we simply wipe our hands and think nothing of an interesting experiment in socialism being crushed on the orders of a far right de facto dictator?
My response: I don’t think the fate of the Kurds was “lost” in discussions about the “withdrawal” from Syria. As I noted in my article on the subject late last month, “it is clear now that the proposed U$ withdrawal from Syria is a cover for further Turkish involvement in Syria, with the Turks now becoming the mercenaries of empire” while noting an article in November 2018 reporting that “the Emirati and Saudi military forces arrived in Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria (“Rojava”), were stationed with U$ forces, supporting their “tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons,” while also meeting with Kurdish officials.” Adding to this, I question the assessment that the announcement was “abrupt” as that implies there was no strategy behind it. I am not sure, personally, if the orange menace does any strategizing of his own, but it is clear that his advisors do, so I think this was part of a planned effort to make other countries, like the Saudis, Emiratis, and Turks, do the dirty work of the U$ imperialists. It is not unprecedented. I also question how “socialist,” “democratic,” or “cooperative” the Kurds are, but since Dolack mentions that later in the article, I will address that later on.
Dolack’s comment #2:
Most of the commentary I have seen from U.S. Leftists simply declares “we never support U.S. troops” and that’s the end of it; thus in this conception President Trump for once did something right. But is this issue really so simple? I will argue here that support of Rojava, and dismay at the abrupt withdrawal of troops on the direct demand of Turkish President and de facto dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is not at all a matter of “support” of a U.S. military presence.
My response: Some may be openly saying that the orange menace did something right, I don’t doubt that. But, of the commentaries I’ve read, in Black Agenda Report (also see here) and anti-imperialism.org, there seems to be a strategy to push the orange menace to do more, similar to the strategy to push for more U$ concessions to the DPRK in the delicate detente between the two countries still hanging in place. I will concede, that sure the issue is not simple. But, one could support these Kurds and not support U$ military presence, it is altogether possible. However, supporters of “Rojava,” like Dolack, seem to not understand this at all. I would also say, as an additional comment, that Dolack’s statement that Erdogan is a “de facto dictator” is too moderate, as he is rather an autocrat and representative of the Turkish bourgeoisie, which has been trying to cultivate better relations with the Russian bourgeoisie.
Dolack’s comment #3:
The world of course is accustomed to the U.S. government using financial and military means to destroy nascent socialist societies around the world. But the bizarre and unprecedented case — even if accidental — of an alternative society partly reliant on a U.S. military presence seems to have confused much of the U.S. Left. Or is it simply a matter of indifference to a socialist experiment that puts the liberation of women at the center? Or is it because the dominant political inspiration comes more from anarchism than orthodox Marxism?
My response: Sure, the world recognizes such power of the U$ government. I would add, as is evidenced in the writings of the late William Blum in Rogue State, that the societies do not have to be “socialist” for military and financial means to be used against them. I will also grant that there has been confusion on the Left, but I would say it is more on the issue of opposing U$ imperialism, not the fact that a so-called “alternative society” is “partly reliant” (much more than partly) on U$ military presence. There is, clearly, no problem with putting “liberation of women at the center,” but it is wrong to say that it is a socialist experiment, not because the “dominant political inspiration” is more anarchist in origin than Marxist. Rather, it is clear in the society itself and the alliances they had made, as I noted in my article in late December:
…these Kurds (part of “Rojava”) thought that the U$ would champion their cause, failing to understand that the U$ establishment acts “purely in its own interests”…those who criticize these Kurds in “Rojava,” like the YPG, SDF, and PYD, for their alliance with U$ imperialists are not stooges of Erdogan…there are questions about how “revolutionary” or “progressive” these vaulted Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD) are since the SDF said they wanted “to be part of America,” possibly clearing the way for Turkey’s occupation. The Emergency Committee for “Rojava” goes even further in their pro-imperialist orientation, calling the withdrawal of U$ troops a “betrayal” and calling for military, economic, and political assistance, thinking that the U$ imperialists are somehow humanitarian saviors…those in “Rojava” are no Marxists, as they do not hold…that the world is restless and that the “death of the capitalistic method of production” means, simply, “resolution of society into simpler forms…a new and better order of things,” since the current society is “morally bankrupt”
I went onto add that even if we grant that their social contract seems democratic, with varied rights, many of which seem bourgeois in nature (i.e. freedom of speech, equality in gender, worship, assembly, political participation, seek political asylum), it also flat-out endorses private property, declaring that “everyone has the right to the use and enjoyment of his private property” because there is “no one shall be deprived of his property except upon payment of just compensation, for reasons of public utility or social interest, and in the cases and according to the forms established by law.” I went onto add that while the economy of “Rojava” seems social democratic, it does not include “a proposal for a planned economy” or prohibit “extractive processes, management, licensing and other contractual agreements related to such [natural] resources” by corporate entities. More on this will be talked about later.
Dolack’s comment #4:
Let’s think about World War II for a moment. Was supporting the war against Hitler and Mussolini’s fascist régimes simply a matter of “supporting” U.S. troops? The victory over fascism likely could not have been won without the herculean effort of the Soviet Union once it overcame the initial bungling of Josef Stalin and the second-rate commanders he had put in charge of the Red Army after purging most of the best generals. To say that the Soviet Union won World War II is no way is meant to denigrate or downplay the huge sacrifices borne by the Western allies. That Western effort was supported by communists and most other Leftists. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) were staunch supporters of the U.S. war effort — party members well understood what was at stake.
My response: First of all, there were tensions in the CPUSA. In March 1944, William Z. Foster and Sam Darcy were part of those who opposed the direction of the CPUSA pushed by Earl Browder with a changed name to the Communist Political Association (CPA), supported by a majority of those gathered at the time, with Foster keeping his criticism within the central committee of the party, but Darcy conducting “broader agitation” including “circulating a letter to party members” and apparently writing on the issue for the “bourgeois press” which led to his expulsion from the party by Foster! Later that year, in May 1944, Earl Browder’s proposal was taken up by Foster, and the CPUSA voted to adjourn itself. The following year, in April 1945, an article which appeared to show “intimate familiarity of details with the American party’s internal political situation that (correctly) indicated to careful American readers a Moscow source of origin of the document,” led to an uproar in the CPA . The publication of this article prompted an uproar in the CPA, “as factional fighting was unleashed between those favoring a return to the previous “party” form of organization (lead by William Z. Foster) and those in favor of continuing the “new course” initiated by Browder.” What followed was Browder, in June, defending the “wartime policies” advocated by him as head of the CPUSA, which included “the need to establish a Second Front in Europe…support[ing] the Roosevelt administration against an alliance of Republican and conservative anti-Administration forces who were empowered in the rightward-tilting Congressional elections of 1942” and guiding the labor movement “to compliant support of the Roosevelt administration in matters of its personnel or policies,” rejecting the charges that he was revisionist. I could go on, noting further speeches by Browder (including those in 1946 defending himself after he was expelled). The reason I mention this is that the CPUSA was internally compromised and revisionist, meaning this should not be used as a valid comparison to what is happening now in regards to those Kurds in “Rojava.” There was a worldwide war occurring, and, sure, CPUSA members, like many leftists “were staunch supporters of the U.S. war effort” as they knew “what was at stake” but also they may too have been swept up by the euphoria and nationalism for war itself. Yes, Dolack is right that”the victory over fascism likely could not have been won without the herculean effort of the Soviet Union” but it shows his true intent that it the Soviets “overcame the initial bungling of Josef Stalin and the second-rate commanders he had put in charge of the Red Army after purging most of the best generals,” a clear anti-communist charge which could as easily be found in any of the books by Robert Conquest. Even worse is his sentence that declaring that he is not denigrating or downplaying “the huge sacrifices borne by the Western allies” when saying that “the Soviet Union won World War II” which is a cop-out which actually ends up downplaying the effort of the Soviets. If the Soviets had sat out the war, then the Western allies would have never been able to defeat the Nazis. Perhaps if they had joined the Soviets years later to defeat the Nazis when they were weaker, the Holocaust could have been avoided, but instead they wanted to twiddle their thumbs as people died and keep their cash flowing into the Nazi coffers (especially in the case of the British bourgeoisie), while holding a strong anti-Soviet position.
Dolack’s comment #5:
In contrast, the main U.S. Trotskyist party, the Socialist Workers Party, dismissed the war as an inter-imperialist dispute. That may have been so, but was that the moment to make a fetish of pacifism or of an unwillingness to be involved in any way in a capitalist fight? We need only think of what would have happened had Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo triumphed in the war to answer that question. Backing the war effort was the only rational choice any Leftist not blinded by rigid ideology could have made. It is no contradiction to point out the CPUSA took the correct approach even for someone, like myself, who is generally strongly critical of the party.
My response: Of course the Trotskyists would hold that position, without siding with the Soviets against the Nazis if they truly believed what they said. But, they did not, and as always, the Trotskyists end up supporting the global bourgeoisie. We don’t need to “think what would have happened” as that has already in bourgeois media and engaging in such speculation will get us nowhere. So the CPUSA were not “blinded by rigid ideology” but the Trotskyists were? That doesn’t make sense. It is perhaps better to say neither was “blinded” by their beliefs as that almost makes them out to be mindless zombies rather than human beings. Rather it is better to criticize the approach of the Trotskyists rather than engage in such word games as Dolack does. He can say that the CPUSA “took the correct approach” but from what I have previously mentioned about the organization being internally compromised and led by a clear revisionist, Earl Browder, who allied the party with the Democrats and tried to get the proletariat to follow along (without question) the direction of policies of the Roosevelt Administration, it seems clear they could have charted another strategy. Perhaps they could have backed the Soviet effort, rather than the U$ war machine, against fascism.
Dolack’s comment #6:
Shouldn’t we listen to the Kurds? To bring us back to the present controversy, we might ask: What do the Kurds want? The Syrian Kurds, surrounded by hostile forces waiting for the opportunity to crush their socialist experiment, made a realpolitik decision in accepting the presence of U.S. troops, and a limited number of French and British troops. The dominant party in Syrian Kurdistan, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is strongly affiliated with the leading party of Turkey’s Kurds, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK has been locked in a decades-long struggle with successive Turkish governments.
My response: Dolack’s point about the struggle with Turkish governments by the PKK is accurate. But, there is a major problem with his reasoning: there is no one group representing the Kurds. Paul Davis, a former spook (for U$ Army Intelligence) wrote about this in a prominent Kurdish publication, Kurdistan 24, which Dolack somehow missed even though it was written many months ago in late November. He noted, summarizing a recent panel discussion perhaps in a European country, that there is debate about whom speaks “for the Kurds,” with scholar Ismail Beşikçi, saying that while “50 million Kurds live within the confines of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria,” arguing that the “world has not seen fit to recognize a Kurdish state” because while “Palestinians present a united front while the Kurds remain divided.” While the topic of lacking Kurdish unity “was only briefly addressed,” Davis added that it is incumbent on the Kurds to find someone who will “speak for them” with two names standing out: imprisoned Abdullah Öcalan (whom “most countries consider…a terrorist”) and Masoud Barzan, the latter of whom “has the international recognition and standing to present the Kurdish desires to the world.” He ended his article by saying that “before the Kurds can begin to decide who will lead Kurdistan, there must be a Kurdistan. Once a nation becomes a reality, the citizens can start to play politics…There must be a Kurdish awakening and a single voice – be it Barzani or another – to deny the world the option of ignoring the Kurds.”
As such, how we say with certainty what “the Kurds” want? What Kurds are we talking about? Those in Syria, Iraq, Iran, or Turkey? Are they part of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie? The latter comes from an insightful comment by commieposting on Twitter: “what these people [like Dolack] all do is attempt to hide and obscure the fact that the kurdish nation is divided like any other – divided as proletarians and bourgeoisie.”
That brings us back to Dolack. When he says that the Syrian Kurds are “surrounded by hostile forces waiting for the opportunity to crush their socialist experiment” this assumes that the governments of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria are all hostile, when only one of those (Turkey) is actively hostile. While other maps are helpful, like the one from liveuamap, the one from the Carter Center clearly shows that the Syrian government is in no position, even if they wanted to, to be hostile to the Kurds. Additionally, this means that the Kurds collectively did not make the “realpolitik decision in accepting the presence of U.S. troops, and a limited number of French and British troops” but rather that was the move of the Kurdish leaders, led by, as he admits, “the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is strongly affiliated with the leading party of Turkey’s Kurds, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).” Interestingly, he does not recognize the contradiction: how progressive is “Rojava” (composed of the Jazira, Euphrates, and Afrin regions) if the levers of power are in control by the PYD with no voting in Arab-majority areas in the region in 2017, even as one New York Times reporter dumbly, in 2015, declared that there was “no hierarchy” in Rojava, a clear lie born from their fantastical imagination.
Dolack’s comment #7:
The preceding sentence is something of a euphemism. It would be more accurate to say that the Turkish government has waged an unrelenting war against the Kurdish people. Ankara has long denied the existence of the Kurdish people, banning their language, publications, holidays and cultural expressions, and pursuing a relentless campaign of forced resettlement intended to dilute their numbers in southeast Turkey. Uprisings have been met with arrests, torture, bombings, military assaults, the razing of villages and declarations of martial law. Hundreds of thousands have been arrested, tortured, forcibly displaced or killed. Turkish governments, including that of President Erdoğan, do not distinguish between “Kurd” and “terrorist.” The PKK’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, has been held in solitary confinement since his abduction in Kenya in 1999, an abduction assisted by the U.S. Successive U.S. governments have capitulated to Turkey by falsely labeling the PKK a “terrorist” organization and have actively assisted in the suppression of Turkish Kurds. Can it really be possible that Syrian Kurds are somehow unaware of all this? Obviously not.
My response: There is no doubt that the Turks have engaged in a long-standing effort of suppression of the Kurds. However, Dolack is downplaying the U$ role here. For one, there may be a connection of the Kurds to what was happening in Iran, as was briefly mentioned in an article I wrote back in May 2016, noting that the U$ and these Kurds have a “close relationship” which manifests itself in military strikes, adding that one could speculate the the U$ government was covertly working with “Kurdish [drug] traffickers to destabilize Iran.” [1] One article I linked to, on Narconon, speculated on Kurdish involvement, noting “Iran lies directly in the path of the world’s largest flow of heroin…Ethnic Kurds populate much of the Iran-Turkey border areas and are thought to be heavily involved in the movement of drugs across this border. They then control some of these shipments all the way to Europe.”
There is more than this. Back in 2016, an article in Vox of all places predicted the end of the alliance between the forces of “Rojava” and the U$, saying that their interests will diverge, adding that “the United States has had a longstanding relationship with Iraq’s quasi-autonomous Kurdish minority, who benefited from the American-led no-fly zone over Iraq after the 1990s Gulf War and from Saddam Hussein’s downfall in 2003” and that while the alliance has “worked well” it was an “alliance of convenience” as the U$ wants to, in his distorted view “defeat” Daesh while the Kurds in Iraq and Syria are “mostly focused on protecting their own populations and territory.” [2] The article goes onto say that “the status of the Kurds in post-Saddam Iraq has never totally been settled” since they demanded “a significant degree of autonomy after his fall, including their own regional government and military” but they also, in June 2014, seized oil-rich Kirkuk, which a number of Iraqis seeing this as “an unconstitutional power grab.” It also states that since 2012, when “Rojava has essentially functioned as an independent” they have been natural allies of the U$ as they “fight ISIS, oppose Assad, and aren’t mixed up with jihadists” but they also cause tension with Turkey, who is worried “that Syrian Kurds would inspire Kurdish nationalism in Turkey” leading Turkey to be “deeply hostile to any independent or autonomous Rojava.” Even so, this article declares that the Kurds in Syria don’t “share America’s goals or vision for the region. Kurdistan is not America East” although some recent comments by Kurdish groups like YPG indicate they see it, in a sense, that way. The article ends by saying that “the Kurds are political actors with their own interests and concerns, which they will pursue even if Washington doesn’t like it,” but this again ignores the past history between the Kurds and the U$.
Stephen Zunes, of all people, a person who downplays the role of foreign money, specifically from the U$, and has tried to smear the former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, among other horrible positions, provides some of this history. He defines the Kurds wildly as a nation of over 30 million people “divided among six countries, primarily in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey and with smaller numbers in northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran and the Caucuses. They are the world’s largest nation without a state of their own.” [3] He notes how their “struggle for self-determination has been hampered by…rivalry between competing nationalist groups, some of which have been used as pawns by regional powers[and] the United States.” He further notes that while at the 1919 Versailles Conference ,Woodrow Wilson, a liberal imperialist “unsuccessfully pushed for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan,” that policy since then has been terrible. For instance, he recalls how in the mid-1970s, in conjunction with the autocratic Shah, the U$ goaded Kurds in Iraq to launch an “armed uprising” against the Iraqi government “with the promise of continued military support” but then the U$ abandoned them as “part of an agreement with the Baghdad regime for a territorial compromise favorable to Iran regarding the Shatt al-Arab waterway” resulting in the Iraqi Army marching into Kurdish areas, slaughtering thousands, with Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, dismissing any humanitarian consequences, by coldly declaring that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.” In the 1980s, Iraqi Kurds rose up against the Iraqi government (then led by Saddam Hussein) again, led by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which was, at the time supported by the U$ through agricultural, economic, and military support, with the U$ looking the other way as many of these funds “were laundered by purchasing military equipment despite widespread knowledge that it was being deployed as part of Baghdad’s genocidal war against the Kurds.” This went to such an extreme that in March 1988 after the Iraqis attacked Kurdish town of Halabja, killing thousands, the U$ leaked phony intelligence in order to claim that Iran “was actually responsible.” [4] This incident in 1988 was not isolated, with clear proof other other attacks by Iraq in 1986 and 1987, and even an effort by Senator Clairborn Bell to put pressure on the Iraqi government but this was killed by the Reagan Administration, which wanted to “continue its military and economic support of Saddam Hussein’s regime.” Later on, the U$ conquest of Iraq shamelessly used “suffering of the Kurdish people under Saddam’s rule…as an excuse” for bloody imperial intervention.
After the destruction of much of the air force of Iraq in 1991 by the Gulf War, there was “strict enforcement of a “no-fly zone” covering most Kurdish-populated areas in northern Iraq,” meaning that Iraq no longer “had the capacity to engage in such large-scale repression,” in Zunes’ opinion, which kinda ends up supporting imperialist intervention. Anyway, as a result, as the Shiites rebelled in Southern Iraq later that year, the Kurds made major advances, seizing a number of towns, reversed “by a brutal counter-attack by Iraqi government forces.” And while George H.W. Bush told the people of Iraq to rise up against Saddam, U$ forces “did nothing to support the post-war rebellion and stood by while thousands of Iraqi Kurds, Shiites, and others were slaughtered” and furthered the injury by excluding “Iraqi helicopter gunships from the ban on Iraqi military air traffic…[which proved] decisive in crushing the rebellions.” Some suspect,he wrote this happened because “the Bush administration feared a victory by Iraqi Kurds might encourage the ongoing Kurdish uprising in Turkey, a NATO ally,” which blocked more than “100,000 Kurds from entering their country, thereby trapping them in snowy mountains in violation of their obligations under international humanitarian law to allow the fleeing civilians sanctuary.” As such, U$ forces ” operating out of its bases in Turkey and with the assistance of a dozen other countries, began air dropping emergency supplies, soon followed by the deployment of thousands of troops into northern Iraq to provide additional aid and to construct resettlement camps” which continued into 1996. Soon enough the U$, Great Britain and France, “unilaterally banned the Iraqi government from deploying any of its aircraft in northern Iraq above the 36th parallel with the stated goal of enforcing UN Security Council resolution 688” putting in place a no-fly-zone of “dubious legality” which at first received “widespread bipartisan support in Washington and even among human rights advocates as an appropriate means of preventing a renewal of the Iraqi government’s savage repression of the Kurdish people.” However, this zone itself did not “protect the Iraqi Kurdish populations from potential assaults by Iraqi forces, which…had pulled back and were focused on post-war reconstruction and protecting the regime in Baghdad” and seeing this zone evolve into “an excuse for continuing a low-level war against Iraq, France soon dropped out of the enforcement efforts.” Then in August 1996, using the ” factional fighting broke out between the PUK and the KDP in Iraqi Kurdistan” as an excuse, President Bill Clinton “ordered a series of major bombing raids and missile attacks against Iraq” which garnered widespread bipartisan support even though “most of the U.S. strikes took place in the central and southern part of Iraq–hundreds of miles from the Iraqi advance.”
From this, the “mission creep” began as U$ forces “patrolling the no-fly zone gradually escalated its rules of engagement” originally justifying use of force “challenge Iraqi encroachments into the proscribed airspace,” then to include “assaults on anti-aircraft batteries that fired at allied aircraft enforcing the zone” or when”anti-aircraft batteries locked “their radar toward allied aircraft, even without firing.” This meant that by the end of the decade President Clinton was “ordering attacks on additional radar installations and other military targets within the no-fly zone, even when they were unrelated to an alleged Iraqi threat against a particular U.S. aircraft.” As such, when Bush II came to power, targeting was further expanded, with “the U.S. attacking radar and command-and-control installations well beyond the no-fly zones” and by 2002, “U.S. air strikes against Iraq were taking place almost daily.” This all meant that “rather than an expression of humanitarian concern for Iraq’s Kurdish population, the no-fly zones became instruments to legitimize U.S. attacks against Iraq” and they ended up, during their 12 years of operation (1991-2003) to kill “far more Kurds” than the Iraqi government! The U$ support for these Kurds was clearly further insincere because of the “strong U.S. support for the Turkish government in its repression of its own Kurdish population” (which could happen again), with the U$ remaining silent during the 1990s “regarding the Turkish government’s repression,” selling the Turks billions of dollars in armaments in the 1980s and 1990s as “the Turkish military carried out widespread attacks against civilian populations.” These attacks were so extensive that “over 3,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed and over two million Kurds became refugees” with 3/4 of the weapons of U$ origin. The U$ government even defended “periodic incursions into the safe haven by thousands of Turkish troops as well as air strikes by the Turkish military inside Iraqi territory.” And to go back to Ocolan, which Dolack seems to revere, the U$ government first “successfully pressured Syria to expel PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan” in 1998 and then in February 1999, the U$ (likely CIA) “assisted Turkish intelligence agents in locating Ocalan in Kenya, where he was kidnapped, brought to Turkey and initially sentenced to death, though this was later commuted to life in prison”! With that, why would any Kurd trust the U$? Clearly, this indicates to me that something else is going on, that the Kurdish bourgeoisie are clearly out for themselves and act like they have “forgotten” their history.
Zones ends his article by noting that the “PKK resumed its armed struggle in 2004,” that Kurds in Northern Iraq “formally gained unprecedented rights as a result of the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003” and have “evolved into a de facto independent state” while also noting that “government corruption is widespread in Iraqi Kurdistan and opposition activists are routinely beaten, tortured, and killed,” even though it is a place that at the time of his writing (2007), hosted “thousands of American troops, diplomats and businesspeople.” He also noted how the U$ backed an “Iranian Kurdish group known as PEJAK, which has launched frequent cross-border raids into Iran, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Iranians.” He ended the article in calling for “greater American leadership” in telling the Kurds in Northern Iraq to “crack down on PKK military activities inside their territory,” the U$ severing their “ties to the PEJAK,” telling the Turks to “honor Iraqi sovereignty and cease their attacks against suspected PKK targets inside Iraqi territory,” along with a number of other policies. [5]
But that isn’t the whole story, apart from Western treachery. One writer even said that “every human disaster can be counted as a political step forward in the Kurds’ pursuit of their historical entitlement to statehood,” adding that “whenever possible they expand the territory they control – taking over oil and gas reserves in adjacent areas – and assert greater authority over their own heartlands,” while also noting that while “in theory they are fighting to create a unitary state in all of Kurdistan, a territory whose borders are undefined but that in some Kurds’ imaginings stretches all the way from deep inside Iran to the shores of the Mediterranean.”This same person added that “across their four main ‘host’ countries, though, the Kurds are internally divided over strategy” with some seeking a “seek a single Kurdish nation-state; others prefer autonomy within the state they inhabit; others would be content with recognition of their rights as a minority in a truly democratic state,” with many seeming to “internalised the post-Ottoman borders, embracing their separate identities as Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish or Iranian Kurds,” meaning that they “can’t make significant headway in their pursuit of greater freedom without the aid of an external power” with aid that has “whether from the US, Iran or the Soviet Union and Russia…always been part of a strategy in which the Kurds are merely instrumental.” [6] This, still, is only part of the story.
A search on the website of the U$ Department Office of the Historian, which has previous diplomatic documents ranging throughout U$ history online, does not paint a pretty picture. One of the earliest mentions of Kurds is in 1866, with one document recording that the mountain region of Syria is “inhabited by Kurd and Turcoman tribes” with another in 1885 condemning the “outrage perpetrated by the Kurd, Moussa Bey, upon the American citizens, Messrs. Knapp and Reynolds.” The next mention of value, apart from those condemning any “further outrage by the Kurd tribe they will be hanged” (1905) and “Kurd accomplices” who “await attack” (1906), is the rough description of “Kurdistan” in 1904:
The home of the Kurds or “Kurdistan” is an indefinite geographical expression, but may be roughly understood as beginning at Mount Ararat on the north and stretching south to where the mountains fade away into the plains of Mesopotamia above Bagdad, say, 300 miles; the width of the region may be measured by the distance between Lake Urumia in Persia and Lake Van in Turkey—something like 100 miles; the area of this region is as large as the State of South Carolina. It disregards imperial boundaries, as its inhabitants disregard imperial laws and orders; it extends into Persia or Turkey according to the pleasure and habits and wanderings of these wild people. Notwithstanding the strict laws that require passports to enter Turkey or Persia, the Kurd relies with confidence and success upon his rifle and scimitar rather than upon paper and seals and visas, and so crosses indifferently into either territory to commit crimes, or to escape the consequences of his crimes. This is the Kurd, the creature we have to deal with in this case.
This is a crude understanding of the Kurdish people, and likely a bit racist (calling them “the creature”), but the pictured size of “Kurdistan” which disregards borders, with the people themselves crossing borders without problems still rings true.
Then, after a mention of the “Kurd and Turkish population of Armenia…massacring Armenians with the connivance and often assistance of Ottoman authorities,” seeming to implicate them in the Armenian genocide, we can fast forward many years. In 1945 and 1946, U$ diplomats worried about Soviet support of “Kurd agitation” which would weaken U$ allies (Iran and Turkey), putting them under threat. The British shared this concern as well, with one diplomatic document saying that the “British Chargé d’Affaires [was] also concerned with free movement Barzanis and Soviet Kurd political agents from USSR to Iraq through Iranian Kurdistan.”
With that, we move onto 1962. One diplomatic cable in 1962 noted that a Kurdish officer made a “strong plea for US support of revolution movement” saying that most Communists have been removed from the KDP, cooperate with “conservative Arab Iraqi elements and bring Iraq back into Baghdad Pact” if the U$ wishes,and give the U$”full information on internal political or military developments in Kurdistan or Arab Iraq.” Noting the viewpoint of Mulla Mustafa (also known as Mustafa Barzani), he said that the Shah of Iran would like Kurdistan as an “autonomous republic” while adding that they maintain “regular contact with the UAR” and the Soviets in Baghdad whom they are not willing to burn bridges with “unless they have assurances USG will support their movement.” The cable went onto say that “Israel has offered assistance to Kurds in Europe but this refused…because they fear Israel might purposely reveal information and “movement” would be harmed throughout Arab countries,” and noting that Barzani would rather “cooperate with West rather than with USSR” who he did not trust. As such, the Kurds were hoping for a change in U$ policy, which was that “Kurdish problem in Iraq [is] an internal matter which should be resolved internally” while they also “believe the future well-being of Kurds in Iraq, as well as those in Iran and Turkey, is inseparably tied to the well-being of the countries in which they reside.” One year later, a paper noted JFK’s desire to do all they can to “help Iraq and thus consolidate its break with the Soviets,” which would, by extension, possibly imply assistance to the Kurds.
Then we go to 1966. A diplomatic message said that rather than giving a “congratulatory message” to the Iraqis “on thwarting of coup” that should rather, among other aspects, give “congratulations on GOI [government of Iraq] political program for Kurds and on gaining Kurdish acceptance, and…hope that settlement will be implemented promptly, consistently and in good faith by both GOI and Kurds.” They also speculated the coup attempt may have been related to the “June 29 announcement of Kurdish settlement.”
By the 1970s, there would be a lot of action in efforts to assist Kurds, specifically those in Iraq. One of these was to, in 1972 or 1973, provide $3 million dollars to “assist Mulla Mustafa Barzani and the Iraqi Kurds in their resistance against the Bathi Iraqi regime” along with “roughly $2 million in supplies…to be delivered via CIA channels.” In 1972, the Shah of Iran said he was “afraid the Soviets would establish a coalition of the Kurds, the Baathists, and the Communists,” suggesting to Henry Kissinger that “Turkey needs strengthening…[and that] Iran can help with the Kurds.” According to the memoirs of Kissinger (Years of Renewal, pp. 582–3), during this same conversation, President Nixon agreed that “without American support, the existing Kurdish uprising against the Baghdad Government would collapse” and that U$ participation “was needed to maintain the morale of such key allies as Iran and Jordan” even though “no record of this conversation was found.” Other cables noted millions in contributions to the “Kurdish cause” while also saying in 1973 that “the Kurds, who make up about 30 percent of the Iraqi population…are in a chronic state of revolt.” They also added that these Kurds “are part of the some 5–6 million Kurds located in contiguous areas of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey” with thee ultimate goal of “an independent Kurdish state, but the Iraqi Kurds will settle, for the moment at least, for autonomy within a unified Iraqi state as long as they also share in the central government.” The following year, the U$ government said it opposed an “autonomous” Kurdish government, saying it “escalate the situation well beyond our covert capabilities to contribute meaningfully”and that disclosure of U$ involvement would send a signal to the Soviets, “affect U.S.-Turkish relations,” and would be viewed a certain way by Arabs. They also declared that such a state “could be considered tantamount to aggression against Iraq,” while noting that the Shah sees benefit, like the U$, “in a stalemate situation in Iraq in which the Ba’ath government is intrinsically weakened by Kurdish refusal to relinquish its semi-autonomy.” They concluded that they hoped to signal to Barzani, by giving “more funds and supplies.” that the U$ is “till sympathetic and friendly to his predicament and prepared to continue to help on a scale which can be kept covert, but that we cannot play a prime role in the new ballgame.”
Then we get to 1975. That year there was talk about approaching the Iranians to “determine how Iran intends to handle its future relationship with the Kurds” since, as it was argued, the “the Iranian and the U.S. Governments will face [a problem] in the U.S. and elsewhere if there is a massacre and Barzani charges that he has been let down.” They further argued that “the plight of the Kurds could arouse deep humanitarian concern”while it could also “create an impossible situation if we were to be working at cross purposes with Iran.” It was that year that U$-backed Iranians withdrew their “support of the Iraqi Kurds” leading the rebellion by these Kurds, which had started a year before, to collapse, with “hundreds of thousands…[fleeing] the country to refugee camps, mainly in Iran.”
One more cable is worth mentioning. It is in 1978. It says that while Communists and Kurds are represented in the Iraqi government it is “essentially cosmetic” as the opposition, “be it Communist, Kurd, rival Baathist, or military—seems to be in disarray, unable to mount an effective challenge to Saddam or alter the present governmental or political structure.” There are a number of other results as well, for those who are interested in pursuing this search further.
Many years later, in 1998, representatives of the KDP and PUK met in Washington, D.C. to sign an accord (the Washington Agreement) to resolve their issues, which has not been fully implemented, with ongoing negotiations and discussions. By 2002, the Kurds were warning that Saddam would respond to U$ attack by “by deploying weapons of mass destruction as he has done in the past” while also saying that overthrow of Saddam ” would serve justice for the man who has harmed them for decades,” both of which fed into the drive for a full-out war. [7] A few years later, Najmaldin Karim, the former president and founder of the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), complained that imperial planners of the Iraq Study Group were ignoring “Kurdistan,” noting that even Turkey and Russia have set up consulates in this region of Iraq. How did he promote the region? He said it had “a peaceful, thriving economy” and that”Iraqi Kurds are massively pro-American” adding that the Kurds are “America’s closest allies in Iraq,” claiming that the U$is embarrassed of its previous betrayals of the Kurds. He went further to endorse the “proposal promoted by Senator Joe Biden and…Leslie Gelb” which would balkanize the country into a Shia, Sunni, and Kurd region. How does he not see a problem with this?
This brings us to an open question: who is the WKI? We know that they are people who promote those who advocate for the “Kurdish cause” including those who want continued U$ intervention in Syria, to create “a safe haven,” critical of the “autocratic Turkish nation-state,” and those who are part of the Kurdish government in northern Iraq (KRG) who boast about their connections in Washington, D.C., and to the “Kurdistani diaspora,” including to the bourgeoisie in the energy sector (specifically oil & gas). They also, helpfully list all the “Kurdish parties,”or at least the ones they point in that category. This organization, which was founded in 1996, defines itself, basically as the one-stop-shop for “Kurd-related issues,” and has been promoted by the KRG. They have such a connection that Karim became the Governor of Kirkuk (from 2011-2017)! Sourcewatch tells a little more. While their page for the organization doesn’t show anything in particular, there are clear connections of former and current individuals of WKI to the NGO world, AIPAC, the U$ government (like the CIA and State Department), American Enterprise Institute, anti-Soviet causes, and outright advocacy for the overthrow of Saddam, in line with imperial interests. Clearly, these people have an agenda which meshes with the murderous empire, making one skeptical of existing efforts for Kurdish nationalism without question.
Dolack’s comment #8:
Surrounded and blockaded by Turkey, an oppressive Syrian government, Islamic State terrorists and a corrupt Iraqi Kurdistan government in alliance with Turkey, the Syrian Kurds of Rojava have made a series of realpolitik choices, one of which is to accept a U.S. military presence in the territory to prevent Turkey from invading. That in the wake of the announced U.S. withdrawal Rojava authorities have asked the Syrian army to move into position to provide a new buffer against Turkey — despite the fact the Assad father and son régimes have been relentlessly repressive against them — is another difficult decision made by a people who are surrounded by enemies.
My response: This is getting into pro-imperialist territory fast, declaring that the Syrian government is “oppressive” and acting like they are all surrounded by enemies, the same thing that the Zionists say all the time as they cry for U$ assistance. There is a major question if “U.S. military presence in the territory [would]…prevent Turkey from invading” as I will discuss below, in response to another one of Dolack’s comments. But to say that negotiating with the Syrian army is hard because of repression by the Syrians, also moves into pro-imperialist territory, as the Syrians don’t want a Turkish invasion either, evidenced by the recent agreement between the Syrian government and the YPG. More on on the Syrian government role will be addressed later in this piece.
Dolack is basically making the same argument as Noam Chomsky, that a “small US troop contingent in the Kurdish region serves as a deterrent to a likely Turkish invasion, extending their criminal assault against Kurds in Turkey itself and the regions of Syria they have already occupied,” even though this is clearly an imperialist position, as much as embattled French President Emanuel Macron telling Vladimir Putin that the Kurds must be protected at all costs. Cries from those like Dolack along with dedicated imperialists have led the orange menace to say that Syrian Kurds (the ones the U$ supports) will be protected by the U$, while also claiming that some Kurds sell oil to Iran, but apparently not those in Syria. His comments were echoed by Pompeo who said that the orange menace stressed “the importance of ensuring that the Turks don’t slaughter the Kurds” as U$ forces are re-deployed from Syria to Iraq. After all, as his trip across the Mideast will declare load and clear that “the United States is not leaving the Middle East,” continuing efforts of imperial stabilization.
Dolack’s comment #9:
To ignore what the Kurdish people, in attempting to build a socialist, egalitarian society, have to say are acts of Western chauvinism. It is hardly reasonable to see the Syrian Kurds as “naïve” or “puppets” of the U.S. as if they are incapable of understanding their own experiences. And Turkey’s invasion of Rojava’s Afrin district, which was disconnected from the rest of Rojava, resulting in massive ethnic cleansing, should make clear the dangers of further Turkish invasions.
This is where Dolack, as I said on Twitter yesterday, basically said that opposing U$ troops in Syria is racist as is apparently ignores what “the Kurdish people” are “attempting to build.” So, should we ignore the fact that the Kurds in Rojava are not even politically united or that the PKK recently attacked a Turkish military base, raising the question if they are trying to goad the Turks into attacking? There is no doubt that the Turks want to engage in a form of ethnic cleansing and wipe out these Kurdish people, or at least incapacitate them, likely with U$ assistance. These Kurds, specifically their leaders, are active participants and clearly aware of their role, even while they do not remember (or have conditioned themselves to forget) the clear U$ history of betraying the Kurdish people in the past. The U$ imperialists see them as puppets which they can discard when they are “down with them,” even though they are still human beings who are not playthings, who have every right to determine their own way forward…
Dolack’s comment #10:
The Kurdistan National Congress, an alliance of Kurdish parties, civil society organizations and exile groups, issued a communiqué that said, as its first point, “The coalition forces must not leave North and East Syria/Rojava.” The news site Rudaw reports that Islamic State has gone on the offensive since President Trump acquiesced to President Erdoğan’s demand, and quotes a spokesperson for the Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces as saying that “More than four million are exposed to the danger of massive displacement, escaping from possible genocide,” noting the example of Turkey’s brutal invasion of Afrin.
My response: That announcement by the Kurdistan National Congress is no surprise, as they are sticking with their previous policy of wanting U$ support, which is actually an ahistorical decision. It also does not surprise me that, if the reports he noted are true, that “Islamic State has gone on the offensive since President Trump acquiesced to President Erdoğan’s demand” since Daesh (another name for the “Islamic State”) is supported either directly or indirectly by the United States itself! At the same time, as I said in my article in late December, the story that the orange menace acquiesced to Erdogan is too simplistic, that there is something more going on, some sort of planning by the advisors of the orange menace. I also do not doubt that there would be “danger of massive displacement.” However, the way the SDF frames this, as does Dolack, almost sets the stage for a “humanitarian” intervention in Northeast Syria to “protect the Kurds” which all should oppose.
Then Dolack quotes from “someone on the ground” in “Rojava” itself, which he does not link to, but I will. It has been reprinted many places and was written by a self-declared anarchist. Although he admits that he is “not formally integrated into any of the groups here” and is basically just an observer, Dolack gives him this magical legitimacy. He does make valid points that the decision by the orange menace to “withdraw” from Syria is not antiwar or anti-imperialist, as it “will not bring the conflict in Syria to an end,” and even is right it does give “Erdoğan the go-ahead to invade Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing against the people who have done much of the fighting and dying to halt the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS)” while the orange menace “aims to leave Israel the most ostensibly liberal and democratic project in the entire Middle East,” all of which “will come at a tremendous cost.” But then he says that it doesn’t matter “where US troops are stationed [because] two thousand US soldiers at issue are a drop in the bucket in terms of the number of armed fighters in Syria today. They have not been on the frontlines” saying that “what matters is that Trump’s announcement is a message to Erdoğan indicating that there will be no consequences if the Turkish state invades Rojava.” He rightly criticizes Medea Benjamin, while declaring “it makes no sense to blame people here in Rojava for depending on the United States when…anyone like her has done anything to offer them any sort of alternative,” and then his article goes on.
It here that we must recall the role of the SDF, YPG, and its associates in destroying Raqqa, dooming the civilians that lived inside. The city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of Daesh, was declared “liberated” by these forces in October of last year, much of which was destroyed, with these forces turning their eye to “Deir ez-Zor, an oil-rich region in Syria,” engendering further conflict while the result for children, and undoubtedly others, will be the ensuing psychological damage of bombs and beheadings for years to come. The city was, as one Russian general put it, repeating the fate of Dresden in 1945, which “was erased in the British-American bombarding,” even as then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson embraced this bloody “liberation.” SDF, in conjunction with the U$-backed coalition, made the city a living hell, with great civilian harm, from actions of the coalition due to a”reliance on air and artillery strikes ahead of more cautious ground advances” while “the largest weapons wielded by the SDF were 120mm mortars.” [8] This manifested itself in the fact that bombs, missiles and artillery shells, which were “fired from afar and usually targeted based on intelligence from local proxy ground forces…rained almost continuously into Raqqa.” Even worse, the civilian reception centers set up by the SDF on the outskirts of the city, where civilian “survivors were able to speak freely about their harrowing experiences” was a sham as there was “little or no official record kept of their testimonies about the toll of fighting and bombing inside the city”! That wasn’t all: the SDF and U$-backed coalition gave conflicting messages to Raqqa’s civilians, sometimes telling them to leave, other times telling them to stay, with the question of how “the SDF was able to differentiate populations in the city.” As such, there were obvious concerns the “Coalition and its SDF allies are not taking enough care to protect civilians.” As one report in New Eastern Outlook added, thanks to “massive US air strikes in support of their ground allies, the Kurds, the United Nation estimates that 80 percent of Raqqa is uninhabitable now, raising a crucial question of who was the city won for and who will be placed there after Daesh has been forced to flee and re-locate?” The article further asked how the destroyed city will “return to local governance and leadership and that the city’s residents now have a chance to control their own future,” given that the city “has nothing, neither standing buildings nor residents, that the local authorities will be managing or governing,” and that there is “nothing for them to return to.” It was further noted that the predominantly Sunni Arabs distrusted their so-called “liberators,” while they doubt “if international aid would ever reach them to facilitate such large scale rehabilitation” which is justified because the YPG abandoned the city of Kobani after their victory in 2015, meaning that “the city was completely destroyed and remains in tatters even after two years.” This is something that Dolack will, of course, not mention at all, because it makes clear that the YPG, SDF, the U$-backed coalition, and their associates have blood on their hands, specifically the blood of civilians, obviously meaning that war crimes have been committed without question.
Dolack’s comment #11:
None of this means we should forget for a moment the role of the United States in destroying attempts to build socialism, or mere attempts to challenge U.S. hegemony even where capitalist relations are not seriously threatened. Certainly there is no prospect of a U.S. government supporting socialism in Rojava; experiments in building societies considerably less radical than that of Rojava have been mercilessly crushed by the U.S. using every means at its disposal. That the project of Rojava, for now, has been helped by the presence of U.S. troops is an unintentional byproduct of the unsuccessful U.S. effort to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. At the same time of the expected pullout from Rojava, U.S. troops will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they are unambiguously occupiers.
This is a backward way of justifying U$ presence, saying it is bad elsewhere (Iraq and Afghanistan) but good in Syria? That is a twisted perspective. Is it right then that the SDF raced to seize oil-rich parts of Syria, including the “Al-Omar oil field in eastern Syria” or that U$ continues to deliver arms and ammunition to the SDF? Is it also right that the U$ army has “set up a sum of fourteen military bases for its ground troops in different parts of Iraq, including the Iraqi Kurdistan region”? Because Dolack sounds like he is saying this is right. Perhaps Dolack forgets that Rojava would not be possible if it was not for the West, as I have noted in the past. They came about thanks to the turmoil caused by the unrest in Syria, with many efforts at imperial destabilization of the county under way.
Dolack’s comment #12:
Even if the analysis is overly mechanical, cheering the withdrawal of troops is understandable, given the imperialist history of U.S. aggression. Less understandable is support for the bloodthirsty Assad regime. “The enemy of what I oppose is a friend” is a reductionist, and often futile, way of thinking. The Ba’ath regime of Hafez and Bashar Assad have a long history of murderous rampages against Syrians. The United Nations Human Rights Council reports “patterns of summary execution, arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, including sexual violence, as well as violations of children’s rights.” Amnesty International reports that “As many as 13,000 prisoners from Saydnaya Military Prison were extrajudicially executed in night-time mass hangings between 2011 and 2015. The victims were overwhelmingly civilians perceived to oppose the government and were executed after being held in conditions amounting to enforced disappearance.”
My response: When you see the words “Assad brutality in the service of neoliberalism” beginning this section of Dolack’s article, you know it is going to be a crapshoot. Clearly, Dolack is working to justify his argument that “Rojava” is completely surrounded by enemies. He does admit that “cheering the withdrawal of troops is understandable, given the imperialist history of U.S. aggression” which is a valid point, but he is also trying to sneer at the left. He then declares “support for the bloodthirsty Assad regime” is not understandable, declaring that “the Ba’ath regime of Hafez and Bashar Assad have a long history of murderous rampages against Syrians.” As a person who is openly willing to be more critical of the Syrian government as it clearly represents the Syrian bourgeoisie and is, at best, progressive, I was interested to see what sources he used: the UN Human Rights Council report and Amnesty International. Clearly, he is forgetting the behind the mask of human rights organizations, they “are promoting the war agenda of western and regional governments. Some are worse than others.”As for this specific report, it turns out it was totally fabricated with the U$ government basically trying to say that Assad is Hitler. What about the UN Human Rights Report? Well, you have to be skeptical when this report, from 2011, when it was based on “interviews with 223 victims and witnesses, but observers were not allowed access to the country,” which American Thinker endorsed with little comment. It makes, as such, no sense that this report is given even a shred of credibility.
Dolack’s comment #13:
Enforced monoculture agriculture was imposed on the Kurdish regions of Syria by the Ba’ath régime, with no economic development allowed. These areas were intentionally kept undeveloped under a policy of “Arabization” against Kurds and the other minority groups of the areas now comprising Rojava. Kurds were routinely forcibly removed from their farm lands and other properties, with Arabs settled in their place. Nor should the Assad family rule be seen in as any way as progressive. Neoliberal policies and increasingly anti-labor policies have been imposed. The spark that ignited the civil war was the drought that struck Syria beginning in 2006, a disaster deepened by poor water management and corruption.
My response: While I could say, yes, this whole section has a degree of credibility, I am skeptical because Dolack cites no sources whatsoever for this information. I would agree that “neoliberal policies and increasingly anti-labor policies have been imposed,” sure, but at the same time, the relationship between the Western and Syrian bourgeoisie has definitely broken since 2011. I am not sure Gowans is right when he says the U$ has been scheming against Syria since the 1960s, but there sure was some hostility before 2011, with the relationship obviously tenuous at times. Now, I have also heard the theory that “the spark that ignited the civil war was the drought that struck Syria beginning in 2006, a disaster deepened by poor water management and corruption” but that almost would be too easy of an explanation. Additionally, this conception acts like this is a civil war when it is really an attack on the Syrian government by the U$, devolving into a proxy war of sorts between varied forces.
Dolack’s comment #14:
Political scientists Raymond Hinnebusch and Tina Zinti, in the introduction to Syria from Reform to Revolt, Volume 1: Political Economy and International Relations, provide a concise summary of Assad neoliberalism. (The following two paragraphs are summarized from their introduction.)
Hafez al-Assad became dictator, eliminating Ba’athist rivals, in 1970. He “constructed a presidential system above party and army” staffed with relatives, close associates and others from his Alawite minority, according to professors Hinnebusch and Zinti. “[T]he party turned from an ideological movement into institutionalized clientalism” with corruption that undermined development. In turn, Alawite domination bred resentment on the part of the Sunni majority, and a network of secret police and elite military units, allowed to be above the law, kept the regime secure. Over the course of the 1990s, widespread privatization drastically shrank the state sector, which earned Assad the support of Syria’s bourgeoisie.
Upon Assad’s death in 2000, his son Bashar was installed as president. Bashar al-Assad sought to continue opening Syria’s economy to foreign capital. In order to accomplish that, he needed to sideline his father’s old guard and consolidate his power. He did, but by doing so he weakened the régime and its connections to its base. He also altered the régime’s social base, basing his rule on technocrats and businessmen who supported his economic reforms and concomitant disciplining of the working class. Syria’s public sector was run down, social services reduced, an already weak labor law further weakened and taxation became regressive, enabling new private banks and businesses to reap big incomes.
My response: While I am glad that Dolack, for once, this is clearly an “Assad is a dictator” type of book. One of the endorsements of the book on the Syracuse University Press website comes from David W. Lesch, who wrote a book titled Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad. Uh-oh. Additionally, on the Amazon website, the book is described as providing “insightful snapshots of Bashar al-Asad’s decade of authoritarian upgrading provide an indispensable resource for understanding the current crisis and its disastrous consequence.” Yikes! So we already know this is getting bad when Hafez al-Assad is described by Dolack as a “dictator” who eliminates “Ba’athist rivals” with no mention of his participation in the 1963 or 1966 coups, which allowed him to rise up the government structure, and alluded to the 1970 coup, also called the “Corrective Movement.” If we took Dolack’s summary at face value, then Assad constructed a presidential system based on patronage, which led to resentment from the majority Sunnis and a “network of secret police and elite military units…kept the regime secure.”Additionally, we would conclude that over the 1990s, “widespread privatization drastically shrank the state sector, which earned Assad the support of Syria’s bourgeoisie.” Just taking from sources cited on the Wikipedia page of Hafez al-Assad, all of which is negative, we learn that the state was nationalistic, militaristic, secular and apparently “socialist” (not really), focusing on “domestic prosperity and economic independence,” despite accused horrors. [9] So, perhaps he is right about privatization efforts which increased the power of the Syrian bourgeoisie, but it is wrong to paint Syria as some ghoulish place commanded by an all-powerful monster. As such, I have to say his words “are acts of Western chauvinism,” just like he accused the “Left” of doing to his “beloved” Kurds.
Dolack’s comment #15:
Upon Assad’s death in 2000, his son Bashar was installed as president. Bashar al-Assad sought to continue opening Syria’s economy to foreign capital. In order to accomplish that, he needed to sideline his father’s old guard and consolidate his power. He did, but by doing so he weakened the régime and its connections to its base. He also altered the régime’s social base, basing his rule on technocrats and businessmen who supported his economic reforms and concomitant disciplining of the working class. Syria’s public sector was run down, social services reduced, an already weak labor law further weakened and taxation became regressive, enabling new private banks and businesses to reap big incomes.
My response: Again, there is the perception as Bashar al-Assad as a ghoul, being “installed as President” (the CIA can do that not a small country like Syria), sidelining “his father’s old guard and consolidate his power,” which weakened the base of his “regime,” which was now based on “technocrats and businessmen who supported his economic reforms and concomitant disciplining of the working class.” What was this all for? Well, if we take him at face value, then Bashar al-Assad “continue[d] opening Syria’s economy to foreign capital,” ran down the public sector of Syria, reduced social services, weakened the labor laws, made taxation regressive, while also enabling “new private banks and businesses to reap big incomes.” To take from a liberal paper, they echoed the same thing, saying that Assad’s “Syria would be modern and technocratic, a new model for the Middle East,” saying he wants approval from the “West, from educated Damascenes, from the artists and the intellectual class,” quoting an unnamed Syrian intellectual,while also noting that when he came into power, he “allowed private ownership of banks. The government even granted a license to the country’s first independent newspaper” until this bourgeois openness was ended. [10] The same article also said that early on, “syria had been an unofficial partner of the United States, even covertly torturing suspected militants” but after 2003, the “Bush administration began hinting that Syria could be the next candidate for regime change,” while adding that “Assad took pleasure in toying with the West” and that he spent his first time in office refining the economy policy, “privatizing the old state-run industries without actually creating any new competition. It was gangster capitalism cloaked in neoliberal free-market rhetoric.” There are other parts of the article which are questionable on their merit, which I will not mention here. One commentary in the horrid Guardian said in 2008 that there was openness by the Syrian government toward certain Western countries, like France (the former colonizers of Syria), the ongoing problem of the Muslim Brotherhood violently opposing the government, and a continuing “seesawing relationship with the US,” even quoting him as saying “when our interests have matched, the Americans have been good to us. When the interests have differed, they wanted us to mould ourselves to them, which we refused.” [11] Whose interests is he talking about? That of the Syrian bourgeoisie. Additionally, other articles noted that he had promised “a China-style economic liberalization whose very success would mitigate the need for political reform” while some “analysts” grumbled that because of the country’s turmoil there is no chance it “could be democratic,”not recognizing the role of the West in creating such a situation! [12]
Dolack’s comment #16:
[The Assad family is] Not exactly friends of the working class, and a strong contrast to the system of “democratic confederalism” as the Rojava economic and political system is known.
My response: While I’ll agree, sure, they represent the Syrian bourgeoisie, it is wrong to point out how they currently stand diametrically opposed to U$ imperialism at this current time? I don’t see”Rojava” as any better. In fact, I’d argue it is worse as it allows imperialists an “in” into the country itself, which is dangerous for all living in the region, as it will undoubtedly lead to further violence. I have written about this in the past, saying that Syria is socially democratic, but I am currently going through my articles as an exercise in self-criticism. Once that article specifically is looked over, I will link it here.
Dolack’s comment #17:
Clandestine organizing had been conducted among Syrian Kurds since a 2004 massacre of Kurds by the Assad régime; much of this organizing was done by women because they could move more openly then men under the close watch of the régime. Kurds were supportive of the rebels when the civil war began, but withdrew from cooperation as the opposition became increasingly Islamized and unresponsive to Kurd demands for cultural recognition. Meanwhile, as the uprising began, Kurdish self-protection militias were formed in secret with clandestine stocks of weapons. The drive for freedom from Assad’s terror began on the night of July 18, 2012, when the People’s Protection Unit (YPG) took control of the roads leading into Kobani and, inside the city, people began to take over government buildings.
My response: You know that Dolack is working extra hard to justify “Rojava” when this section of his article begins with the title “Building political democracy through communes” which makes me think of the criticism of Marx and Engels of those who advocated for communes in the 19th century, the first people who called themselves socialist. For him, sure that is great that “clandestine organizing had been conducted among Syrian Kurds” since 2004, mainly by women rather than men. Count me skeptical that there was a “2004 massacre of Kurds by the Assad régime” based on the previous information he has presented. To say that “Kurds were supportive of the rebels when the civil war began,” is troublesome, because these “rebels” ended up, unlike these Kurds, being literal pawns, but it makes sense they broke from these individuals. Also, what is “Islamized”? I don’t think that is even an actual word, making me think he is clearly being Islamophobic here and not accurate to what happened. Furthermore, saying that “Kurdish self-protection militias” were secretly forming and had “clandestine stocks of weapons” brings up a whole number of questions, including: where did these weapons come from? Then, in a part that sounds like it could have been written in the New York Times, he says that these Kurds began their “drive for freedom from Assad’s terror…on the night of July 18, 2012” when a YPG unit “took control of the roads leading into Kobani and, inside the city, people began to take over government buildings.” Based on what I noted about Kobani later, that they eventually abandoned the city after “liberating” it in 2015, I wonder if this fantastical story is completely true. Did the people of Kobani want to be “liberated” in this manner? We know that Kurds from Northern Iraq came to fight alongside the YPG in 2015, which was allowed by the Turks and U$ but the Syrians denounced, during the siege of Kobani, and that the siege ended with “liberation” after 112 days of fighting. The siege itself damaged infrastructure and destroyed much of the town of Kobani, 70% of which had been destroyed! [13] Even one favorable article in The Atlantic in October 2016 stated that since the siege ended, “reconstruction has barely begun to compensate for the havoc wrought on the city by both ISIS artillery and coalition airstrikes…Herculean efforts have cleared the streets, but water and power have yet to be restored. Although commerce is trickling back to life…more than half of the residential structures still standing are little more than blown out concrete shells. Yet the spirit of the people endures: Some now use defused ISIS rounds as ashtrays and flower pots.” A terrible sight indeed!
Dolack’s comment #18:
What the Syrian Kurds have created in the territory known as Rojava is a political system based on neighborhood communes and an economic system based on cooperatives. (“Rojava” is the Kurdish word for “west,” denoting that the Syrian portion of their traditional lands is “West Kurdistan.”) The inspiration for their system is Murray Bookchin’s concept of a federation of independent communities known as “libertarian municipalism” or “communalism.” But democratic confederalism is a syncretic philosophy, influenced by theorists such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Benedict Anderson and Antonio Gramsci in addition to Mr. Bookchin but rooted in Kurdish history and culture.
My response: The way is framed is obviously a method for which we are supposed to cheer. Saying that their system is based on “Murray Bookchin’s concept of a federation of independent communities known as “libertarian municipalism” or “communalism”” is an indication to me that something rotten is going on. Bookchin was a dedicated anti-communist, who disliked Marxism, and thought that the best place to change “the structure of society” is at the municipal level, being a clear anarchist. To take from an article which is favorable to him in ROAR magazine, it states that Bookchin felt that capitalism’s fatal law was not exploitation of the proletariat, but “in its conflict with the natural environment,” while also advocating his idea of “libertarian municipalism” as the “key to making anarchism politically and socially relevant again,” with these ideas influencing Öcalan. Of course Bookchin was flattered, telling Ocalan in 2004: “My hope is that the Kurdish people will one day be able to establish a free, rational society that will allow their brilliance once again to flourish. They are fortunate indeed to have a leader of Mr. Öcalan’s talents to guide them,” basically endorsing the effort.
At the same time, it is a bit laughable to say that the philosophy of “Rojava,” if you can call it that, is “influenced by theorists such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Benedict Anderson and Antonio Gramsci in addition to Mr. Bookchin but rooted in Kurdish history and culture.” I say that because Wallerstein was a committed Marxist, who developed the world-systems theory (dividing of the world into the core, periphery, and semi-periphery) and Gramsci, as I remember, defended the Soviet state as socialist. As for Benedict Anderson, this is the bourgeois scholar wrote his book, Imagined Communities, and may have mentioned capitalism in his works, but clearly is not a Marxist. So, with this, Dolack does not know what he is talking about, when it comes to this topic.
Dolack’s comment #19:
Political organization in Rojava consists of two parallel structures. The older and more established is the system of communes and councils, which are direct-participation bodies. The other structure, resembling a traditional government, is the Democratic-Autonomous Administration, which is more of a representative body, although one that includes seats for all parties and multiple social organizations.
My response: If we accept this at face value, it seems like a system which would engender too much conflict. Would it not be better to have one structure rather than two? More than anything, it would seem that this would lead to utter confusion. As such, there is clearly hierarchy despite what that starry-eyed New York Times reporter thought in 2015. Additionally, this obscures the fact that “Rojava” has a proletariat and a bourgeoisie.
Dolack’s comment #20:
The commune is the basic unit of self-government, the base of the council system. A commune comprises the households of a few streets within a city or village, usually 30 to 400 households. Above the commune level are community people’s councils comprising a city neighborhood or a village. The next level up are the district councils, consisting of a city and surrounding villages. The top of the four levels is the People’s Council of West Kurdistan, which elects an executive body on which about three dozen people sit. The top level theoretically coordinates decisions for all of Rojava.
My response: Sure, we can praise this approach, saying it pure democracy and that the People’s Council of West Kurdistan, “which elects an executive body on which about three dozen people sit…theoretically coordinates decisions for all of Rojava” but this ignores underlying problems in “Rojava.” For one, in the push for “equal political representation of all ethno-religious components” like Christians, Arabs, and Kurds, it resembles “sectarian quotas adopted in Lebanon and Iraq,” with questions arising how terms like “peoples and communities” are defined. As such, as argued by someone who is partial to “Rojava,” instance on such boundaries “betrays the libertarian transnational aspirations” and leads to a further contradiction from the “authority bestowed upon tribal leaders”! [14]
Dolack’s comment #21:
Integrated within the four-level council system are seven commissions — defense, economics, politics, civil society, free society, justice and ideology — and a women’s council. These committees and women’s councils exist at all four levels. In turn commissions at local levels coordinate their work with commissions in adjacent areas. There is also an additional commission, health, responsible for coordinating access to health care (regardless of ability to pay) and maintaining hospitals, in which medical professionals fully participate. Except for the women’s councils, all bodies have male and female co-leaders.
My response: I see how this system would seem attractive, democratic, and progressive, including that “except for the women’s councils, all bodies have male and female co-leaders.” However, the PKK deals with dissent harshly, going against anyone who criticizes their beloved Ocalan. Additionally, while the PKK has renounced “demands for an independent Kurdistan,” it would be wrong to “ignore the ongoing military expansion of the territories controlled by the Kurds, whose outcome means the de facto fragmentation of Syria along new borders.” At the same time, as noted elsewhere in this piece, the charter of “Rojava” officially enshrines private property along with “a provision that safeguards the privileges of landowners, while encouraging them to invest in agricultural projects sponsored by the Rojava authorities” which hilariously runs counter to Bookchin’s views “on how libertarian municipalism is expected to replace private property.” [15] So much for their “philosophy”!
Dolack’s comment #22:
At least 40 percent of the attendees must be women in order for a commune decision to be binding. That quota reflects that women’s liberation is central to the Rojava project on the basis that the oppression of women at the hands of men has to be completely eliminated for any egalitarian society to be born. Manifestations of sexism, including male violence against women, have not magically disappeared. These may now be socially unacceptable, and more likely to be kept behind closed doors, but the system of women’s councils attached to the communes, and councils at higher levels, and the self-organization of women, has at a minimum put an end to the isolation that enabled the toleration of sexist behavior and allowed other social problems to fester.
My response: I can see why one would cheer this quota of women which must be present “in order for a commune decision to be binding” and you could say that “women’s liberation is central to the Rojava project.” However, the fact is that he has to admit that “manifestations of sexism, including male violence against women, have not magically disappeared” but that is now only “socially unacceptable, and more likely to be kept behind closed doors,” with women in this positions “at a minimum put an end to the isolation that enabled the toleration of sexist behavior and allowed other social problems to fester.” That seems utterly weak and pathetic. How is this really progress? It seems like one step forward and one step back at the same time.
Dolack’s comment #23:
A system of women’s houses provides spaces for women to discuss their issues. These centers also offer courses on computers, language, sewing, first aid, culture and art, as well as providing assistance against social sexism. As with peace committees that seek to find a solution rather than mete out punishments in adjudicating conflicts, the first approach when dealing with violence or other issues of sexism is to effect a change in behavior. One manifestation of putting these beliefs into action is the creation of women’s militias, which have played leading roles in battlefield victories over Islamic State.
My response: We can all clap and say this is feminist and all, even progressive by fining solutions to problems “rather than mete out punishments in adjudicating conflicts” and that “creating women’s militias” is affecting a change in behavior. This is easily countered by Andrea Glioti’s in-depth piece, which is a bit partial to “Rojava” where he notes that “militarisation of women and society at large is an alarming trend enforced through conscription and sanctioned by the social prestige enjoyed by the fighters’ families”! [16] He also says that women become worthy of respect “as long as they turn into men of arms and sacrifice themselves on the battlefield” and that while “some would defend this militarised system of values with the current need to defend Rojava…even minors…[are] forcibly enlisted to ensure the survival of a social utopia”! He further adds that European leftist solidarity groups, “cherry-picked the so-called Rojava revolution”and how they portrayed it in their media.
Dolack’s comment #24:
The basis of Rojava’s economy are cooperatives. The long-term goal is to establish an economy based on human need, environmentalism and equality, distinctly different from capitalism. Such an economy can hardly be established overnight, so although assistance is provided to cooperatives, which are rapidly increasing in number, private capital and markets still exist. Nor has any attempt to expropriate large private landholdings been attempted or contemplated.
My response: Despite the fact that this section of the article is titled “Building a cooperative economy based on human need” he interestingly begins to point out the limitations of “Rojava” which paradoxically begins to put into question if there is “socialism” or if this entity constitutes a “socialist experiment,” democratic and cooperative experiment and is “socialist, egalitarian” as he declared earlier in the article. If we are saying that the economy’s basis is “cooperatives” and that it has a long-term goal which is “an economy based on human need, environmentalism and equality” then why is the economy undeveloped enough to only have “assistance is provided to cooperatives” while “private capital and markets still exist.” Furthermore, why has there been no attempt to “expropriate large private landholdings”? What kind of socialists are they? The answer is they are clearly not socialist or radical, but are only seen that way.
Dolack’s comment #25:
Given the intentional under-development of the region under the Assad family régime, the resulting lack of industry and the civil-war inability to import machinery or much else, and the necessity of becoming as food self-sufficient as possible due to the blockade, Rojava’s cooperatives are primarily in the agricultural sector. There is also the necessity of reducing unemployment, and the organization of communes is seen as the speediest route to that social goal as well.
My response: On this count, I will not go with his claim that there was “intentional under-development of the region under the Assad family régime,” as he has not provided any sources to support that. Perhaps, there is a point that there is a “lack of industry and the civil-war inability to import machinery or much else,” and sure, it makes sense that in an effort to become “food self-sufficient” that the cooperatives of “Rojava” are “primarily in the agricultural sector.” And sure, reducing unemployment and “organization of communes” can be seem as important. However, this again obscures the fact that there is division in this society between the bourgeoisie, who are divided among their varied parties, and the proletariat, the masses within “Rojava.” The fact that class is not incorporated into his analysis, corrupts the whole article itself, making it like glass changing temperatures too fast: it develops cracks.
Dolack’s comment #26:
The practitioners of democratic confederalism say they reject both capitalism and the Soviet model of state ownership. They say they represent a third way, embodied in the idea that self-management in the workplace goes with self-management in politics and administration. Since their liberation from the highly repressive Assad régime, Rojava agriculture has become far more diversified, and price controls were imposed.
My response: You can say it is good that they reject capitalism, but it is dangerous that they reject the “Soviet model of state ownership,” as such a model could actually help them. Instead, they declare they want “self-management in the workplace goes with self-management in politics and administration” which seems like a situation which is bound for conflict and division which makes unification hard to come by. Once again, he has to just imperialist rhetoric to talk about “liberation from the highly repressive Assad régime.” Even, taking his words at face value again, the agriculture of “Rojava” has diversified and price controls have been imposed, these are utter reforms, something that could be expected of a social democratic government in Europe, not a socialist government, to be completely frank.
Dolack’s comment #27:
Cooperative enterprises are not intended to be competitive against one another. Cooperatives are required to be connected to the council system; independence is not allowed. Cooperatives work through the economics commissions to meet social need and in many cases their leadership is elected by the communes. The intention is to form cooperatives in all sectors of the economy. But basic necessities such as water, land and energy are intended to be fully socialized, with some arguing that these should be made available free of charge. Because the economy will retain some capitalist elements for some time, safeguards are seen as necessary to ensure that cooperatives don’t become too large and begin to behave like private enterprises.
My response: You can say that they are not intended to be competitive, but they will still participate in the global capitalist system anyway. And sure, there can be an intention to “form cooperatives in all sectors of the economy.” However, if basic necessities are not yet “fully socialized,” or “made available free of charge” which only “some” want, this again raises the question as to how “radical” this whole project is. Most laughable of all is the fact “the economy will retain some capitalist elements for some time,” leading to safeguards “to ensure that cooperatives don’t become too large and begin to behave like private enterprises.” Again, like most of these comments about Rojava’s social structure, I am taking this at face value, and saying that if this is the case, it sounds like something a social-democrat-imperialist like Bernie Sanders would want rather than a real socialist.
Dolack’s comment #28:
We need not indulge in hagiography. There are, naturally, problems and contradictions. Private ownership of the means of production is enshrined in documents espousing socialism and equality, and large private landholdings, with attendant social relations, will be untouched. It is hardly reasonable to expect that a brand new economy can be established overnight, much less in a region forced to divert resources to military defense. Nonetheless, capitalists expect as much profit as can be squeezed out of their operations, an expectation decidedly at odds with goals of “equality and environmental sustainability.” In essence, what is being created is a mixed economy, and the history of mixed economies is fraught with difficulties. Another issue is that Rojava’s authorities, connected with the dominant Democratic Union Party (PYD), can be heavy-handed, including the closing of the offices of the opposition Kurdish National Council on questionable legal grounds.
My response: I found this section very interesting. Dolack is admitting that “Rojava” enshrines “private ownership of the means of production…in documents espousing socialism and equality” and that “large private landholdings, with attendant social relations, will be untouched”! Golly, even the Soviets during the New Economic Policy (NEP) wouldn’t have allowed that. Sure, he makes a good point that “it is hardly reasonable to expect that a brand new economy can be established overnight,” but they have had since 2012 to tinker with the economy of the region, if they wished (although they are blatantly violating the sovereignty of Syria), yet, they still do not have a socialist economy. He even says that what is being created “is a mixed economy, and the history of mixed economies is fraught with difficulties” and that “Rojava’s authorities…can be heavy-handed, including the closing of the offices of the opposition Kurdish National Council on questionable legal grounds”! So, how are they democratic or socialist again? I just don’t understand how they are socialist or democratic when this is going on. Dolack wouldn’t recognize that as he is not a Marxist and as such, any analysis of class goes by the wayside as he tries to hammer his point that “Rojava” is good and you should smile.
Dolack’s comment #29:
Nonetheless, what is being created in northern Syria is a remarkable experiment in economic and political democracy — not only Kurds but other minority groups and Arabs consciously working toward socialism. Why shouldn’t this be supported? The authors of the book Revolution in Rojava, supporters of the project and one of whom fought in the women’s militia, argue that the idea that Rojava’s acceptance of Western aid is a “betrayal” is “naïve,” drawing parallels with Republican Spain of the 1930s. Describing Rojava as an “anti-fascist project,” they note that the capitalist West turned its back on the Spanish Revolution, allowing fascism to triumph.
My response: If this is an experiment, then it has to be a “test or trial of something,” being a process or action undertaken to “discover something not yet known or to demonstrate something known,” to use the definition from the fourth edition of the Webster’s New World College Dictionary. It can also be any “action or process designed to find out whether something is effective, workable, valid, etc.” If it is remarkable, then it must be unusual or extraordinary, meaning it must be something that is not usual or common, rare, not very usual, or “exceptional” to use definitions of all three words from the same dictionary. If this is all true, and it is “a remarkable experiment in economic and political democracy” then why is it promoted in the main capitalist media like the New York Times (see “The Kurds’ Democratic Experiment”), Financial Times (see Power to the people: a Syrian experiment in democracy”.), Yahoo (see “Syrian Kurds give women equal rights, snubbing jihadists”), Foreign Affairs (see “The Rojava Model”), The Atlantic (see “What the Syrian Kurds Have Wrought. The radical, unlikely, democratic experiment in northern Syria”), The Guardian (see “Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?”), Slate (see “Regaining hope in Rojava” and “American Leftists Need to Pay More Attention to Rojava”), U$ government-owned media like Voice of America (see “Writings of Obscure American Leftist Drive Kurdish Forces in Syria”), and two-bit publications like Dissent (see “The Revolution in Rojava”), OpenDemocracy (“The Rojava revolution”), and Unicorn Riot (see “Building Autonomy through Ecology in Rojava”)? Due to such promotion, it makes sense to be skeptical of his claims. To then compare “Rojava” to those fighting Spanish fascism is an utter joke, as that means that if they are “anti-fascist” then who are the fascists? The Turks? The Syrians? The Iraqis? The Iranians? Daesh? Using a term like fascist further muddies the waters.
Dolack’s comment #30:
In the forward to the same book, David Graeber, careful to differentiate the targets of his critique from those who oppose the global dominance of North American militarism, argues…It does seem quite reasonable to hope for a socialist experiment to avoid being destroyed by Islamic State fascism, Turkish ultra-nationalism or Syrian absolutism rather than clinging to dogmatism.
My response: When I see the name David Graeber, a red alert siren goes off in my head, as I know he is the one has sneered at Syria’s government, and has been called by those on Twitter, for his horribleness, “Anarchy Dad.” And, of course, I am blocked by him. Before getting to this quote, I’d like to talk about the quote of Graeber’s that Dolack uses. In this quote Graeber sneers at those who have the “feeling that foiling imperial designs — or avoiding any appearance of even appearing to be on the ‘same side’ as an imperialist in any context — should always take priority over anything else,” showing that he, fundamentally, does not understand international solidarity. Also, it is an evident straw man he constructed on his own, allowing him to declare that this attitude, he manufactured only in his head, “only makes sense if you’ve secretly decided that real revolutions are impossible,” saying that “a genuine popular revolution” is occurring in “Rojava” which should be “success could be a beacon and example to the world.” Graeber sneer continues at “a bunch of white intellectuals” who don’t want to “sully the purity of their reputations by suggesting that US imperial forces already conducting airstrikes in the region might wish to direct their attention to the fascists’ tanks” because they don’t take the position he wants. What “world” is he talking about? The capitalist world? Because they will accept these Kurds with open arms if they serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. The phrasing of this makes me even more wary.
Now onto Dolack’s comment. He claims that Graeber is “careful to differentiate the targets of his critique from those who oppose the global dominance of North American militarism,” although I would say he is sloppy and nasty, not careful! Clearly, Dolack does not know what the world careful means, something which I do not need to define. Of course, in the last sentence, Dolack is optimistic in hoping that “Rojava,” which he still claims is a “socialist experiment,” may be able to “avoid being destroyed by Islamic State fascism, Turkish ultra-nationalism or Syrian absolutism rather than clinging to dogmatism.” This jumble of words shows his utter confusion. Sure, Daesh is terrible, but it could be a step too far to call them fascist. I would just call them religious reactionaries at the very least. As for the Turks, I would call them neo-Ottoman marauders. As for the Syrians, I would call them a progressive force that is nationalist, with a bourgeoisie which is currently taking an anti-imperialist position.
Notes
[1] Tim Arango,”Sinjar Victory Bolsters Kurds, but Could Further Alienate U.S. From Iraq,” New York Times, Nov 13, 2015; Morgan L. Kaplan, “Why the U.S. backed the Kurds,” Washington Post, September 9, 2014.
[2] Zach Beauchamp, “America’s Kurdish problem: today’s allies against ISIS are tomorrow’s headache,” Vox, Apr 8, 2016.
[3] Stephen Zunes, “The United States and the Kurds,” Common Dreams, Oct 26, 2007.
[4] As an article in Foreign Policy noted, “by 1988, U.S. intelligence was flowing freely to Hussein’s military. That March, Iraq launched a nerve gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in northern Iraq.” I mentioned this on Twitter, asking “So much for the U$ as “allies” of the Kurds. Did the SDF, PYD, and others not remember this?” That is still a valid question.
[5] Yet, the U$ criticized MEK for “helping Saddam brutally put down a Kurdish rebellion in the early 1990s, and of launching numerous attacks inside Iran.”
[6] Joost Hiltermann, “They were expendable,” London Review of Books, Nov 17, 2016. Reviewing Gibson’s book, summarized here. Also see William Safire’s “Mr. Ford’s Secret Sellout,” New York Times, Feb 5, 1976. Also see this analyzing U$ foreign policy and the Kurds from the 1950s to 1970s.
[7] Scott Peterson, “Kurds say Iraq’s attacks serve as a warning,” Christian Science Monitor, May 13, 2002; Najmaldin Karim, “A 1991 Kurdish Betrayal Redux?,” Washington Post (opinion), Dec 2, 2006.
[8] Samuel Oakford, “They’re Still Pulling Bodies Out of ISIS’ Capital,” The Daily Beast, Mar 12, 2018.
[9] Halla Dayab, “All in the family: Building the Assad dynasty in Syria,” Al Arabiya English, Nov 28,2014; Anthony Shadid, “In Assad’s Syria, There Is No Imagination,” PBS, Nov 8, 2011.
[10] Annia Ciezadlo, “Bashar Al Assad: An Intimate Profile of a Mass Murderer,”The New Republic,Dec 19, 2013.
[11] Peter Beaumount, “No longer the pariah President,” The Guardian, Nov 15, 2008
[12] Anthony Shadid, “In Assad’s Syria, There Is No Imagination,” PBS, Nov 8, 2011; Aron Lund, “Syria’s Phony Election: False Numbers and Real Victory,”Carnegie Middle EastCenter, Jun 9, 2014.
[13] Patrick Cockburn, “Isis in Kobani: US resupplies Kurdish fighters by plane – then Turkey allows reinforcements through its border,” The Independent, Oct 20, 2014; “Syrian Kurds ‘drive Islamic State out of Kobane’,” BBC News, Jan 26, 2015; Liz Sly, “Syrian regime denounces Turkey for allowing foreign fighters to enter Kobane,” Washington Post, Oct 30, 2014; Nick Palton Walsh, “Syrian town tries to rise from ashes after ISIS defeat,” CNN, May 5, 2015; Si Sheppard, “What the Syrian Kurds Have Wrought,” The Atlantic, Oct 25, 2016.
[14] Andrea Glioti, “Rojava: A libertarian myth under scrutiny,” Al Jazeera, Aug 5, 2016.
As I said on Twitter, this map shows the Syrian government (“Assad regime”) holding “onto much of Syria except for the Kurds in the east, Syrian rebels (“opposition”) in the North along with “Turkish and revel [sic] forces” (referring to the “Free” Syrian Army) and scattered Daesh (“Islamic State”) remnants.” There are other maps, I’ve seen, like one shown by BBC News, but they show the same thing. This map probably simplifies events in Syria a bit too much, tying into existing imperial propaganda it does give one a general idea of what is happening.This article was reprinted from anti-imperialism.org. Some changes have been made, but they are only in light of recent events. In light of some comments on Twitter, some (like @commieposting) have criticized how I describe the Kurds in this post, saying I should name the specific Kurdish groups which the U$ backed, previously. That is a valid point, and as such, I have updated the post to specifically name those groups.
For days now, the bourgeois media has been buzzing about possible withdrawal of all U$ troops from Syria, which are said to number 2,000 people, due to the official dictate from the orange menace on December 19th, as noted by Amber B. on this very blog in a recent post. The orange menace’s dictate came in his free-wielding Twitter declarations that Daesh was “defeated” in Syria (with the U$ “victorious”), that he made a concession to stay in Syria while claiming that the U$ is doing the work of Russia, Iran, Syria & others” who are the “local enemy” of Daesh (who are “not happy about the U.S. leaving”), while stating the U$ should not be the “the Policeman of the Middle East,” all of which appeals to his dedicated base of rabid nationalists even if much of this is filled with lies by omission and mis-truths. This was clear from White nationalist Stephen Miller (one of the advisors to the orange menace), declaring to CNN hosts, “are we supposed to stay in Syria for generation after generation, spilling American blood to fight the enemies of all those countries? ISIS has been defeated…if ISIS wants to retrench and regrow and reorganize, it’s going to be up to those countries to defeat their enemy” while others said U$ national interest is served by redeployment of troops from Syria elsewhere. [1] More worrisome were the tweets from the Chief Spokesperson of the Pentagon, Dana W. White, who declared that the U$ military campaign, officially said to be against Daesh but really meant to destabilize Syria, “is not over” and that “we have started the process of returning U.S. troops home from #Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign…We will continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates,” leaving the door open to further imperialist meddling. With this, the question remains: are U$ imperialists re-calibrating their methods for destabilizing Syria? Regardless of the answer to that question, what do these new developments mean for the world at-large, especially the people of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the panoply of other Middle Eastern countries, many of which have a U$ presence?
As Amber B. put it in the aforementioned post, the dictate by the orange menace “caused an uproar among legislators and the brass,” who were apparently caught off-guard by this announcement. Not only were neo-cons in Washington, like Eli Lake, Lindsay Graham (who wants to somehow change the mind of the orange menace), Max Boot, and Marco Rubio, pushing for further U$ involvement, but so were so-called “experts,” ravenous liberals like Killary, Medhi Hasan, Victoria Nuland (of Ukraine overthrow fame), Chris Coons, and Bob Menendez, libertarians like “ironic” Justin Raimondo or Maj. Danny Sjursen, who declared that “Assad is undoubtedly a monster,” and varied other politicians, all of whom are utter imperialists. Apart from the editors of the National Review declaring that U$ intervention in Syria should continue because the U$ has gained “valuable territorial leverage” and there is “work left to be done” in order to continue destabilization of Syria, even as they admit that Russia’s intervention in Syria has “been an unmitigated success,” Brian Kilmeade of Fox News angrily attacked the action by the orange menace. [2] At the same time, warmongers like Carl Bildt complained about their voices being overruled/ignored, Ian Bremmer cried like a wolf struck with an arrow, howling in pain, saying that “Assad has won…Obama’s gone, Assad is still there. It is embarrassing to admit that Assad has won,” then continuing with his typical imperialist rhetoric. Even NGOs like Refugees International and Mercy Corps seemed to support continued U$ imperial presence in Syria.
Not surprisingly, there has been a number of ill-informed takes by “good, decent liberals“: that the withdrawal is a “corrupt Russian plot” (despite the fact that another meeting between the orange menace and Putin likely will not happen), that “mass murderers” are emboldened, that the withdrawal is a “give-away to Russia in Syria” or part of an “alliance with Putin,” somehow shows that Trump is a “puppet” of Russia, that there is no clear plan or that the orange menace cares about his supposed investments in Russia and Turkey. While the last one could have some credence, the orange menace is not only out for himself, but represents the face of U$ imperialism, so, these reasons are reductive and are Russophobic approaches to what is happening in the world, tying into media narratives that promote this perspective. [3] You will never see liberals making the valid point Marx made to the International Workingman’s Association in London, that “…no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade,” or any “improvement of machinery…appliance of science to production…[or] contrivances of communication,” will do away with the miseries of the working class (which he called the “industrious masses”). The point about imperialism, which is implied in this statement is what I refer to here, is that it will not do away with the working class’s troubles. The reason liberals or progressives will not make this point is that they float underdeveloped theories like “intersectionality” which does not pose class as a central component of oppression, leading to a distorted view of the world. In the process of criticizing such theories, one can avoid the petty-bourgeois sloppiness Lenin criticized in 1918, when criticizing left-communists, adding that is important for Marxists to “give a coherent and complete exposition of the principles underlying one’s views and tactics,” a process which is championed and done on a regular basis on sites such as this one.
This undoubtedly raises the question of whether this dictate “will survive the row it has unleashed.” The question of whether this dictate will survive is also questioned by the fact that varied administration officials have declared in the past year that U$ troops will remain in Syria (specifically to counter Iran), even as Rand Paul and Mike Lee support the decision by the orange menace, as does Ron Paul, who praised the decision, telling the orange menace not to “buckle” under pressure. [4] As Amber B. put it, this decision serves “as further evidence for a profoundly confused and capricious imperialist mandate.” But that does not mean we should buy into the idea that the U$ imperialists are bumbling fools like Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes, as left-journalist of Pierre Omidyar’s plaything (The Intercept) Jeremy Scahill declared at one time. It is worth noting that even oft-writing revisionist Stephen Gowans, the person who thinks that Syria is a “non-Marxist” socialist state, declared that the “announced withdrawal of US troops from Syria and the drawdown of US occupation forces in Afghanistan…more likely reflect the adoption of new means of achieving longstanding US foreign policy goals” with a policy “based on shifting the burden of maintaining the US empire increasingly to allies and private soldiers bankrolled by oil monarchies,” a clearly valid point.
As such, to recall what Amber B. said, we should remember Lenin, recognizing that “in the absence of an anti-war movement, we must build the conditions for turning imperialist war into revolutionary civil war.” This refers directly, to what Lenin wrote in 1915: that a “revolutionary struggle against the war” is empty and meaningless unless it means “revolutionary action against one’s own government even in wartime.” What does this mean? Lenin explains this means not only desiring the defeat of one’s government, but “facilitating such a defeat,” with the conversion of an imperialist war into a civil war developing out of “a number of diverse phenomena, aspects, features, characteristics and consequences of the imperialist war.” Ultimately that would allow the “proletariat to take advantage of the difficulties experienced by its government and its bourgeoisie in order to overthrow them,” but that cannot happen “without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without contributing to that defeat.” Currently, it would be absurd to say the U$ or any Western country is on the verge of revolution, as many seem to be caught in the thick imperialist and capitalist fog of deception.
Having said all of this, it is worth noting some positive developments: that the major U$ operation in Syria (officially against Daesh) planned before the announced withdrawal will be canceled, that the U$ is planning to close the “Al-Tanf base near the Syrian border with Jordan,” and that John Bolton’s decision to expand the U$ goals in Syria to force Iranian forces to “eventually withdraw” was a failure, another defeat for the hardened imperialist. [5] Even so, the Pentagon is reportedly negotiating to “keep U.S. air power in the fight over Syria.” This means, as should be evident, imperialism, like capitalism, is very adaptable, with increasing “coordination between the monopoly capital and the state within core nations,” with monopoly capitalism involving exporting capital in order to “seek additional surplus value,” and the key feature of such imperialism involving “exporting class struggle and civil war to the peripheral regions.” The latter is the case not only in Syria, but manifests itself in the ongoing deadly armed conflicts in Mexico (drug war since 2006), Iraq (since at least 2003), Afghanistan (since 1978), and Yemen (since 2011). It also includes the smaller ongoing armed conflicts across much of eastern, central, and northern Africa, the Mideast, central Asia, East Asia, along with others scattered in parts of Europe and Latin America.
More possible than not, this call for a withdrawal is part of a re-orientation of U$ policy with Turkey tasked with balkanization of Syria, even as the Chinese revisionists don’t see this as a big deal. This handing of the baton to Turkey is evidenced by the fact that on Tuesday, the U$ State Department approved a sale of a $3.5 billion Patriot missile system, including 140 missiles and related equipment, to Turkey which recently decided not to pursue buying S-400 missiles from Russia. [6] Additionally, on December 4th, two top State Department officials met with the Turks, where they discussed “promotion of stability and security in Syria.” Some, like cordeliers on Twitter, have further argued that that this withdrawal will “provide useful cover for a NATO proxy war managed by Turkey,” while headchoppers of Daesh are rolled into “rebel” militias, and a transition to a new phase of U$ proxy wars in the Mideast. It is even possible that the Zionists will have a role in this new strategy as Netanyahu pledged, in response to the decision of the orange menace, that “we will safeguard the security of Israel and protect ourselves from this arena” and that AIPAC declared that Iran and Hezbollah be “prevented from exploiting this development to further destabilize the region and threaten our allies,” with steps by the U$ to “counter the mounting aggression of Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah.”
There is also an open question of whether Russia will be part of the partition of Syria considering they are one of the three “self-appointed guarantors of the Syrian peace process,” apart from Turkey and Iran, with Russia recently further downscaling its military presence by cutting military flights within Syria from more than hundred per day to fewer than four every week! [7] All three are part of a committee “due to write a new constitution for the country,” which could pave the “pave the way for UN-supervised elections and a possible peace process that would encourage millions of refugees to return to their homeland.” While this could have some positive results, it doesn’t seem right for these countries to re-write a constitution which should be solely written and drafted by the Syrian people! Even so, the Syrian government seems willing to accept the process, which agreed with the Syrian opposition on members which represent “civil society.” Considering the principle established by Marx that “existence and thereby the collisions…between these classes are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position, by the mode of their production and of their exchange determined by it,” it raises the question: who will these civil society members represent?
There was also a theory posed by a recent AP article: that the orange menace decided to withdrawal from Syria based on a telephone call with Erdogan on December 14th. [8] This supposes that everyone of the orange menace’s advisers agreed with Erdogan’s assessment of Daesh, then the orange menace magically agreed to pull out troops. Taking this at face value, Moon of Alabama says that the orange menace did not not “capitulate” to Erdogan but “was finally given a chance” to withdrawal and “grabbed the opportunity”which Erdogan was not ready for, with other articles acting like the orange menace achieved his objective of withdrawal he has wanted since he was inaugurated. [9] They say that Erdogan was caught off guard because while Turkey has planned to “occupy a 10 mile deep strip along the Syrian-Turkish border,” 50,000 to 100,000 troops would be needed to occupy “all of east Syria northward of the Euphrates” which would be opposed by armed Kurds (those within “Rojava”) and a hostile Arab population. While this is convincing, considering Turkey recently said they would delay their military offensive into Syria’s territory, I have a sense something more is going on. This is because it is clear now that the proposed U$ withdrawal from Syria is a cover for further Turkish involvement in Syria, with the Turks now becoming the mercenaries of empire, which some are annoyed with. On November 22, Middle East Monitor reported that the Emirati and Saudi military forces arrived in Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria (“Rojava”), were stationed with U$ forces, supporting their “tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons,”while also meeting with Kurdish officials. This brings us, logically, to the Kurdish question in Syria.
We know that generally, these Kurds (part of “Rojava”) thought that the U$ would champion their cause, failing to understand that the U$ establishment acts “purely in its own interests.” Amber B., in the aforementioned article linked at the beginning of this piece put it well: that while there is some truth in the fact that U$ withdrawal is “an effective abandonment of the progressive Kurdish forces,” the Kurdish people can only resolve their problems on their own, and as such, we should condemn those, like Debbie Bookchin (daughter of noted anarchist Murray Bookchin), a branch of the Democratic “Socialists”of America (actually social democrats), self-declared anarchist Noam Chomsky who advocates for U$ presence to “deter an attack on the Kurdish areas,” and the NYC Socialist Rifle Association, to name a few, who have “substituted genuine internationalism for mindless propaganda work for competing imperialist powers.” As such, those who criticize these Kurds in “Rojava,” like the YPG, SDF, and PYD, for their alliance with U$ imperialists are not stooges of Erdogan as some have dumbly claimed. This is due to the fact there are questions about how “revolutionary” or “progressive” these vaulted Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD) are since the SDF said they wanted “to be part of America,” possibly clearing the way for Turkey’s occupation. The Emergency Committee for “Rojava” goes even further in their pro-imperialist orientation, calling the withdrawal of U$ troops a “betrayal” and calling for military, economic, and political assistance, thinking that the U$ imperialists are somehow humanitarian saviors! Of course, those in “Rojava” are no Marxists, as they do not hold, as Eleanor Marx (Karl and Jenny Marx’s daughter) and Edward Aveling that the world is restless and that the “death of the capitalistic method of production” means, simply, “resolution of society into simpler forms…a new and better order of things,” since the current society is “morally bankrupt.”
Maybe they even hold the latter about society, with social contract seeming democratic with federalist system including legislative, executive, and judicial branches, professed equality in “persons and communities,” a right to live in a healthy environment and express certain rights (“ethnic, cultural, linguistic and gender”), freedom of speech except that which can be restricted, with a policy of interference and admitting their integral nature to Syria, which met some “fundamental requirements of Western international backers opposing the Syrian regime,” as Chatham House declared in 2016. While there are some other rights given, like equality in gender, worship, assembly, political participation, seek political asylum, it also endorses private property: “everyone has the right to the use and enjoyment of his private property” because there is “no one shall be deprived of his property except upon payment of just compensation, for reasons of public utility or social interest, and in the cases and according to the forms established by law.” While the economy of “Rojava” seems social democratic in “directed at providing general welfare and in particular granting funding to science and technology,” aimed at “guaranteeing the daily needs of people and to ensure a dignified life,” with monopoly prohibited, along with “labor rights and sustainable development…guaranteed,” but does not including a proposal for a planned economy. This is coupled with no prohibition of “extractive processes, management, licensing and other contractual agreements related to such [natural] resources” by corporate entities. As such, it raises the question how progressive “Rojava” (composed of three regions: Jazira, Euphrates, and Afrin) is, after all, since the levers of power seems to be in control by the PYD (also noted by a Reuters article in 2017 which noted that there was no voting in Arab-majority areas in the region) even though the New York Times declared, in 2015, there was apparently no hierarchy.
Articles in bourgeois media have added that France, Germany, and the UK still are openly siding with these Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD), recently engaged in bloody (and horrible) battles, who control “roughly one quarter of Syria,” an area which is “rich in farmland, oil and water” (which BBC News admitted allowed the U$ to “indirectly” control “half of Syria’s strategic resources – including many oil fields and dams, and much of its most fertile agricultural land”), a possibly strong “bargaining chip” in negotiations with the Syrian government. [10] They also note that some Kurdish leaders are admitting that “relying on the Americans is always a failed experience, at the very least for Kurds,” and others saying, without recognizing the fact the West has allowed “Rojava” (which has only existed since January 2014) to exist, “the whole world is taking the view that the Kurdish cause can be bought and sold.” This all feeds into sob stories, like those fed to people like Richard Engels of NBC News, that U$ troops in Syria (officially special forces) are “distraught, upset, morally disturbed by having to tell their kurdish allies in Syria that…their promises of defense won’t be kept,” acting like we should feel sorry for imperialists.
When it comes to the Kurds, especially YPG/SDF/PYD, it is worthwhile to recall a number of posts I made on the subject. Most of the posts I have written on the Kurds in the past year have focused on the Kurds in Northern Iraq and the defeat of their ill-thought referendum, while also highlighting how the creation of an ethno-state called “Kurdistan,” spanning northern Iraq and eastern Syria, along with parts of Turkey and Iran, would “assist Zionist expansionism, Saudi expansionism, and Western imperialism in dividing up the region,” while also not beneficial for anyone in the Mideast. In the last article linked when I said that the Kurds were an ethnicity, not a nation, I was countering the notions that such an ethno-state was workable, even as I am not sure I agree with my conclusions at the time that Kurds should just work within existing political systems in Syria and Iraq. So, in some ways, my views are changing, but I still remain a critic of the current trend toward Kurdish nationalism, while recognizing what others say about self-determination. At the present, the question of creating a state named “Kurdistan” is mute as the Kurds are effectively divided into two parts: those in “Rojava” (eastern Syria) like YPG/SDF/PYD, and those in Northern Iraq under the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) which exists as a semi-autonomous area within Iraq. It also worth noting that the Syrian Communist Party recently denounced the “occupation of the US and Turkey,” along with an “emphasis on solidarity with the resistance of Afrin to the Turkish occupation. They also, last month, at a meeting of communist and workers parties in Greece, that
…fundamental contradictions of global imperialism, identified by Leninism, increasingly rage [including]…contradiction between work and capital, whose catastrophic effects are evident not only in the capitalist states of the parties…The situation of a large number of hard-working people in capitalist centers and in many ways falls short of what they had been in the first half of the twentieth century…The contradiction between imperialist capitalist centers and capitalist states [is clear]…The most blatant examples of such a policy of…imperialist aggression are found in the case of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, all of which have been subjected to direct military or imperialist aggression or through the agents of imperialism with the open support of the imperialist countries…The contradiction between the imperialist centers, that is, the contradiction between the financial monopolies and the governments they represent in order to distribute the riches of the total imperialist plunder of the world…All the progressives in the world are aware of the disastrous consequences of a comprehensive and destructive war as they work against the threat of multiple forms of war…To remove the danger of war, imperialism must be dropped…The changes in the international arena also indicate an increase in the role of national liberation movements as a component of the global revolutionary process. National resistances, which are objectively part of the national liberation movements, regardless of the ideology prevailing in this or that faction, have dealt a serious blow to the expansionist tendency of imperialism and its agents…This is what Syria is doing in its courageous response to the ferocious attack by the Atlantic imperialism and its agents and the continuing aggression of Zionist Israel…Syrian communists engaged in the major battle to defend their homeland, along with other national forces…At present, our party believes that the most important goal facing our people is to liberate its territory under the yoke of imperialist occupation, as well as to strenuously oppose the projects that are embroiled in imperialist circles and aimed at dividing Syria…The Syrian Communist Party is characterized by linking the economic and social struggle with the general political struggle. Our Syrian Communist Party is fighting for a complete break with liberal economic trends in defense of national production and the interests of the struggling masses…The circumstances of the imperialist onslaught and the intensification of the contradictions of imperialism require the intensification of the global communist and labor movement and the strengthening of coordination between their factions in order to effectively confront imperialism and then overthrow it. These circumstances also indicate the need to form a united global front between the revolutionary labor movement and national liberation movements.
There is also a revisionist counterpart as well, but recent statements of it are hard to find.
For the purposes of this post, I refer back to the articles I wrote last year on the topic, apart from one where I countered deluded reddit critics or other scattered mentions in varied other articles I wrote in 2016 and 2017. While opposing Turkish invasion of Syria, I argued that Turks and certain Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD) are assisting U$ imperialist objectives, adding that “Rojava” itself is an illegal entity, questioned when self-determination can be used (an argument I am not sure I completely agree with now), and that there are by Western standards, two types of Kurds: the “good” ones that ally with the West (YPG/SDF/PYD) and the “bad” ones that ally with the Syrian government. I also added that “the Syrian government (and people) will continue to be in a precarious situation until the end of the conflict and withdrawal of Western imperialism from the region. The best we can do is pledge solidarity with those fighting the mercenaries of imperial conquest, not only Daesh but the “rebel” forces and “good” Kurds [YPG/SDF/PYD], and all of those standing against global capitalism, even with our respective critiques,” which is still a valid position. Once again, while dated, I would say my two-part series on “Rojava” for Dissident Voice, while without its problems, still is relatively sound in pointing out that such a nation is an illegal entity and how Western imperialism has made its existence possible, making both articles still relevant.
There is no doubt that the Turkish government is strongly anti-Kurd to the point of being genocidal, despite the fact that those who run “Rojava” declared that “we have always wanted to develop a relationship of friendship and neighborliness with Turkey,” but that does not mean U$ presence will save them. Besides, the Syrian government still welcomes the Kurds despite their (specifically the YPG/SDF/PYD) past alliance with the U$ and other Western countries, so I could easily envision a Syrian-Kurdish alliance against the encroaching Turks. One recent article poignantly added that “up to now the Kurds had been prepared to rely on any foreign country, including Israel, to provide them with independence, rather than remaining loyal to Syria,” but saying at at the same time that “the Syrian Army will definitely collaborate with the Kurds to quash ISIS…between two fires on each side of the Euphrates,” adding that “the Kurds are weaker than ever and may well have lost the privileged position they had under US protection,”confirming that when faced with U$ interests, “all partnerships and alliances are dispensable.” Some imperialists, and deluded leftists, will easily, as the Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD) are killed by Turkish bombs (which are supplied by the U$), declare “remember the Kurds!” just like imperialists cried about “remember the Maine!” after the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine before the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Texans after the surrender of the Alamo (“remember the Alamo!”) or U$ soldiers, recalling how British cavalry at the 1778 battle in Camden had attacked surrendering U$ soldiers during the Revolutionary War, cried “remember Buford!” as they shot down surrendering Redcoats in later battles.
To take from the same Moon of Alabama article I mentioned earlier, while the Turkish army could engage in a large occupation of northeast Syria, it would “cost a lot of casualties and financial resources,” with those writers arguing they would only invade if Russia and Syria “fail to get the Kurds under control.” The same article, which makes the mistake of calling the Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD) “anarcho-Marxist,” does note that Kurdish leaders of “Rojava” are currently making the same demands Damascus previously rejected before Turkey destroyed Afrin, while also saying that the paltry sum of British and French forces numbering in the thousands, along with those contributed by other members of the coalition of African, European, Middle Eastern, and American countries reportedly “fighting Daesh,” will likely not stay in Syria without U$ support. However, other articles posited that “a continued presence of allied troops working with local Syrians might compel the U.S. to contribute air” which is a distinct possibility. [11]
On a related note, there has been another development: the departure of Jim Mattis (effective February 28, January 1, 2019), the head of the Pentagon, who advocated for a more “muscular U.S. role in the Mideast,” who wanted continued U$ presence in Syria and Afghanistan, to be replaced by Patrick Shaheen, who favored the space force proposed by the orange menace and has ties to the arms trade between Turkey and the U$, rather than other candidates for the job. [12] For similar reasons, Brett McGerk, the special presidential envoy on the anti-Daesh coalition, recently quit (resignation effective at the end of the year), reportedly writing in an email to his staff that the orange menace’s decision was a “shock” which left “our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered…I ultimately concluded that I could not carry out these new instructions and maintain my integrity.” One imperial correspondent, Jonathan Marcus of BBC News, who called Mattis “much respected,” feared an “unplanned” withdrawal from Syria, and talked about a changing world with rising China (fitting with the new “Africa strategy” unveiled by John Bolton) and “resurgent” Russia, growled that “President Trump seems to be charting his own erratic course through an ocean of reefs, rocks and monsters without any strategic map to guide him.” Interestingly, the same article had a map that showed strong Syrian government control up to the Euphrates, coupled with strong Kurdish control (YPG/SDF/PYD) in eastern part (east of the Euphrates), Syrian rebels and “Jihadist forces” near border with Turkey, as is Turkish military and Turkish-backed rebels, Syrian rebels in the South, and some scattered Daesh pockets, which made his argument a joke. It also should be no surprise that liberal imperialists literally defended Mattis, an “ingrained imperialist” who changed the Pentagon’s mission, was fired by Obama for being too hawkish toward Iran, and opposes the withdrawal of half of the U$ troop presence from Afghanistan (a moderate measure), just as they held worthless rallies to “defend” Robert Mueller earlier this year.
Of course, liberals were baffled by Mattis’s resignation, calling him either a coward, feeling sad about a “loss” of imperial prestige, or pathetically claiming that Putin “applauded” when U$ said they were leaving Syria (despite the fact that he cast doubt on the planned withdrawal). If what is said by the bourgeois media is true, it almost seems that Mattis, a high-ranking officer, used his resignation (which he wrote in September, as the story goes) almost as a form of blackmail to prevent the orange menace from calling for a withdrawal from Syria. If so, that is a frightening use of military power over civilian power, which should be undoubtedly criticized.
Even saying all this, it will be a quandary that Mattis is the one whom will approve the plan for the withdrawal of U$ troops, and once that happens “U.S. troops will begin leaving Syria with the expectation that they will all be out 30 days later.” [13] As such, the U$ troops would be no longer assisting a “Kurdish-led force that now numbers more than 50,000 and is about 40 percent Arab,” with reportedly only 20% through the U$-led “training process.” The Kurds (YPG/SDF/PYD), in this case, are those directly at the front-lines as only four U$ soldiers have been killed, by official counts, since the beginning of the U$ deployment in Syria itself!
This connects to the fear, held by the varied sectors of the bourgeoisie, represented in varied pundits, politicians, and analysts, at minimum, that “Syrian territory occupied by US forces will be returned to the control of Syrian government forces,” even though they claim that areas occupied by the U$ will fall into the hands of terrorists. The withdrawal, the same article posited, saying it will take place in 60-100 days, would more than anything “benefit Syria and Syrians most of all,” allowing Iran to get a benefit, and Russia since it reduces the possibility of conflict with the U$. Iraq will benefit from not having “to commit so many forces to watching the US,” and the “likelihood of an extended Turkish occupation of Afrin and Idlib” may be reduced too, while the Zionists will lose out (after protests over worsening conditions in the proper part of the Zionist state), regretting “loss of access to US airports to use over Syrian occupied territory.” However, the Russian government is skeptical of U$ withdrawal from Syria, which is justified considering that the U$ will “conduct air strikes” in Syria “until the full pullout of troops from its territory,” since the U$ will “conduct air and artillery strikes” in support of their forces! This is a justified skepticism because the U$ could easily get pulled right back into Syria itself, meaning that all options are open. After all, there was talk early this year about Daesh thriving in U$-occupied areas of Syria and the Pentagon planting high numbers of supposed fighters of Daesh.
This brings us to U$ presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Amber B. noted in the aforementioned article at the beginning of this post, nothing is being “done about the u.$. occupation of Iraq,” meaning that this withdrawal could “become just a redeployment, whether by special forces or mercenaries,” even as a “withdrawal from Syrian territory would represent a contraction of the amerikan frontlines, and most definitely serve to weaken their interests overall, but we should not mistake it for “peace” in any sense.” It was further noted that peace “is only something that can truly be won through the elimination of imperialism overall.” What is said is an accurate determination. This is because earlier this month Pompeo spoke with Adil Abd al-Madhi, Iraq’s Prime Minister, about “recent territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria,” claimed that the U$ will respect Iraq’s sovereignty, that that “the Coalition will continue to work closely with Iraqi Security Forces to defeat ISIS remnants.” As for Afghanistan, as mentioned earlier in this article, there is talk of a withdrawal of half of the U$ troops from that country. While this is a positive development, the U$ imperialists want to “conclude the war in Afghanistan on terms favorable to Afghanistan and the United States,” meaning their respective bourgeoisie, specifically the U$ bourgeoisie. It is a laughable argument to say that the moderate withdrawal is somehow connected to Putin, as those like Rachel Maddow, a prominent liberal imperialist, have posited, as the U$ imperialists are extremely hostile to the Russians currently, as evidenced by continued sanctions and sending of arms to Ukraine, and there is no way that Putin or any other high-ranking Russian official would have any ounce of influence over the murderous U$ empire. But, there is another element. While it would be a great victory, you could say, if all the U$ troops are withdrawn, over 49,000 wicked mercenaries remain in U$ “areas of responsibility” within the Mideast, more than half of which are currently in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
With that there are some concluding thoughts. To again mention Amber B.’s post, it was argued that the withdrawal from Syria “represents another great slippage in imperialist footing, and we should exploit this to the best of our ability,” adding that “withdrawal from Syria should become a domino effect in our propaganda, and we should demand the further withdrawal of amerikan forces from surrounding countries, and ultimately every outpost of u.$. imperialism.” It was further noted that a struggle lies ahead within the U$ imperialist state, “as its decrepit factions squabble with one another, and we should use this moment of confusion to our advantage,” adding that “our propaganda should not endorse any imperialist faction over another, but underscore the necessity in struggling against them all.” As such, the article concludes, “we should not resign ourselves only to calls for peace, but augment them with the call to fight imperialism.” This is a justified approach, as siding with one imperialist faction would lead to ruin. With that, a piece of Lenin, in 1902, is relevant at this point, saying that liberalism must be analyzed with the “class point of view,” with interests of the autocracy only coinciding with some of the bourgeoisie, leading to some liberal opposition to autocracy, which protects the bourgeoisie from socialism, adding that while “Communists support every revolutionary movement against the existing system,” this does not “imply support for the liberal opposition.” He further added that it was the duty of revolutionaries to “explain to the proletariat every liberal and democratic protest, to widen and support it, with the active participation of the workers,” not acquiescing leadership of such social improvement efforts to liberals. This can be applied to different efforts by the masses to fight imperialism in all its manifestations, regardless of social movements.
In the process of fighting the imperialist beast, one must recall what Engels and Marx rejected in 1879: “people who openly claim that the workers are too ignorant to emancipate themselves but must first be emancipated from the top down, by the philanthropic big and petty bourgeois.” What this means, in practice, is that the working class in the U$, let’s say, is not ignorant and needs our enlightened assistance like we are coming from the upper spirals of an ivory tower. Rather, to recall from that same article, “educated elements” from the bourgeoisie can join the proletariat, but in doing so, they cannot push out or dominate the proletariat in the process of working with them, rather having to “assimilate [to] the proletariat viewpoint,” which is worth remembering. While obviously it is incorrect to say that the working class will not understand political struggle, we can recall, easily, what Lenin wrote in 1899: that certain workers are “backward” in their thinking, even as they will still understand the struggle, and that it is important to recognize the educated or “developed” workers in the class struggle as a whole. In the case of fighting imperialism, this means countering those among the proletariat who hold viewpoints that are pro-imperialist, bringing them into position standing against the U$ war machine in all its imperial manifestations.
The path forward to fight imperialism is up to the masses, supported by those which work to increase their consciousness, bringing them to a revolutionary posture. Smash the capitalist system! A socialist world is possible! Down with the bourgeoisie!
Notes
[1] Caroline Kelly, “Stephen Miller defends Trump’s Syria withdrawal: ‘Are we supposed to stay in Syria for generation after generation spilling American blood?’,” CNN, Dec 21, 2018
[2] National Review Editors, “Stay in Syria,” Dec. 19, 2018; “‘Fox & Friends’ co-host calls out Trump on Syria: ‘Nobody thinks ISIS is defeated’,” The Hill, Dec. 20, 2018; Deirdre Shesgreen, “Trump’s troop withdrawal caps failed US policy in Syria, experts say,” USA Today, Dec. 20, 2018; “Coons: U.S. should not abandon Kurds, leave Syria,” Dover Post, Dec 20, 2018; Eli Lake, “Trump Courts Catastrophe in Syria,” Bloomberg, Dec. 19, 2018; “”Assad has won,” Ian Bremmer says, as Trump recalls troops from Syria,” CBS News, Dec 20, 2018; Gregory Hellman and Connor O’Brien, “Pulling out of Syria: A primer,” Politico, Dec 20, 2018; Victoria Nuland, “Syria will come back to haunt us,” Washington Post, Dec 20, 2018; David Brown, Gregory Hellman, and Burgess Everett, “Republicans rip Trump’s surprise Syria withdrawal in meeting with Pence,” Politico, Dec. 19, 2018; “Graham plans resolution urging Trump to change mind on Syria,” The Hill, Dec 20, 2018.
[3] Joel Gehrke, “Russia blesses US troop withdrawal from Syria,” Washington Examiner, Dec. 19, 2018; “Trump Defends Syria Troop Pullout,” Newsmax, Dec. 20, 2018; John Hudson, Paul Sonme, and Anton Troianovski, “Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria marks a win for Putin,” Washington Post, Dec 20, 2018.
[4] “Shocking Syria withdrawal plan is pure Trump,” CNN Wire, Dec 19, 2018; Matthew Lee and Robert Burns, “US to withdraw all American troops in Syria, official says,” AP, Dec 19, 2018; Democrat-Gazette staff, “U.S. to withdraw troops from Syria, Trump announces,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Dec. 20, 2018.
[5] Andrew Desiderio, “Trump’s Abrupt Syria Withdrawal Thwarted ‘Major’ Operation Targeting ISIS, Sen. Bob Corker Says,” The Daily Beast, Dec. 21, 2018; Spencer Ackerman and Kimberly Dozier, “Bolton’s Hawkish Syria Plan Backfired, Pushing Trump to Get Out,” The Daily Beast, Dec. 21, 2018; “US will close base in Syria that Russia complained about,” The Hill, Dec 20, 2018. While there is no organized anti-war movement in the U$, there are peace organizations growing in strength. One of those in the Black Alliance for Peace which takes a strong anti-imperialist position, mentioning genocide of indigenous people, “brutal super-exploitation of enslaved African labor” which was used “to amass imperialist wealth,” allowing the U$ to elevate itself “to a world power after the second imperialist war in 1945,” adding that with the recent moves by the orange menace “the ruling-class propagandists” at the major media outlets “have sounded the alarm of pending doom for the empire,” saying that their group doesn’t “praise a U.S. president for ending the illegal subversion, invasion and occupation of a sovereign state that should have never been allowed in the first place by the theoretical representatives of the people who now sit in the U.S. Congress,” leaving the question open if full and rapid withdrawal of U$ forces from Syria will happen. Rather, they demand “demand a full withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Syria, including the mercenary components referred to as “contractors,” want an end to the “war in Afghanistan with a complete and total withdrawal of U.S. forces,” denounce those who think that “permanent war is both rational and inevitable,” while concluding that “the final resolution of the U.S.-led war in Syria must be determined by Syrians themselves. All foreign forces must recognize and respect the sovereignty of the Syrian people and their legal representatives,” calling for “U.S. out of Syria! U.S. out of Africa! Shut down AFRICOM and all NATO bases! Reallocate the people’s resources from funding war to realizing the human rights of all people, not just the 1 percent!” Veterans for Peace, an older peace organization, takes a straight anti-interventionist position, saying they are pleased by the announcement of withdrawal from Syria, adding that the U$ “armed and trained Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda aligned forces, who are seeking to destroy the secular, multi-religious Syrian state and establish a harsh fundamentalist order of their own,” bombed the “city of Raqqa, Syria, similar to its bombardment of Mosul, Iraq,” adding that a “continued U.S. presence in Syria would only prolong a policy that has been disastrous for all the peoples of the region.” They also hoped for a total withdrawal of U$ troops from Syria, a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and said that “it is time to turn a page in history and to build a new world based on human rights, equality and mutual respect for all. We must build momentum toward real and lasting peace. Nothing less than the survival of human civilization is at stake.” Similarly is the position by the World Peace Council.
[6] Nick Wadhams, Tony Capaccio and Margaret Talev, “Trump’s Syria Pullout Fuels Confusion With Kurds Left in Lurch,” Bloomberg, Dec 19, 2018; Matthew Lee and Robert Burns, “US to withdraw all American troops in Syria, official says,” AP, Dec 19, 2018.
[7] Patrick Wintour, “Russia, Turkey and Iran reach agreement on Syria committee,” The Guardian, Dec 18, 2018; “Russia slashes Syria military flights,” AFP, Dec 11, 2018; Edith M. Lederer, “UN envoy: More work needed on Syria constitutional committee,” AP, Dec. 20, 2018. This connects to article I read boldly declaring that the proposed U$ withdrawal is occurring because “the Syrian Arab Army, which now has Russian anti-aircraft equipment, the best in the world,” meaning “they have no choice but to leave before humiliation.” However, I think this could be too simplistic as it casts the Russians as the saviors.
[8] Matthew Lee and Susannah George, “Trump call with Turkish leader led to US pullout from Syria,” AP, Dec. 21, 2018.
[9] Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay, “In Syria retreat, Trump rebuffs top advisers and blindsides U.S. commanders,” Reuters, Dec. 19, 2018.
[10] Guney Yildiz,”US withdrawal from Syria leaves Kurds backed into a corner,” BBC News, Dec 20, 2018; Gregory Hellman and Connor O’Brien, “Pulling out of Syria: A primer,” Politico, Dec 20, 2018; Layal Abou Rahal, “US pullout leaves Syria Kurds exposed,” AFP, Dec. 20, 2018; Tom Perry and Ellen Francis, “Syria’s Kurds reel from U.S. move, Assad seen planning next step,”Reuters, Dec. 20, 2018; “Syria: World reacts to Trump’s decision to pull US troops out,” Al Jazeera, Dec 20, 2018; Sune Engel Rasmussen and David Gauthier-Villars, “Key U.S. Partner in Syria Thrown Into Disarray,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20, 2018; “Syria Kurds say to keep up anti-IS fight unless Turkey attacks,” AFP, Dec. 20, 2018; “Key U.S. ally in Syria rejects Trump claim that ISIS has been defeated,” AP, Dec 20, 2018; Ali Younes, Trevor Aaronson, and Murtaza Hussein, “Syria battle against ISIL far from over, despite US pull-out plan,”Al Jazeera, Dec 20, 2018; Hollie. McKay, “Syrian Kurds allied with US shocked, scared by news of troop withdrawal,” Fox News, Dec 20, 2018.
[11] Robert Burns and Loita Baldor, “Pentagon scrambles on Syria exit amid withdrawal outrage,” AP, Dec 20, 2018.
[12] Paul D. Shinkman, “The Mattis-Trump Partnership Collapses Under Its Own Weight,” U.S. News & World Report, Dec 20, 2018; Shaun Tandon and Thomas Watkins, “US defense chief quits as Trump pulls from Syria, Afghanistan,” AFP, Dec 21, 2018; Nick Wadhams, Tony Capaccio and Margaret Talev, “Trump’s Syria Pullout Fuels Confusion With Kurds Left in Lurch,” Bloomberg, Dec 19, 2018; Victoria Bekiempis, “Brett McGurk, the Man Who Built Coalition to Fight ISIS, Quits Over Presidents ISIS Strategy,” The Daily Beast, Dec. 22, 2018; Jonathan Marcus, “After Mattis, Trump’s foreign policy worries allies,” BBC News, Dec. 21, 2018. On a related note, one Twitter user, @RedKahina, reminded users of how Matt Blumenthal, Ben Norton, and Rania Khalek once propaganda for a partition of Syria by Turkey, a NATO ally.
[13] Luis Martinez and Elizabeth McLaughlin, “What you need to know about US military involvement in Syria as Trump orders withdrawal,” ABC News, Dec 20, 2018.
With the orange menace saying he wants to make “America great again” (as opposed to Andrew Cuomo of New York accurately saying that “we’re not going to make America great again, America was never great”) while acknowledging that the U$ is not “making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” due to the trade war with China, and the Zionists hail the U$ for ending funding of the UN Human Rights Council, it is worth looking at how the U$ measures up compared to a number of countries, revisionist or not, some of which are in the crosshairs of U$ imperialism.
The UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has a page showing compliance of countries with their treaties.It includes a number of UN organs underneath it like the Human Rights Council (HRC), Universal Periodic Review (undertaken by the HRC, which has its own special procedures), human rights treaty bodies, and other organs. The HRC is the same council that the Bush Administration quit in June 2008, while the Obama Administration reversed this, but then the current imperial administration reinstated the Bush era policy because of the criticism of Zionists.
Going back to the OHCHR’s page, I went through the 18 treaties listed on the page and put them into a spreadsheet in order to compare these countries. Not surprisingly, this shows that the U$ is lacking. Of the 18 treaties, the U$ has only ratified or acceded to five! [1] Even if you count the treaties that the U$ has only signed but not acceded to or ratified, that would only bring the total to nine. By this measure, that the U$ has only agreed to 50% of the treaties. This drops to about 30% when it is lowered to the more accurate number of five, covering only treaties ratified or acceded to. What about other countries? The DPRK is not much better when it comes to approval of human rights treaties, unfortunately. They have only ratified or acceded to six treaties:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Of these treaties, the U$ has still not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (only signed it), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (only signed it), Convention on the Rights of the Child (only signed it), or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (only signed it). So, in this way, you could say that the DPRK has an upper hand when it comes to human rights. However, other countries do even better than the U$ by far. This is partially due to the fact that while the DPRK can be said to be anti-imperialist, the concept of Juche, as it is implemented currently, is clearly revisionist. This leads to clear distortions. Still, the fact that even the apartheid Zionist state has ratified more human rights treaties than the U$ (nine compared to to the U$’s five), is actually pretty pathetic.
Cuba is one of those countries. It has ratified or acceded to eight human rights treaties and signed three of them. [2] While it also revisionist to an extent like the DPRK, it has retained more socialist elements than the DPRK one could say, with a society which is even more open and participatory. That means that Cuba has agreed, whether by ratifying (or acceding) or signing, to about 60% of the human rights treaties (specifically 11) noted by the OHCHR. That is relatively impressive.
Some may ask about the revisionist triad, consisting of China, Vietnam, and Laos, which largely operate on a similar model with a market economy, state ownership, and are clearly on the capitalist road. They are not engaging in any sort of New Economic Policy reminiscent of the Soviets as they do not see their path as a “strategic retreat” as Lenin clearly saw it [3], rather claiming it will bring them toward socialism, even though they are actually very much on the capitalist road, not getting off it anytime soon! As I noted on Reddit, NEP clearly had its downsides, admitted by bourgeois analysts, leading to its end in 1928 due to Josef Stalin’s action to stop it. As such, it seems strange to act like China since 1978 has engaged in its own form of NEP, an idea advocated by Deng, because the conditions were different, as China by 1978 was in a much better position than Soviet Russia in 1921. The same applies to Laos after the New Economic Mechanism began in 1986,or Vietnam after Đổi Mới (Renovation) began the same year. [4] For China, the main player in this revisionist triad, it has ratified or acceded to seven treaties, and signed two treaties, overlapping a bit with Cuba in these realms. However, China never ratified or acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance or Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the first of which Cuba had signed and ratified, and the second of which Cuba has only currently signed. This means that Cuba has a better record than China in this realm, with China only ratifying or signing half of the human rights treaties noted by the OHCHR. Most worrisome is the fact that China has not ratified or acceded to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families considering that that “almost 269 million internal migrant workers are moving from rural areas to the country’s growing cities”! This is a convention that states that
…States Parties undertake, in accordance with the international instruments concerning human rights, to respect and to ensure to all migrant workers and members of their families within their territory or subject to their jurisdiction the rights provided for in the present Convention without distinction of any kind such as to sex, race, colour, language, religion or conviction, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, nationality, age, economic position, property, marital status, birth or other status…Migrant workers and members of their families shall be free to leave any State, including their State of origin. This right shall not be subject to any restrictions…No migrant worker or member of his or her family shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment…Migrant workers and members of their families shall have the right to hold opinions without interference...No migrant worker or member of his or her family shall be arbitrarily deprived of property, whether owned individually or in association with others… Migrant workers shall enjoy treatment not less favourable than that which applies to nationals of the State of employment in respect of remuneration.
Such migrants are needed to keep the state-sponsored capitalist mode of production in China humming along as Minqi Li recently told The Real News, so that is likely why this convention was not even signed by China. Clearly, there is class conflict in China. This was recently noted by RedSparkwhich wrote about how a solidarity group in Shenzhen was attacked by Chinese police, a group standing in solidarity with a “worker’s struggle in Shenzhen demanding real representation and right to organize,” rallying “under the banner of Marx, Lenin, and Chairman Mao.”
What about Vietnam and Laos? Well, Laos ratified or acceded to eight treaties, and signed two treaties. That would actually give it an even better track record than China, but not as good as Cuba. As for Vietnam, it ratified or acceded to nine treaties, giving it the same track record as China.
Then there are three countries which really stand out in this realm: Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, all of which are social democracies, like Syria. Venezuela has ratified or acceded to 14 treaties and signed three. Of these, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; and Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, were ratified or acceded to during the time Hugo Chavez served as the president of Venezuela (from 1999 to 2013). Additionally, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was signed in 2013, the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was signed in 2011, the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was signed in 2011, and the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance was signed in 2008.
Bolivia, signed just as many treaties! In fact, Bolivia ratified or acceded to all 18 treaties. Of these treaties, six of which of them have been ratified since 2006 when Evo Morales became President and his Movement of Socialism came into power, still holding majorities in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Those six treaties are:
Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2006
International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2008
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009
Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2012
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure in 2013
Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty in 2013
Even The Guardian, which grumbled about the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Bolivia ruling (in December 2017) that all public offices, including the presidency have no term limits, meaning that Morales can run for a fourth term in 2019 and all the actions thereafter, noted the accomplishments of Bolivia (and then proceeded to trash the country in typical imperialist fashion) [5]:
Morales, 58 – an Aymara former coca grower – was elected in 2006. The country’s first indigenous president, his 2009 constitution refounded Bolivia as a “plurinational state”. A partial nationalisation of Bolivia’s oil and gas helped create a middle class from scratch. Bolivia is Latin America’s fastest-growing economy; 53% of its legislators are women and a fifth are under 30. “From being a republic of classes, castes, skin colours, Bolivia today has become a country that by law has to be inclusive,” said Valeria Silva Guzmán, 27, a Mas congresswoman. Through slashing school truancy, infant and maternal mortality, and old-age poverty, she argued, Morales has “definitively changed the everyday reality of Bolivians”.
Of course, there is more to discuss about Bolivia, but this is a good start.
Finally, there is Nicaragua. It has ratified or acceded to 14 treaties, eight (more than half) of which were signed while the Sandinistas were in power from 1979 to 1990 and again from 2006 to the present. These include:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1980
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1980
Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1980
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1981
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007
Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty in 2009
Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2009
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2010
And that concludes this post, which provides a starting point for writing about all of these countries in the future.
Notes
[1] Specifically the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. As for those that were only signed, this applies to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
[2] Specifically it has ratified or acceded to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; Convention on the Rights of the Child; International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance; Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict. It has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
[3] In October 1921, Lenin told the Second All-Russia Congress Of Political Education Departments that “our New Economic Policy signifies that, having sustained severe defeat on this point, we have started a strategical retreat…in attempting to go over straight to communism we, in the spring of 1921, sustained a more serious defeat on the economic front than any defeat inflicted upon us by Kolchak, Denikin or Pilsudski. This defeat was much more serious, significant and dangerous…Concessions to foreign capitalists…and leasing enterprises to private capitalists definitely mean restoring capitalism, and this is part and parcel of the New Economic Policy…We must not count on going straight to communism. We must build on the basis of peasants’ personal incentive…we must undergo this training, this severe, stern and sometimes even cruel training, because we have no other way out.” Later on, in February 1922 he noted that “we are still alone and in a backward country, a country that was ruined more than others, but we have accomplished a great deal,” adding the next month the Soviets are, too, “acting as merchants” and later that “economically and politically NEP makes it fully possible for us to lay the foundations of socialist economy.” Apart from this, he easily explained it through 1921 and 1922 as a clear transitionary period, but a strategic retreat,even admitting in November 1921 that “we have retreated to state capitalism, but we did not retreat too far” and at other times it led to capitalist relations. This is NOTHING like what happened in China after 1978 or even Laos and Vietnam, as the conditions could not totally account for such action, especially since the Laotian civil war had ended in 1975, with the same being the case for Vietnam, meaning they had 13 years to develop an economic plan.
[4] As the UN Described it, in a positive tone, “in 1986, the Fourth Party Congress launched the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) to boost all economic sectors through indicative planning and economic liberalization, including a shift toward market determination of prices and resource allocations, decentralization of control over industries, progressive privatization and deregulation to promote trade and investment. Following the adoption of the New Economic Mechanism, the macro-economic situation in the country improved considerably. The macro-economic policy changes have had a strong impact on the development of the urban areas.” The same positive tone was expressed by AESAN. As Social Watch noted, “in December 1986, the [Vietnamese] government mandated the Doi Moi (open door) policy, shifting from a centrally planned economy to a market oriented one. The current trend shows growing inequality between the rural and urban population, and between the rich and the poor. Privatisation and liberalisation increased the social gap in the access to basic social services in general and to education and health in particular, and increased the vulnerability of the rural poor. In December 1986, the government mandated the DoiMoi (open door) policy, shifting from a centrally planned economy to a market oriented one, inside the framework of state regulations. The main thrust of the Doi Moi is to promote a multi-sector economic system, emphasising the state sector while encouraging the private sector. To achieve economic integration, the open door would be implemented gradually in order to stabilise the political and social situation…Poverty is still mainly a rural problem in a country where some 80% of the population live in rural areas, and two-thirds of them remain largely dependent on agriculture for a living.”
[5] Lawrence Blair, “Evo for ever? Bolivia scraps term limits as critics blast ‘coup’ to keep Morales in power,” The Guardian, Dec 3, 2017.
Kim and the orange menace shake hands at the June 12th Singapore summit.
Reprinted from anti-imperialism.org, with changes of some links to this blog and text itself for reasons of smoothness. This story was revised, with an eye to self-criticism on August 22, 2019.
Last month, I wrote a criticism, on this very website [anti-imperialism.org], of the orange menace’s letter which canceled one-on-one talks with Kim Jong Un, the DPRK’s elected leader, whom has held the ceremonial title of “supreme leader,” and commander of the Korean People’s Army, since December 2011. [1] Since then, the letter has become old hat, with the one-on-one talks on June 12 at a hotel located on Singapore’s Sentosa Island. Perhaps, the letter from the orange menace was a warning shot across the bow, supposed to say who was in “control.” With the summit, Pence, Bolton, and others within the U$ government which didn’t want the summit, were marginalized. The giddy liberals, like Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson or former CIA director John Brennan were likely annoyed, as were those on news stations like MSNBC, unable to contain their hatred for the people of the DPRK, especially for Kim himself, calling him a “murderous dictator” who had “gulags” time and time again. As I wrote last month, “Kim and the DPRK have the upper hand here, not the imperialists, showing the DPRK are in a strong position, at an advantage.” As Amber B. recently wrote [on anti-imperialism.org], criticizing the left-opposition of the orange menace by groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and Refuse Fascism, instead of focusing on the orange menace, only a figurehead of the moment, as the primary enemy, it is better to “highlight the innumerable ways his administration works in perfect continuity with amerikan imperialism in general,” while understanding his peculiarities, but not giving them primary importance. With this, the following article aims to highlight the anger from sectors of the bourgeoisie on the summit, the results of the summit itself, how it fits into the broader framework of U$ imperialism, and what it means for the world as a whole.
In order to highlight the reactions and results of the summit, it is best to reprint the joint statement by Kim and the orange menace which was posted on the websites of Explore DPRK and Rodong Sinmun. The statement which was released on June 12 is as follows:
Kim Jong Un, chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, held the first historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
Chairman Kim Jong Un and President Trump conducted a comprehensive, in-depth and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new DPRK-U.S. relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Convinced that the establishment of new DPRK-U.S. relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Chairman Kim Jong Un and President Trump state the following:
1. The DPRK and the United States commit to establish new DPRK-U.S. relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The DPRK and the United States will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The DPRK and the United States commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
Having acknowledged that the DPRK-U.S. summit, the first in history, was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for opening of a new future, Chairman Kim Jong Un and President Trump commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously.
The DPRK and the United States commit to hold follow-on negotiations led by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the DPRK-U.S. summit.
Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America have committed to cooperate for the development of new DPRK- U.S. relations and for the promotion of peace, prosperity, and security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.
One can say it is positive that both sides agree on establishing new relations which will contribute to “peace and prosperity,” build a “lasting and robust peace regime” on the Korean Peninsula, and will work together to recover POW/MIA remains. The same can be said for implementing the summit’s outcomes, and planned cooperation tied with “the promotion of peace, prosperity, and security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.” The DPRK itself is compelled by the agreement to work for “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and reaffirm the ROK-DPRK Panmunjom Declaration, while the U$ is committed “to provide security guarantees to the DPRK.” Still, it is going too far to say that this is a “pretty comprehensive document” as the orange menace declared recently. Rather, it is much more moderate, even if we take Kim’s words that the past will be left behind and that the “world will see a major change.” It is also an agreement which is supported by 51% of those in the U$, a strong showing of the populace for peace.
Recent developments have raised questions about the specter of detente, with papers like the New York Times declaring that the DPRK “ruined” negotiations and The Atlantic declaring that the road for denuclearization will not be an easy one. [2] Basically, the DPRK is asking for concessions from U$ imperialists in exchange for denuclearization, criticizing unilateral and irreversible denuclearization pushed by Pompeo (and neo-cons) most recently in his meeting with high-level DPRK officials, such as key Workers’ Party of Korea official Kim Yong Chol, whom have called for a phased approach toward a nuclear-free Korean peninsula rather than “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” (CVID) demanded quickly by the U$. As such, the DPRK said the talks with Pompeo, whom declared that both sides had made progress on “almost all of the central issues,” were regrettable, while Chol said that “the more you [Pompeo] come, more trust we can build between one another.” This could indicate differences within the DPRK’s leadership on how the U$ should be approached.
The full statement from the DPRK’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on July 7 showed the rightful criticism of the U$. It says that while they expected “that the U.S. side would bring itself with a constructive proposal which would help build up trust true to the spirit of the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks,” with the DPRK putting forward “constructive proposals to seek a balanced implementation of all the provisions of the Joint Statement,” including putting in place “multilateral exchanges for improved relations between the DPRK and the U.S., making public a declaration on the end of war first on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement to build a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, dismantling the test ground of high thrust engine to make a physical verification of the suspension of ICBM production as part of denuclearization steps and making an earliest start of the working-level talks for recovering POW/MIA remains.” Kim even wrote the orange menace a personal letter out of respect. However, the U$ imperialists demanded that the DPRK comply with the demand for unilateral denuclearization which “run[s] counter to the spirit of the Singapore summit meeting and talks,” never mentioning the issue of “establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula which is essential for defusing tension and preventing a war,” instead saying they would backtrack on ending “the status of war under certain conditions and excuses”! This seems to follow efforts of previous administrations, with the suspension of the war games something that could be reversed. The foreign ministry adds that the DPRK was naive to think that the U$ would “come with a constructive proposal which accords with the spirit of the DPRK-U.S. summit meeting and talks,” and notes that while the DPRK in the last few months “displayed maximum patience,” watching the U$ and initiating many “good-will steps,” this was misunderstood by the U$. They further commented that such imperialists are “fatally mistaken” if they think that “the DPRK would be compelled to accept, out of its patience” the imperialists’ demands. The statement closes by saying that “the U.S. should make a serious consideration of whether the toleration of the headwind against the wills of the two top leaders would meet the aspirations and expectations of the world people as well as the interests of its country.” So, the negotiations and burgeoning detente will continue, but tensions are rising to the surface, even if the orange menace really does give Kim a CD with Elton John’s “Rocket Man” as some bourgeois media are alleging.
Since the summit: the U$ and DPRK’s response
What has happened since the summit is important to recall. Positively, the U$ ended military drills, also called “war games,” with the ROK, with the orange menace rightly calling them “inappropriate” and “provocative” while even floating the withdrawal of U$ troops from the ROK. However, this could be part of his strategy to make a mark globally, or to force concessions out of Japan and ROK through his measures. [3] At the same time, military drills could even be “used again to threaten Pyongyang once it doesn’t proceed with the denuclearization as Washington wants” as the Global Times posited. This is no surprise however, because there is a clear trend of imperial arrogance under the current administration, exemplified most poignantly by Nikki Haley in response to social democratic imperialist Bernie Sanders, telling him that “it is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America. The Special Rapporteur wasted the UN’s time and resources, deflecting attention from the world’s worst human rights abusers and focusing instead on the wealthiest and freest country in the world.”
The U$ imperialists have been holding a tenacious line. Hawkish John Bolton declared that discussions between the DPRK and U$ (including Mike Pompeo) would continue, putting the onus on the DPRK, saying that denuclearization can happen within a year (or even 2 ½ years), with an undefined program with “asks” mentioned by Bolton and unnamed U$ officials, perhaps numbering as many as 47 as TASS reported recently. [4] The orange menace claimed this would include consultations with the ROK, Japan, and China. At the same time, there are some talk of a second summit between Kim and the orange menace, possibly at the UN General Assembly’s annual session beginning in September, even though there are efforts to put stumbling blocks in place. Of course, people like Pence claim that the “success of this summit and the progress that we’ve made is a direct result of President Trump’s steadfast leadership, and the courage of one American family” referring to Otto Warmbier’s family. The orange menace unconsciously, since he is a political amateur, as the Koreans said at the past, has disrupted, in another attempt to put his “mark” on history, the imperial Orientalist narrative on the DPRK by saying that people in the country “love” Kim with a “fervor,” and that the people in the country are hard-working and industrious. He also said that “I believe it’s a rough situation over there [in the DPRK]. It’s rough in a lot of places, by the way, not just there.” [5] Even with this, the imperial hostility toward the DPRK continues.
It is good to see the orange menace admitting that calling Kim “rocket man” was foolish. However, disgustingly he claimed it was part of his strategy to “earn” Kim’s “respect”! This seems like a horrible strategy which was not worth the cost! Detente could have been started much earlier. The current imperial strategy however is a bit confused as the orange menace extended the “national emergency” for the DPRK for another year, saying it constitutes an “extraordinary threat” to the U$, allowing economic sanctions to remain in place! Further dis-junction is evidenced by the orange menace’s claims that he had “good chemistry” with Kim, who he called a “very smart guy,” “tough guy,” “great negotiator,” and “very talented” as one of very few to run a “tough country,” but nodded to the Orientalists by saying that Kim has engaged in “very bad things” even as he said that “so have a lot of other people that have done some really bad things.” This is another crack in the imperialist narrative. Let us be clear that Kim outmaneuvered the orange menace, who depends on advisers like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, while Kim serves as the guiding force of the DPRK, far from what those in the West call a “dictator” with venom on their lips. The orange menace is falling on his own sword by playing up the summit’s results. Of course, no one would even dream of considering denuclearization of the U$!
Since the summit, Kim and the DPRK leadership has taken a strong stand. If Bolton is to be believed, Kim told the orange menace on June 12 that he was different than Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. [6] While some say that the exact details of what the orange menace and Kim talked about is not known, Rodong Sinmun described the meeting as an “epoch-making meeting…[with] a candid exchange of views on the practical issues of weighty significance in putting an end to the decades-long hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S.” It also says there was “a comprehensive and in-depth discussion over the issues of establishing new DPRK-U.S. relations and building a permanent and durable peace mechanism on the Korean Peninsula at the talks” with Kim praising “the president’s will and enthusiasm to resolve matters in a realistic way through dialogue and negotiations, away from the hostility-woven past…[and that] the two countries should commit themselves to refraining from antagonizing each other out of mutual understanding, and take legal and institutional steps to guarantee it.” Additionally, “Kim Jong Un invited Trump to visit Pyongyang at a convenient time and Trump invited Kim…to visit the U.S.” This having been the case, people have sent Kim congratulatory letters, while he has met with Xi Jinping, who represents the Chinese revisionists, and with Moon Jae-in, negotiating to have continued reunions of families separated by the Korean War, leading even a common revisionist, Roland Boer, to float the idea of Nobel Prize for Kim and Moon. There have also been meetings between high-ranking DPRK and ROK generals. Most importantly for the Korean people is Kim’s public appearance at a Sinuiju province cosmetics factory in which he said “it is important to completely eliminate manual labor and modernize production processes,” by bringing in automation. [7] He also said he “always hoped for a visit to the cosmetic factory in Sinuiju…They are famous for producing cosmetics with a spring scent,” and was also “proud of the factory’s production levels, but encouraged workers to continue excelling” as one article noted. We can debate automation of the workforce, but Kim clearly cares about his people while the orange menace does not care one bit, a fact the DPRK is undoubtedly aware of.
Then we get to claims of increased nuclear production in the DPRK’s facility in Yongbyon from 5-6 unnamed “U.S. officials,” a supposed report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and most “strongly” from commercial satellite imagery, displayed by anti-DPRK “watcher” website, 38 North, a project of the Henry L. Stimson Center, whose “partners” include many foundations and imperial groups. The center is also, as it should be noted, funded by the capitalist governments of Australia, Canada, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, UK, and U$, along with various private individuals, corporations, and foundations. [8] The imagery used by 38 North comes from a Pleiades satellite run by the French subsidiary of Airbus Defense and Space, called Airbus DS Geo SA, a global business which bills itself as an “international pioneer in Earth observation services.” As it turns out, Airbus Defense and Space is a subsidiary of the aerospace company, Airbus, over a quarter of which is owned by the capitalist French, Spanish, and German governments, according to page 108 of the organization’s most recent annual report. That doesn’t sound like an unbiased source at all! I am reminded of a recent article by Melinda Laituri in The Conversation, where she writes that
Satellite images…are captured through remote sensing technologies…without physical contact or firsthand experience. Algorithms refine these data to describe places and phenomena on the Earth’s surface and in the atmosphere…I think it’s important for people to understand the limitations of this technology, lest they misunderstand what they see…But there are some caveats that anyone working with satellite images – or viewing them – should consider. Satellite images are only as good as their resolution. The smaller the pixel size, the sharper the image. But even high-resolution images need to be validated on the ground to ensure the trustworthiness of the interpretation. Should we question the images we see? Whose view of the world are we seeing? One example of the misuse of remotely sensed data was in 2003, when satellite images were[falsely] used as evidence of sites of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq…processing satellite images is computationally intensive. At best, satellite images are interpretations of conditions on Earth – a “snapshot” derived from algorithms that calculate how the raw data are defined and visualized. This has created a “black box,” making it difficult to know when or why the algorithm gets it wrong…Through platforms like Google Earth and Earth Explorer, satellite images are increasingly available to not only researchers and scientists, but to people around the world…maps derived from satellite images are constructed by those who may not be very familiar with the site. Mappers have an important responsibility when representing other people’s places. Maps derived from satellite images without local context – like street names or information about vegetation types – tell incomplete stories. Building footprints can be digitized, but only locals can identify the purpose of that building. Imaginary lines, like country boundaries, don’t show up on remotely sensed images. As satellite images become more ubiquitous, we should reflect on where they come from, how they are created, and the purpose for their use.
Keeping that at mind, we should not, for one second, accept the claims made by the DNI, unnamed U$ officials, and even the interpretation of satellite imagery at face value. As Stephen Lendman, who I’ve cited before, writes, even 38 North can’t confirm if the work it says occurred, “continued after the June 12 Kim/Trump summit” or not! So, this makes their article totally worthless, a piece of junk which should be incinerated in the closest furnace, without polluting the air of course.
Capitalism coming to the DPRK?
There are signs of possible shifts. Kim met with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on June 11, saying he would “learn a lot from the good knowledge and experience of Singapore in various fields in the future,” adding that issues of bilateral relations and increased “wide-ranging exchange and cooperation” was encouraged, while Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan and Singaporean Minister of Education Ong Ye Kung went to the DPRK. This raises the question: is capitalism coming to the DPRK as part of the detente with U$ imperialists?
We know that a four-minute short, created by the National Security Council, was shown to Kim, along with the capitalist media later on, with a voice over thundering that “Destiny Pictures presents a story of opportunity. A new story. A new beginning. Out of peace. Two men, two leaders, one destiny.” [9] This video “shows scenes of high-tech societies and everyday America, contrasted with images of traditional and contemporary Korean life, spliced with shots of rockets and North Korean militarism” as one bourgeois news outlet puts it. As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which is not anti-imperialist in the slightest, describes it, the video serves “as a kind of hyper-capitalist real estate pitch, complete with beachfront property and speedboats and babies.” There’s also the fact that the orange menace, who says the video was shown in English and Korean, claims it was “loved” by Kim and eight Korean representatives. If he and other top DPRK officials liked the video, which we can’t be completely sure about unless we take the word of the orange menace at face value, it is somewhat worrisome considering the capitalist nature. Even so, it wouldn’t mean that the country is moving in a capitalist direction. In fact, it could mean they see it more broadly without abandoning the country’s social model.
At the same time, it is significant that the foreign affairs minister of Singapore, Vivian Balakrishnan, was impressed with what he saw in the DPRK on his visit. As he recounted:
…I come back very impressed…my views have also altered based on what I saw, heard, and (after I had) spoken to people. Clearly, the government has been hard at work all these decades to upgrade their infrastructure. I also got to experience the rugged, disciplined, determined, self-reliant society. They know they have had enormous challenges for well-nigh a century in North Korea. But they are proud of themselves and of their identity, and I can see there is that determination to move on, get ahead and to progress. So the society itself is a very impressive society and a city in its own right. Despite these maximal sanctions, what you have is a society that has continued to invest itself and continuously trying to upgrade people and their skills and the services they provide to their citizens. Now, can you imagine if peace finally comes, and North Korea is allowed to open up to the world and gain access to technology, capability, skills and markets. I think the sky is the limit for their people. If a breakthrough is achieved during the summit in Singapore, if peace comes, there will be a bountiful harvest. Primarily of course, with the Korean peninsula but also the rest of us, including Singapore as well. [10]
The question remains: who will collect this “bountiful harvest”? Will it be the Korean people or capitalists, Chinese, ROK, Japanese, Singaporean, and U$, spreading their wings and planting themselves in the North? If the latter is the case, then it will be a sad day for the forces fighting global imperialism. If the former occurs, which is something all those who care about justice should push for, then this would be a great relief for Korean people. We already know that 80% of ROK trading companies want to take part in development projects in the DPRK after international sanctions are lifted and are asking for better cross-border exchange. [11] Additionally, the national assembly of the ROK has seen an “increase in the number of bill proposals by legislators pushing to bolster economic exchanges with North Korea,” with many focused on inter-Korean railways and other economic exchanges. We also know that the U$ may be interested in negotiations with the DPRK because of large “deposits of rare earth elements (REEs)…potentially worth billions of US dollars” at a time that the DPRK “may be on the cusp of being integrated into a vast supply chain via an Iron Silk Road, with the Russia-China strategic partnership simultaneously investing in railways, pipelines and ports in parallel to North-South Korean special economic zones (SEZs), Chinese-style” as Pepe Escobar, favorable to Chinese revisionism, wrote recently. Furthermore, the orange menace and certain U$ imperialists want the summit in order to further “U.S. capitalist interests in Asia.”
It also seems that the DPRK is preparing itself even more for the world spotlight. One traveler from New Zealand, calling himself Indigo Traveller Nick, described Pyongyang as “impeccably clean,” thanks to efforts by locals, with grand metro stops, a fascinating but brutal war museum about the Korean war, feeling invisible as a foreigner, and having relative freedom for footage except for taking images of statues of current or former leaders. [12] He also claimed that those in rural regions of the country “looked like they walked straight out from a 1940s film,” reminiscent of the Soviet Union. He ended by calling it the “most unique and fascinating country” he had ever visited. On a related noted, the country is also connected culturally and linguistically to the south, with both countries sharing the same unofficial national anthem, “Our Wish is Reunification.” At the same time, a 42-minute video of the summit and visit of Kim and other top DPRK officials to Singapore was proudly broadcast on Korean Central Television (KCTV), including a “glittering Singapore skyline,” with Kim approving of Singapore as “clean and beautiful.” This would seem at least somewhat worrisome since Singapore is, as the bourgeois media has argued, a “prosperous capitalist nation,” only being “prosperous” for the capitalists.
The Russians are key in future developments in the DPRK, since they play a part in the search for a solution to the woes of the Korean Peninsula. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov is noted as saying in mid-June that they “seek economic cooperation with South Korea, which is our second largest trading partner in Asia after China,” while there would be high-level talks later in the month, focusing on “further development of Russia-South Korea relations in political, trade and economic, and humanitarian spheres.” [13] This is connected with the idea, posed by ROK president Moon Jae-in, that there be a Trans Korean Maine Line which can be connected to the Trans-Siberian Railway, which can benefit both Koreas and Russia, connected with having a gas pipeline from Russia connecting the two Koreas, along with electric lines as well, possibly even connecting with Japan. Moon also said, elsewhere that the DPRK can be part of negotiations with Russia “after permanent peace is established in the region.” An outlet of the Vietnamese revisionists, VN Express, reported on the topic as well, noting that between the ROK and Russia, there was hope “that reduced tensions with Pyongyang will open up opportunities for economic and infrastructure projects that would directly link South Korea with Russia through North Korea” with an area of common interest being “railway projects,” with current development “of a railway link between the Russian eastern border town of Khasan and the North Korean port of Rajin.” The DPRK clearly realizes the value of Russia as well, with Kim touring a military site in a Russian-made Lada Priora, a car produced by a large automaker in Russia, AvtoVAZ, which is majority-owned by the French car company, Renault.
China, which is revisionist and connected to global capitalism, as a social-imperialist power, has a strong role in the events in the country. There are indications that any transformation in the DPRK will be based on what has happened in China since 1978, not on the U$, engaging in economic reconstruction with any capitalistic opening limited to SEZs. [14] The Chinese state media claims that the DPRK’s cosmetic industry will gain from capitalistic Chinese investment, building upon existing connections to Chinese cyberspace. With all of this, the DPRK’s leadership increased the country’s ties with China, with the Chinese hosting a banquet for Kim on June 19, with talks in the following days, returning after the talks, on June 21. Interestingly, he visited, with his wife Ri Sol Ju, “the Beijing Municipal Track Traffic Control Centre,” learning the details and asking pointed questions, adding that “he admires at the high-level automation and good combined control system of the centre, he hoped that the centre would further develop into a world-level traffic control centre and make greater progress.”
There have also been rumblings about the “erasing” of anti-imperialist propaganda in the DPRK, which claims it was “replaced” by other propaganda celebrating Korean unification and not as critical of the U$. [15] A tour manager of Young Pioneer Tours named Rowan Beard, Peter Ward of NKNews, and a researcher at the ROK’s Korea Institute for National Unification named Hong Min, along with some other so-called “experts” said this was the case. Additionally, AP reported that the annual anti-imperialist rally to mark the start of the Korean War, or the Great Fatherland Liberation War, is not occurring this year. Of course, this is reporting on the outside, looking in, so what they are saying is likely distorted. It is clear that Rodong Sinmunis still celebrating the “socialist public health system in the DPRK,” writing on June 25th that this system is “symbolic of the advantages of Korean-style socialism centered on the popular masses, where the working masses are masters of everything and everything in society serves them.”
Clearly, the stage is set for some sort of capitalist opening in the DPRK. There are already some SEZs and other market mechanisms, as allowed by the country’s constitution, but these seem to be limited within the country itself. It is not known how much the country will “open” up, but if it is as much as China, this could be deleterious to the Korean people in the North by hurting any efforts for social construction in the country. Whatever is in store in the months and years to come, Russia, China, and the ROK will be key players, as will the DPRK. Perhaps Japan will be part of the equation, as will the U$, but the result of the detente will determine what the role of U$ imperialists will be going forward. The DPRK could also follow the model of Vietnam, which those like Pompeo hope for, as he recently said in Hanoi that “I say all of that because it’s important, but I hope that the United States, that one day we can share the same relationship with North Korea [that we have with Vietnam].” He added at a press conference in Japan that “in light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for Chairman Kim Jong Un. President Trump believes your country can replicate this path. It’s yours if you’ll seize the moment. The miracle could be yours. The choice now lies with North Korea and its people.” Whether that comes to pass, the fact is that the DPRK will adapt to the new surroundings, as has done since September 9, 1948, when the country was founded, with its efforts to play the Soviets and the Chinese off each other, especially after the 1960s, until the end of the Cold War in 1991, leading to some criticism from certain parts of the world.
The warmongers continue their assault: liberals and corporate media
While the orange menace rattles on about “fake news” from NBC and CNN, saying that there should be “negotiating in good faith” by both sides, with war and “potential nuclear catastrophe” involving the DPRK averted, he poses himself as a “courageous” individual for making “peace.” At the same time, Bruce Cumings, a liberal bourgeois historian, has said that this summit “frees Trump from Washington establishment thinking, and create[s] a real possibility of peace in Korea.” Not everyone sees it that way: liberals and much of the corporate media is opposed to detente between the DPRK and the U$ since they want the detente to fail.
This attitude is evident without question. On June 12, Ankit Panda of The Daily Beast declared that during the meeting Kim “got the better end of the bargain” and that the DPRK gained an “important propaganda coup.” [16] The same day, The Guardian blared that Kim “won” the summit, gaining “bolstered status and diplomatic leverage,” even saying that the war games were positive! Others, like William Rivers Pitt of Truthout, went into the bizarre, calling Kim a “dangerous menace” who was a “fascist” like the orange menace! This wasn’t much of a surprise considering that others like Tony Schwartz (former ghostwriter for the orange menace) and Rebecca Gordon of TomDispatch fell in line, saying that the orange menace was moving closer to “enemies” of the empire. They “proved” this by citing the orange menace’s comments that Kim is a “tough guy” who is “smart” and a “great negotiator,” while saying, some time ago, in response to typical bourgeois criticism of Putin, “what do you think, our country’s so innocent?” The latter statement alludes to imperial violence since 1776 while such violence continues unimpeded! By contrast, progressive “luminary” Amy Goodman was more positive on the summit, saying that there should be unification behind “peace movements that are driving this diplomatic opening.” The same was the case for Tom Shorrock, who called Kim a “dictator,” who was also positive, especially criticizing corporate pundits.
A number of radical and alternative commentators exposed the true nature of the warmongers. Some wrote that the summit was “filled with the sorts of reality-television antics we’ve come to expect from the U.S. leader,” but also said that those Democrats who were Clintonites or Obamaesque, “struggled hard to express principled disagreements with the White House over a rapprochement with Pyongyang,” using a “laundry-list cliché of complaints,” with the orange menace “incapable of doing any good unless he’s applying a language of pressure, sanctions and veiled threats using acceptable language.” Even the Greanville Post, an alternative media outlet which is favorable to revisionism, pointed out that Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, the U$ House Minority Leader, did not like the moderate concessions by the orange menace to Kim, wanting more brinkmanship, not wanting a “genuine and durable peace” on the Korean Peninsula. The union-funded publication, In These Times, said something similar, noting that Koreans were optimistic about the summit, while those like Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, liberal cesspool Vox, Hallie Jackson of MSNBC, and King Russophobe Adam Schiff, among other establishment liberals, as some call them, were up in arms, with even social democratic imperialist Bernie Sanders praising the summit! This was not unusual. The bourgeois media made the faulty assumption for weeks leading up to the summit (and since) that “North Korea cannot live without nuclear weapons” and do not take one second to “understand North Korea’s strategy in regard to nuclear weapons,” not recognizing that the DPRK was ready and willing to negotiate openly with the U$ back in 2013, but the U$ refused to negotiate. This same media seemed to be more concerned about Kim than the orange menace, which has thousands more weapons possibly at his (and his government’s) disposal, 1,650 strategic nuclear warheads on ICBMs and 180 tactical nuclear weapons at bomber bases in Europe, a much greater threat to the world as a whole. After all, while the orange menace is the person followed by the “football”, the imperialists have granted themselves all “rights” to use nuclear weapons as they see fit. Such warmongers easily align with the military contractors whose stocks took a dive as Kim and the orange menace signed an agreement on June 12, as their dreams of “yet another catastrophic U.S.-led military conflict” seem to have faded away.
Black Agenda Report was spot on in their criticism of such warmongers. Margaret Kimberley said that the Democrats “are left with nothing except attacking Trump from the right” because they fundamentally “like war, interventions and United States hegemony” as “true believers in imperialism.” They are not at all, as she notes, progressive, instead supporting “America’s professed right to invade and intervene in the affairs of countries all over the world,” upholding the U$ as the global police force, not supporting any “sovereignty and equality among nations.” Ajamu Baraka similarly wrote about how any move “toward normalizing relations between the United States and North Korea” was derided by Democrats, along with others from NPR, MSNBC, and CNN, who do not realize that this process, is, for the Korean people, about de-colonization. He also said that ultimately the orange menace will fall in line and misread the Koreans since “peace, de-colonization and national reconciliation for Korea are counter to U.S. interests,” meaning that there must be a demand upon the empire to get out of Korea, supporting a process to make that occur. Of course, the Democrats who stake out “a position to the right of John Bolton on the summit” cannot be trusted to make this happen, with even the Poor People’s Campaign, launched in May 2018, having little to say on the topic. In contrast, the newfangled Black Alliance for Peace has adopted the strong position of: “not one drop of blood from the working class and poor to defend the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.”
This leads to a further conclusion: that the “Democratic Party establishment and its media surrogates,” which some claim are MSNBC and CNN, are not part of the “Left” anymore. After all, these forces have called for increased pressure on Russia and the DPRK while they support a full-fledged proxy conflict in Syria and the murderous Zionist apartheid state, making common cause with neo-cons, the military establishment and multinational capitalist combines. This is part of what Amber B. described on this website [anti-imperialism.org] back in June: that Democrats are intensifying their rightward shift “in the midst of a new looming crisis in imperialism, critiquing Trump for overseeing a declining u.$. empire, de-escalation with N. Korea, an Assad victory in Syria, and defeat on virtually every front of soft power available to the u.$.” This is connected to a new predicament and threat of inter-imperialist war, necessitating greater unity among revolutionary forces in order to defeat “the u.$. in all conflicts and colonial holdings, in and outside north amerika, and ultimately of taking power.” Such unity requires, as Amber B. noted correctly, that the direction of U$ imperialism belongs to a greater authority: “the whole constellation of relations of moribund imperialism, settler and neo-colonialism, and inter-imperialist rivalry.” This means that “unless and until the u.$. state is overthrown, its ruling classes suppressed, its sovereignty over captive nations ended, then amerikan imperialism will continue, till total victory or total ruin, no matter who is in power.” Looking at the changes of power since 2000, from Clinton to Bush II in 2000, from Bush II to Obama in 2008, from Obama to the orange menace in 2016, as a small example, there has been imperial continuity manifested in the Afghanistan war, extraordinary rendition of any suspected “wrongdoer,” the developed mass surveillance system, the dungeons of mass incarceration, maintaining the Guantanamo Naval Base, and the overall warfare readiness of the empire, with interspersed wars, terroristic drone strikes, expanding bases, and covert (and overt) activity.
What does the summit mean for the world?
On June 12, in the flurry of news on the topic, the New York Times took a typical Orientalist perspective but still admitted that “for the first time since 1953, the door has been opened to peace on the Korean Peninsula.” But there is more than just a door that has been opened. A whole new opportunity and paradigm is possible, with those such as Kim, very-popular ROK president Moon Jae-In, and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, key players in such negotiations, which can be said to be part of “serious peace talks,” with ending the state of war giving the Korean people “space they need to deal with their own division,” leading to future democratic change. Even the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union praised the summit, saying it signals “a new era in which peace on the Korean Peninsula is possible” while they worried that the agreement was not concrete enough, saying that the conclusion “peace treaty by all relevant sides and a non-aggression pact between the U.S. and North Korea are needed as steps towards creating a Korean peace regime.” This union was also concerned that the comments by the orange menace about “prosperity” in the DPRK is “predicated on private investment and the capitalist opening” of that country’s economy, a process that “does not involve workers’ participation, [and] has the potential to lead to the expansion of labour rights violations and increase in economic and other forms of inequality.” In the meantime, the murderous empire has no intention to operate “within the rule-based international order designed to govern relations between states and between people and governments” evidenced by the withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council because it criticized Zionist oppression. Bolivian President Evo Morales rightly described that this event was the most recent evidence that the U$ is “an interventionist, coup-mongering state, and a violator of the people’s right to life, especially of the poorest…[and] an accomplice of Israel, that massacres civilians, and [the U$] today incarcerates innocent children that cross its border.” The empire is, as he noted, with all its unilateral actions since 2017, “the worst threat for world peace, human rights, and Mother Earth.”
As the Chinese revisionist leadership and DPRK leadership increase their ties, there is talk of a railway going from China into the DPRK, with the revisionists not letting up on supporting murderous sanctions on the Korean people. [17] This could complicate matters for the orange menace as it increases the leverage of Xi Jinping in the trade war between the U$ and China, with the Chinese restraining their criticism of the orange menace. This trade war, whether it leads to a shooting war or not, allows Xi (and the Chinese revisionists) to disrupt possible negotiations between the DPRK and U$. As Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, “what matters is how China and the US cooperate. Let competition drive cooperation,” showing they operate within the capitalist model. Let us not forget that Kim arrived on an Air China jet in Singapore, undoubtedly a symbolic move without question, showing that China “brought him there and back.”
The DPRK is not a Chinese colony. Rather, the DPRK decides its own policy, with Kim outmaneuvering the imperialists, with the U$ adopting the freeze-for-freeze policy, in the simple agreement on June 12 which did not have “any decisive or concrete details,” proposed by the Russians and Chinese, and more recently endorsed by the DPRK itself. Such independent policy has led the ROK has made some concessions even though their military remains wary. In a recent KCNA article describing the summit, it was clear that the Koreans were pursuing their own path, treating the U$ respectfully, while still holding a strong line. This independent policy was recently showcased in the president of the Presidium, the leading body of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), Kim Yong Nam, congratulating Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador upon his election as president of Mexico (by a landslide), saying that it is “an expression of the Mexican people’s trust and expectation,” while adding that he wished Obrador “good health and great success in his responsible work, expressing belief that the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries would develop onto a new higher stage in line with the aspiration and desire of the two peoples.” Whether Obrador can challenge existing capitalist orthodoxy is an open question, but the Mexican people got a long-needed change and social movements in the country can push Obrador to move the country in a progressive, even radical, direction. On the topic of the DPRK’s independent policy, one should also point out the favorable relations they hold with socially democratic Nicaragua, the secular socially democratic state of Syria, socially democratic Venezuela, Islamic nationalist Iran, socialist Cuba, and support for Palestinian liberation without question.
The former colonial master of Japan has been broadly left out of discussions, becoming a bystander, even though it will eventually have to conform. [18] The DPRK has said already that Japan will be ignored as long as it continues efforts to boost its military readiness and large-scale military drills, that the anti-DPRK policy of the government must be scrapped, and replaced with “sincerity toward Peace.” Other countries have been more positive. The Iranians, with Mohammad Bagher Nobakht of the Iranian government saying that “we are facing a man who revokes his signature while abroad,” who warned Kim of the U$ duplicity, were positive about the summit, with Iranian Ambassador to London, Hamid Baeidinejad saying that “one positive aspect of the agreement between the US and North Korea is that the possibility of war and military conflict between the two sides, escalated by Trump’s bellicose remarks, which could have affected South Korea, Japan and China, and had caused great concern, has now been reduced.” More specifically, the Japanese, ROK, and Chinese were pleased. But neo-cons like Marco Rubio, David Purdue, Brett Klinger (former CIA, Heritage Foundation), and conservative analyst Brit Hume were fuming while Lindsey Graham and Cory Gardner were more optimistic. Even the chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, Mac Thornberry, supports ending the war games, while he still supports a strong imperial presence in the ROK. The Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, Brian Schatz, Chris Murphy, and Steve Cohen, sided with the neo-cons, as one would expect.
It remains to be seen if future negotiations will focus on “eliminating Washington’s regional nuclear umbrella…[or] pulling US troops out of South Korea.” Even if this is the “beginning of a different sort of diplomatic process” as some say, even some bourgeois analysts grumble that “North Korea is not going to jump into our alliance network anytime soon, but the Singapore summit may give it the opportunity to move out of China’s orbit,” seeing a possible future ally of the empire, not realizing the interconnections of the DPRK and China or their shared history. [19] Then there’s the question of possible sanction relief, which the U$ seems to be holding out as a possibility but only once the DPRK unilaterally and completely disarm its nukes, which they aren’t prepared to do without major concessions by the imperialists first, a justified response. The DPRK wants to protect and expand the standard of living of the people within the country, but will not dismantle its nuclear industry since “nuclear technology can be used to generate electricity and is a prestige item for the North generally.” While it is hard for some to see “coherence in Trump’s bellicose policies towards Iran and North Korea,” the fact, as one analyst noted, is that “any increased popularity Trump would gain from a war now would invariably diminish by the time he’s up for reelection. Thus, for Trump, commencing war two years later, just before the presidential election, would make far more sense. Republicans, independents and even some Democrats would rally to the flag and be more likely to vote him back into office.” Furthermore, as Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, noted, the orange menace is not “causing chaos in the imperial Big House because he wants to hasten the demise of U.S. imperialism” but rather he is trying to “stamp his orange imprint on history,” not knowing what he does, while he aligns closely with the Zionists and Gulf autocrats.
I tend to disagree with Ford’s comment that the orange menace doesn’t know what he is doing. There seems to be precise calculations for what he is doing. Sure, he is trying to imprint on history, but his snap analysis, manifested by his comment in Canada that “they say you know you’re going to like somebody in the first five seconds – you ever hear of that one? Well, I think I’ll know very quickly whether or not something good is going to happen. I also think I’ll know whether it will happen fast” about Kim, adding that “I’ll be on a mission of peace. In my heart, we will be carrying the hearts of millions of people, people from all over the world. We have to get denuclearization, we have to get something going.”” While this is utter hogwash, there is rationality to his method. At times, the administration is just trying to push the envelope, while other times his statements serve as a distraction from pressing matters. It all fits within the framework of U$ imperialism which broadly continues on the path set by Bush II and Obama, with even further venom spewed toward Venezuela, Cuba (to a lesser extent), Russia, and China. And no, the summit between Kim and the orange menace, even with its antics of those like reactionary Dennis Rodman, was not a distraction from the meeting of some elites, like Henry Kissinger and 130 others, at Bilderberg. Rather, the bourgeois media would just not cover the Bilderberg meeting, regardless of whether the Kim-orange menace summit occurred. This isn’t because of some magic conspiracy, but rather because the summit was more jazzy, fitting with the bourgeois media model than a “boring” and secretive Bilderberg summit, as they would likely describe it.
What is in the cards in the coming days is a summit between Vladimir Putin and the orange menace on July 16 in Helsinki, which is already being panned by bourgeois media and their Russophobic allies here, there, and everywhere!. [20] This summit would undoubtedly be modeled the same way as the summit between Kim and the orange menace. In the process, anti-imperialists must push the U$ for concessions on reducing military pressure, while having no illusions about the Russians, who are nationalistic and wedded to capitalism, with their own bourgeoisie which is willing to work with the U$ as needed.
The specter of detente between the DPRK and U$ scares the liberal and neoconservative imperialists who would like a state of war on the Korean Peninsula, posing the DPRK as a “threat” to global humanity even though the murderous empire is the real threat. This is evident in the fact that this empire has over 266 times more nuclear weapons than the DPRK! [21] At the same time, those imperialists in the corner of the orange menace see this as an opportunity to “flip” the DPRK into the U$ imperial umbrella. What comes next is in part up to the DPRK and U$ negotiators, but can also be influenced by the proletariat in the DPRK, ROK, China, and Russia, along with long-standing movements such as the peace movement. In the end, we should remain critical while rejecting Orientalist propaganda aimed at the Koreans and not being dismissive of the detente, realizing the potential of a peaceful Korean Peninsula for those occupying it, those in the countries surrounding it, and the world at-large.
Notes
[1] In 2012, he also became the Chairman (called “First Secretary” from 2012 to 2016) of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission (called the National Defence Commission from 2012 to 2016), Chair of the Central Military Commission, and a member of the Politiburo’s presidium which is led by Kim Yong Chol.
[2] Uri Freedman, “America’s Moment of Truth With North Korea Is Coming,” The Atlantic, July 10, 2018; Reuters Staff, “North Korea says resolve for denuclearisation may falter after talks with U.S.: KCNA,” Reuters, July 7, 2018; Matthew Lee and Andrew Harnick, “North Korea Says Talks With Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Were ‘Regrettable’,” AP (reprinted by Time), July 7, 2018; Rozina Sabur, “Mike Pompeo arrives in Pyongyang to press for commitment to denuclearisation,” The Telegraph, July 6, 2018; Hyonshee Shin and David Brunnstrom, “North Korea slams ‘gangster-like’ U.S. demands after satisfied Pompeo leaves,” Reuters, July 6, 2018.
[3] Wang Peng, “US move to suspend military drills with South Korea a calculated move,” Global Times, June 19, 2018; “President Trump Says North Korea Has Returned the Remains of 200 U.S. Soldiers,” Time, June 21, 2018.
[4] Stefan Becket, “Bolton says U.S. could dismantle North Korean arsenal “within a year”,” CBS News, July 1, 2018; Elise Labott, “US and North Korean officials met Sunday to discuss implementing agreement between countries,” CNN, July 1, 2018; Mike Allen, “Scoop: Trump may hold Round 2 with Kim Jong-un in NYC,” Axios, July 2, 2018; Ian Kullgren, “Bolton downplays North Korea weapons report,” Politico, July 2, 2018; Julia ManChester, “Pence on Trump-Kim summit: ‘It takes courage to make peace’,” The Hill, June 13, 2018; Phil Stewart, “U.S. to give North Korea post-summit timeline with ‘asks’ soon: official,” Reuters, June 24, 2018; “Trump: North Korea ‘total denuclearization’ started; officials see no new moves,” Reuters, Jun 22, 2018. In his interview with ABC News, as noted in the June 12 article titled “President Trump sits down with George Stephanopoulos: TRANSCRIPT,” he said that “we have the framework of getting ready to denuclearize North Korea…We’re going to work with South Korea. We’re going to work with Japan. We’re going to work with China…They’re [Korean] gonna start immediately. They really already started. They blew up a site, which was the real deal site that was their big site, they’ve blown it up…We stopped playing those war games that cost us a fortune…they’re very expensive…His [Kim’s] country does love him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor. They’re gonna put it together, and I think they’re going to end up with a very strong country, and a country which has people — that they’re so hard working, so industrious…We’re starting from scratch. We’re starting right now, and we have to get rid of those nuclear weapons…there are reasons he [Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il] didn’t because he was let down by the United States, but that’s irrelevant…In the past we’ve tried, but it never worked out and it never did work out. And it was embarrassing actually to the United states and to our leadership…He trusts me, I believe, I really do. I mean, he said openly, and he said it to a couple of reporters that were with him that he knows that no other president ever could have done this.”
[5] Morgan Gsalder, “Trump: North Koreans love Kim,” The Hill, June 12, 2018; Collum Borchers, “Trump’s refreshing admission that he felt ‘foolish’ when taunting Kim Jong Un,” Washington Post, June 13, 2018; AP, “Trump flips on North Korea, declaring country still an ‘extraordinary threat’,” The Guardian, June 23, 2018; “Trump touts ‘great chemistry’ with Kim Jong Un,” AOL News, June 24, 2018; Lisa de Moraes, “Donald Trump Defends “Great Negotiator” Kim Jong Un Who Bret Baier Calls “Killer”,” Deadline, June 13, 2018; Steve Holland, “Trump defends policies on border, North Korea in visit to Las Vegas,” Reuters, June 23, 2018. Even the orange menace has doubted, there will problems of this strategy, saying “I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse” as noted in Dylan Stableford’s June 13th article in Yahoo! News titled “’Sleep well tonight!’: Trump promptly declares North Korea no longer a nuclear threat.”
[6] Stefan Becket, “Bolton says U.S. could dismantle North Korean arsenal “within a year”,” CBS News, July 1, 2018; Ian Kullgren, “Bolton downplays North Korea weapons report,” Politico, July 2, 2018; Krishnadev Calamur, “No One Knows What Kim Jong Un Promised Trump,” The Atlantic, Jul 2, 2018; “Date set for reunions of war-separated Korean families,” DW, June 22, 2018.
[7] Tom O’Connor, “North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Wants to ‘Completely Eliminate Manual Labor’,” Newsweek, July 2, 2018; Kim Myong-song, “Kim Jong-un Visits Chinese Border Region,” Chosun, July 2, 2018; “Kim Jong Un visits cosmetics factory in special economic zone near border with China,” Straits Times, July 1, 2018.
[8] Kanga Kong, “North Korea Ramps Up Nuclear Effort Weeks After Trump Summit,” Bloomberg, July 2, 2018; Courtney Kube, Ken Dilanian and Carol E. Lee, “North Korea has increased nuclear production at secret sites, say U.S. officials,” NBC News, June 29, 2018; Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, “North Korea working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program, U.S. officials say,” Washington Post, June 30, 2018; Jonathan Cheng, “North Korea Expands Key Missile-Manufacturing Plant,” Wall Street Journal, Jul 1, 2018; Frank V. Pabian, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. and Jack Liu, “Infrastructure Improvements at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility,” 38 North, June 26, 2018.
[9] Kate Simmons, “Creator of the Trump-Kim ‘Movie Trailer’ Steps Forward,” Newser, June 13, 2018; Alana Abramson, “National Security Council Says It Created That Video President Trump Showed Kim Jong Un Before the North Korean Summit,” Time, June 13, 2018; Euan McKirdy, “Destiny Pictures founder claims mistaken identity, distances himself from Trump video,” CNN, June 14, 2018; Julian Borger, “’Harebrained’: National Security Council owns up to widely derided Trump video,” The Guardian, June 13, 2018; Tim Hains, “Scott Adams: Trump Video Message To Kim “Might Be The Best Thing Anybody Ever Did In A Negotiation, Period”,” RealClearPolitics, June 12, 2018; John Hindertaker, “The Kim Destiny Pictures Video: Brilliant or Stupid? [Updated],” PowerLine, June 13, 2018.
[10] Leong Wai Kit, “’I come back very impressed’: Vivian Balakrishnan on trip to North Korea,” Channel News Asia, June 9, 2018.
[11] “Bulk of S. Korean trading firms want to take part in N. Korea projects: poll,” Yonhap News, June 17, 2018; “Parliament sees more bill proposals for inter-Korean economic exchanges amid warming ties,” Yonhap News, June 10, 2018.
[12] “Inside North Korea: Kiwi’s ‘surreal’ trip to the secretive nation,” New Zealand Herald, June 25, 2018; Ben Westcott and Stella Ko, “North Korea state media airs unseen video from Trump-Kim summit,” CNN, June 14, 2018.
[13] “Russia, South Korea to discuss economic cooperation, Korean Peninsula issue,” Xinhua, June 20, 2018; “Putin tells Moon: We’ll keep working for Korean peninsula peace,” Reuters, June 22, 2018.
[14] Cynthia Kim and Christian Shepard, “North Korea seen looking to China, not U.S., for help in any economic transformation,” Reuters, Jun 10, 2018; Cao Siqi, “North Korean cosmetics firm gains attention from Kim’s factory visit,” Global Times, Jul 3, 2018.
[15] Andreas Illmer, “North Korean propaganda changes its tune,” BBC News, June 23, 2018; Eileen AJ Connolly, “North Korea erasing most anti-US propaganda,” New York Post, Jun 23, 2018; “North Korea to erase anti-U.S. propaganda,” BlackListed News, June 24, 2018; “North Korea media tone down anti-US rhetoric,” Financial Times, accessed June 25, 2018; Cha Song Ho and Eric Talmadge, “In sign of detente, North Korea skips annual anti-US rally,” Washington Post (reprinted from AP), June 25, 2018.
[16] Ankit Panda, “Trump’s Singapore Summit Was a Bust—for the U.S.,” The Daily Beast, June 12, 2018; “The Guardian view on Trump in Singapore: a huge win – for North Korea,” The Guardian, June 12, 2018; William Rivers Pitt, “Winning the News Cycle: Trump’s Made-for-TV Singapore Summit,” Truthout, reprinted in Information Clearing House, June 13, 2018; “Trump Dismisses Kim Jong Un’s Atrocities: ‘He’s a Tough Guy’,” The Daily Beast, June 14, 2018.
[17] Liu Caiyu, “North Korea deserves trust as Kim shows resolution on China trip: analysts,” Global Times, June 21, 2018; “As Kim Visits China, Xi Flaunts Bargaining Chip in Trade Dispute,” Bloomberg News, June 19, 2018; Deng Xiaoci, “FM urges US to cooperate on trade, N.Korea as Pompeo visits China,” Global Times, June 14, 2018; Moon of Alabama, “The Real Results Of The Trump-Kim Summit – Freeze For Freeze (And Some Amusement),” Information Clearing House, June 14, 2018.
[18] Akira Kimura, “Trump-Kim summit leaves Japan struggling with outdated strategy,” Global Times, Jun 14, 2018; “North Korea says to ignore Japan until it scraps military drills, other measures,” Reuters, June 25, 2018; “Iran spokesman warns Kim about nuclear agreement with Trump,” AP, June 12, 2018; Julia Manchester, “Dems rip Trump concessions, ’embarrassing’ rhetoric with Kim,” The Hill, June 12, 2018; Brian Murphy and Shibani Mahtani, “With some reservations, East Asian countries welcome the Trump-Kim summit,” Washington Post, June 12, 2018; Ellen Mitchell, “GOP senator ‘troubled’ by Trump announcement to halt US-South Korean military drills,” The Hill, June 12, 2018; Paul LeBlanc, “Fox News Analyst Calls Trump Handshake With ‘Thug’ Kim Jong Un ‘Disconcerting’,” Newsweek, June 12, 2018; Eli Stokols, “Republicans remain skeptical despite Trump’s boasts of breakthrough with North Korea’s Kim,” LA Times, June 12, 2018; Ellen Mitchell, “House GOP chairman backs Trump’s move to halt military exercises with South Korea,” The Hill, June 13, 2018.
[19] Christopher Steintz, “The Trump-Kim summit advances a unique rapprochement,” The Hill, June 13, 2018; “Pompeo: No Sanctions Relief for Pyongyang Until After Denuclearization,” The Daily Beast, June 13, 2018; Sharon Marris, “Confusion As North Korea Says US Will Lift Sanctions,” Information Clearing House (reprinted from Sky), June 13, 2018; Jeffrey Sommers and Peter Paik, “A Blow to Interventionists, as US and North Korea Move Toward Peace,” CounterPunch, June 13, 2018; Alana Abramson, “President Trump Says It’ll Take Him 1 Minute to Figure Out If Kim Jong Un Is Serious About Peace,” Time, June 9, 2018; Matt Agorist, “As Media Hypes Trump-Kim Summit, The Real Rulers of the World are Secretly Meeting at Bilderberg,” Activist Post, June 7, 2018; Steve Geimann, “Dennis Rodman to Cheer ‘My Friends’ Trump and Kim in Singapore,” Bloomberg News, June 9, 2018; Jennifer Epstein, Toluse Olorunnipa, and Jennifer Jacobs, “Trump, Kim Planning One-on-One Talk at Start of Summit,” Bloomberg News, June 9, 2018.
[20]John Wagner, Anton Troianovski and Philip Rucker, “Trump and Putin will meet July 16 in Helsinki, Washington and Moscow announce,” Washington Post, June 28, 2018; Philip Giraldi, “Will the Real Donald Trump Please Stand Up?,” Unz Review (reprinted in Information Clearing House), Jun 21, 2018.
[21] This comes from information compiled by the Arms Control Association in June 2018, and the Ploughshares Fund in July 2018. If we include all nuclear weapons of the U$, including the 2,500 said to be “retired” but are still intact, then the U$ has over 436 times as many nuclear weapons, having 6,500 while the DPRK, according to a January 2018 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “have produced sufficient fissile material to build 30 to 60 nuclear weapons, and that it might possibly have assembled 10 to 20 warheads,” adding at the end of the article that “as far as we can assess…North Korea might have produced sufficient fissile material to hypothetically build 30 to 60 nuclear weapons (if it used all the material), but only assembled perhaps 10 to 20 warheads, if even that many.” This is where the number of 15 comes from the Arms Control Association and Ploughshares Fund, which seem to have averaged the numbers 10 and 20 together. As such, the nuclear superiority of the murderous empire might be even more! Both of these organizations are undoubtedly bourgeois without question, but even using their numbers it shows nuclear superiority of the murderous empire. The amount of nukes held by the DPRK is small, as Russia and the U$ hold 92% of the world’s nukes! So the complaints of the imperialists, and even revisionists like those in Laos, China, and Vietnam on this topic is laughable, as they do not recognize this glaring disparity!
A painting at the October Liberation War Panorama Hall (in Damascus) by Mansudae artists representing Syria’s war against the Zionist state in 1973 (Yom Kippur War/October liberation war), showing “Hafez al-Assad flanked by Syrians after the war.” The war was very brutal, (including strikes on Syrian army buildings “in the heart of Damascus” and “accidentally” a “nearby Soviet cultural center”) but perhaps they were celebrating they could hold their own against the Zionists? The U$ State Department says that “the 1973 war…ended in an Israeli victory, but at great cost to the United States” while the Syrians describe it as a “near victory.” Taking all of this, the above painting is meant to celebrate that “the Syrian army fought against the Israeli occupation…a leading, brave army and a people that embraces it and supports its sacrifices and victories” as a play in 2013 drawing parallels between the current conflict there and the October Liberation War.
This article was revised, with an eye to self-criticism, on August 23, 2019.
In 1963 (Juche 52), the Arab Socialist Party, more accurately called the Ba’athists, came to power. However, it was not until 1970 (Juche 59) that the first of the Assads came to power. Hafiz Assad would remain the country’s president from 1971 (Juche 60) to 2000 (Juche 89), followed by Abdul Halim Khaddam as an interim president, and Bashar Al-Assad after him from 2000 (Juche 89) to the present-day. As I wrote out in my previous post, Syria was (and is) undeniably a socially democratic state, especially after the Western-friendly reforms in the 2000s, making the IMF smile with glee, which was only partially reversed as a result of the imperialist attack on Syria beginning in 2011. Through all of this, the DPRK was an ally of the government, which, you could say, engaged in a national liberation struggle to oust imperialists, although this was not totally the case as the Ba’athists engaged in bourgeois Arab nationalism. Still, the role of the DPRK, which has, like Cuba, sent doctors abroad to countries such as Syria, is worth noting.
On July 25, 1966 (Juche 55), the DPRK and Syria established diplomatic relations. This was celebrated in 2016 (Juche 105), in a solidarity meeting at the Chollima Hall of Culture in August, as “an epochal event and landmark in boosting the bilateral cooperative relations and the friendly ties between the peoples of the two countries.” [1] The same article in Rodong Sinmun described the relations as one between comradely states (bolding is my emphasis):
The DPRK and Syria have waged a common struggle in the same trench of the anti-imperialist struggle to protect the sovereignty of the countries and global peace and security. This is a clear proof that the bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation forged and cultivated by the great leaders with much care remain very strong. Though the old generation and century are replaced by the new ones, the DPRK-Syria friendship is steadily growing stronger true to the behests of the great preceding leaders. The Syrian people are eal victory of the cause of the Juche revolution by upholding the Party’s Songun politics and line of simultaneously developing the two fronts in defiance of the U.S. imperialists’ moves to stifle the DPRK. The service personnel and people of the DPRK send invariable support and firm solidarity to the Syrian government and pxpressing positive support and solidarity for the service personnel and people of the DPRK in the struggle to bring earlier the final veople in their just struggle to beat back the invasion and terrorism by the hostile forces at home and abroad and ensure the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. The DPRK government and people will as ever stand by the Syrian government and people in their joint struggle for independence against imperialism.”
Bourgeois scholars even recognize the connection, declaring that “since the 1960s, North Korea has sold arms and equipment to Syria, and provided other sorts of military-to-military assistance, such as training and technical assistance” (while spuriously claiming that the DPRK helped develop “Syria’s chemical weapons and ballistic missile programs”), the two countries have a “long history of military cooperation…[that] goes back many years,” and that their connections are “far deeper and more entrenched than many Middle East analysts realize.” [2] They also state that Syria is one of the few countries in the world which “established diplomatic relations with North Korea, but not South Korea” in the post-Cold War environment.
A major watershed moment in 1relations between the two countries was the sending of a contingent of 25 pilots from the DPRK to Syria during the war of 1967 (Juche 56), assisting the Syrian air force by defending the “airspace over Damascus,” called the “Six Day War” or called “an-Naksah,” meaning “the setback” in Arabic. [3] This was a war fought, between June 5 and 10th, between a coalition of Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, which were assisted by Algeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, fighting against the Zionists for 132 hours and 30 minutes, a little less than 6 days, with the war fought on the Syrian side for the whole time, and shorter on the Egyptian and Jordanian fronts. While Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of the Zionist state feared that “unless the US and USSR are coming much nearer to each other and stop sending arms to the Arabs – I am afraid there will be no peace in the Middle East,” with “peace” meaning room for Zionist expansion, the result of the war was large land grabs by the Zionists in the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula (which they gave up), the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, with claims the war showed “Arab weakness” and Zionist strength (leading to Zionist “pride”), claimed “anti-Jewish” behavior in Arab countries after the war, and others claiming that the Soviets “instigated” the war, which is also questionable. [4] With this, it is worth remembering that before the war, on May 29, the commander of the UN force noted that “two Israel[i] aircraft violated…[the] air space over Gaza” of the United Arab Republic (renamed the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1971), with skirmished between all involved, the Egyptians arguing that the Zionists committed “treacherous aggression” and were trying to block the Suez canal. In November 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 242, calling for the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and the termination “of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” among other aspects.
Via a Norwegian media house called LookLex. Used under the fair use requirements of U.S. Copyright law.
What about the war itself, which has a dedicated chapter in the history of the U$ State Department? For one, some advisers admitted that “Israelis had jumped off on minimum provocation in a very purposeful effort to deal with air power and then go after the UAR armies…assembled in the Sinai” meaning that the Zionists struck first in an effort of aggression (one document says “this is an Israeli initiative“), with LBJ even seeing the war was “a mistake by the Israelis,” telling them that directly. Other documents note that the Soviets wanted hostilities to cease, putting to bed the myth that they “instigated” hostilities by siding with/supporting the Arabs, while noting that Zionist aggression had occurred. As an assessment at the end of the war of Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East acknolwedged, “we do not believe that the Soviets planned or initiated the Middle Eastern crisis…[they] were developments which the USSR did not desire, initially did not foresee and, later, could not forestall.”
The cables to show that the murderous empire sided with the Zionists, with comment by Walt Rostow that “so long as the war is roughly moving in Israeli’s favor, I believe we can shorten it by getting at the substance of a settlement at the earliest possible time,” ringing their hands about “Arab provocations,” and efforts to split the states against the Zionists apart, while they called for “restraint” and were surprised that the Soviets called them participators in the Zionist aggression, which was evident, with support for Zionist “self-defense” as another example, without a doubt,while they denied direct involvement. With the imperialist warplanes staying away, there was also concern about the “large American and foreign community in Jordan,” with Arabs in the UN feeling “that the USSR had let them down,” push for the Johnson administration to be more Zionist, with some saying that “the continuing delay in convening the Security Council is very much in Israel’s interest so long as Israeli forces continue their spectacular military success…The delay serves Israel, damages the Soviet position and still further discredits the United Nations” which almost sounds like an endorsement, declaration that “the destruction of Nasser as an effective Pan-Arabist is fundamental to our hopes for gaining a reasonably quick settlement…with Nasser remove…the Middle East would probably be relieved…of the intense and effective extremism that has been constantly stimulated by the Nasser charisma and the UAR political propaganda apparatus,” and saying that “Israel has no intention of going on to Damascus. It is trying physically to silence the Syrian gun positions but they are well emplaced, almost impervious to air attacks, and have to be taken by ground assault.” The empire was concerned, that after the war, “to the average Arab there is no doubt that we [the empire] would by this time be militarily involved on Israel’s side if she were being attacked by Arabs as she is now attacking them” and said that “the Syrians reluctantly had agreed to a cease fire only after the Israelis had done so. The Syrians then engaged in a wholesale destruction of the Israeli side of the line,” with the Soviets breaking diplomatic relations with the Zionists after the war.
In a three-part interview, Norman Finkelstein talked with with the progressive news outlet, The Real News, about the 1967 war. In the first part he argued the “the big question for Israel in 1967 was not whether they were going to prevail over the Arabs…Their big concern was, how would the US react?”with the Zionists knowing that “Nasser wasn’t going to attack” and the “the war was over, really literally, it was over in about six minutes” since after the Zionists “flattened the Egyptian Air Force…then the ground troops had no air support. It was over. The only reason it lasted six days is because they wanted to grab territory,” with the Soviets warning the nearby Arab states that the Zionists would attack. Additionally, Finkelstein argued that “Palestinian commando raids, mostly supported by the Syrian regime” occurred because “of the Israeli land grab in the demilitarized zones” with uncalled for aggression by the Zionists, with the U$ not opposing the aggression but not supporting it openly. In the second part he argued that the war “knocked out Nasser, knocked out radical Arab nationalism, finished it off, which the U.S. wanted to finish off also,” adding that after the war the Zionists popularized the “image of the Jewish fighter” with the Zionists shocked by the war in 1973 (Juche 62) because “had internalized all the racist [thinking that] Arabs can’t fight…[and] didn’t believe that the Arabs can mount an attack on Israel.” In the final part of the interview, Finkelstein argued that the U$-backed “peace process” never meant to end Zionist occupation of illegally occupied territories of the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza.
Assistance by the DPRK during the war was followed by conventional weapons such as “rifles, artillery, mortars, machine guns, ammunition, bombs, armored vehicles, anti-tank weapons, and multiple rocket launchers” given to the Syrian military by the Koreans over the years, which bourgeois analysts sneer at without question. What one Spanish-speaking comrade named Fekerfanta, said is relevant here [5]:
Since the creation of present-day Syria, North Korea has shown great solidarity with the country, especially on two issues of great importance, the first, the development of agriculture, lending all its heavy agricultural technology on the state lands of Syria…and in the development of energy.
In 1970 (Juche 59), the DPRK showed its continual strong support for Syria. 200 tank crewmen, 140 missile technicians, and 53 pilots were dispatched to the country. [6] Around the same time, conventional weapons such as rifles, artillery, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and tanks were supplied to Syria. In 1973 (Juche 62), 30 pilots from the DPRK participated in the October (liberation) war, which is called the “Yom Kippur War” by the Zionists, led by Arab states of Syria and Egypt, with the latter states supported by expeditionary forces of the Saudis, East Germans, Pakistanis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, and Cubans, while being supported by the Soviets. These pilots aided the Syrian air force, likely directly fighting the Zionists as they flew Egyptian and Syrian jet fighters, with KPA (Korean People’s Army) Chief of General Staff Kim Kyok Sik coordinating this assistance. [7] Sik would later help coordinate “post-war rehabilitation of Syrian armed forces in the mid-1970s” which included the sending of 40 MiG pilots and 75 air force instructors in 1975 (Juche 64) and 1976 (Juche 65), with these individuals providing training, along with sending its artisans to “build a commemorative museum in Cairo” and selling 300 “recoilless guns” to Syria in 1978 (Juche 67), to give an example. Into the 1980s, the DPRK provided Syria with “military instructors and arms” including air defense systems, and also “helped upgrade hundreds of Soviet-made T-54 and T-55 tanks in service with the Syrian Arab Army,” to give some examples.
Painting originally from www.greywoolknickers.net, re-posted by NK News, shows Hafez Al-Assad and Kim Il Sung. At the October Liberation War Panorama Hall in Damascus.
Such acts of solidarity with Syria are not surprising. As a top adviser to the ROK president, Moon Chung-in, noted in 2007 (Juche 96), the DPRK “sees Israel as an invader and has been willing to support military action by the Arabs that promotes Palestinian liberation. Solidarity between North Korea and the Arabs has been bolstered by maintaining security relations, which go far beyond diplomatic rhetoric.” [8] This should be celebrated, rather than condemned, which the Zionists want us to do.
In the 1980s, the DPRK continued its strong support. During the 1982 (Juche 71) uprising of Islamic reactionaries, some claimed they operated “122 millimeter truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers.” [9] Whether that was true or not, even bourgeois analysts have to admit that special operations forces were deployed to Syria to “help train the conventional Syrian Arab Army and its allies in insurgency tactics,” especially during the Lebanese Civil War in 1982 (Juche 71), with 25 of them reportedly killed by the IDF, and reportedly varying military instructors were sent through the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The U$ Intelligence community acknowledged this in their June 1985 (Juche 74) Special National Intelligence Assessment saying that the DPRK had an unknown number of advisers and gave the country gunpowder, claiming that “most military shipments to PLO routed through Syria,” which, if true, would be another effort of support for Palestinian liberation. This was, as some acknowledged, part of a “mutually beneficial relationship” between the DPRK and Syria, which included some Syrian military officers educated at educational institutions inside the DPRK, such as Kim Il Sung Military University which was continued until 2013 (Juche 102), and likely is still an occurrence. Reportedly, Kim Jong Il even followed, “with interest” the careers of several general officers from Syria who has graduated from the university.
Then, we come to the 1990s. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Juche 80), both Syria and the DPRK, which were not “client states” as anti-communist analysts claim but were independent countries, were hit by a loss of “strategic support that the Soviets had provided them,” forcing both to reportedly “abandon the dream of “strategic parity” with Seoul and Tel Aviv,” adopting a formula of “strategic deterrence” instead. [10] Additionally, as the DPRK refused overtures by the Zionists to “establish diplomatic relations,” the Syrians “rejected past ROK attempts to normalize relations.” As such, the two countries continued to support each other, with Pak Ui Chun,the foreign minister of the DPRK, serving as the Ambassador of the DPRK to Syria in the early 1990s, with secretaries of the WPK, Kim Yang Gon and Kim Yong Il, receiving senior officials from Syria on “numerous occasions.” The relations were so strong that in January 1997 (Juche 86), Hafez al-Assad, President of Syria, stated that the position of Syria “recognizing only the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the Korean peninsula” would be unchanged. A few years later, in October 1999 (Juche 88), the still-standing October Liberation War Panorama Hall opened in Syria. Within it is the Tishreen War Panorama (finished in 1998), titled officially “Operations for the liberation of Kunaittiru City during the October War,” which measures 15 x 125 m, which was painted by varying artists of the Mansudae Art Studio: O Gwang Ho, Ri Gap ll, Ham Gwan Sop, Ham Gun Nam, Ju Gwang Hyok, Yun Hong Chol, Ri Yong Nam, Jang Chi Bok, Hong Gyong Nam, Ri Jong Gap, An Dok Yong, Jang Chol Ho, Im Gon ll, Ri Jae Su, Choi Song Sik, Mun Su Chol, Cha Yo Sang, Mun Dok Gi, Jang Sung Ho, and Jin Chol Jin.
As the new century began, the relationship remained strong. In June 2000 (Juche 89) and July 2002 (Juche 91), Kim Yong Yam, President of the SPA Presidium, traveled to Syria, just has he had done in July 1992 as Foreign Minister, showing that it is undoubtedly true that “many senior DPRK leaders have either visited Syria over the past two decades or worked closely with its government” as was written in 2013. [11] In January 2002 (Juche 91), in a measure of solidarity, vice-minister of the Syrian foreign ministry, Suleyman Hadad, went to Pyongyang and told the vice-President of the SPA Presidium, Yang Hyong Sop, that “the Syrian people would stand firm on the side of the heroic Korean people” with a statement issued not long after by the Syrian government saying the U$ was the real “axis of evil” and expressed “full support for the DPRK’s stance.” This shows that the anti-imperialist positions go both ways. The following year, 2003 (Juche 92), after Syria was accused of “providing Saddam’s armies with military supplies, following the US invasion of Iraq,” Rodong Sinmun urged the U$ to stop its “anti-Syria campaign” and later that year the government of the DPRK “dismissed the U.S. decision [to impose sanctions on Syria] as a product of its desperate moves to interfere in the internal affairs of Syria and destroy its economic system from A to Z.” Also that year, after the DPRK announced it was withdrawing from the Non-Profileration Treaty (NPT), a leading member of the Syrian Arab Socialist Baath Party, Wolid Hamdoun, who headed the Syrian Arab-Korea Friendship Association, and the director general of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Gaji al Dib, told the ambassador of the DPRK that “Syria and the DPRK are standing in the same trench of the struggle against the U.S. vicious and aggressive offensives and expressed full support to the principled stand and decision of People’s Korea.” [12]
In the years to come, the relationship remained a strong one. In 2004 (Juche 93), some claimed that a “a dozen Syrian technicians” were killed in an explosion at the train station in Ryongchon, near the Chinese border which they thought was an apparent assassination attempt to kill Kim Jong Il. [13] Whether that happened, the fact is that this shows a strong relationship. Then there’s the famed military strike in September 2007 (Juche 96) by the Zionists, which they have never officially confirmed. In this act of military aggression, which they called “Operation Orchard,” the Zionists dropped 17 tons of explosives on a supposed “secret nuclear reactor” in Syria, near Al Kibar, reportedly killing 10 technicians from the DPRK, with claims that the latter helped build and/or supply this supposed “gas-cooled, graphite-moderated” reactor (the IAEA said it “appeared” to look like a reactor which isn’t reassuring), which some claimed looked like the reactor in Yongbyong. [14] While this incident is broadly still shrouded in mystery, it does seem evident that the strike happened, although it cannot be confirmed if they hit a nuclear reactor or another building as the accounts of the incident usually come from sources favorable to Zionists, and that it was green-lighted by the U$, with Mossad reportedly breaking into the “Vienna home of Syria’s Atomic Agency director,” finding photos of the building which reportedly “showed North Korean workers in the facility,” with these findings reportedly confirmed by the U$ intelligence community. If it really was a reactor, then this was not “one of the greatest acts of nuclear proliferation in history” as Zionists claimed, but was rather an act of cowardly aggression, showing that the Zionists were afraid their nuclear deterrent would be ruined. The Spanish-speaking comrade named Fekerfanta, who I mentioned earlier, accepts that it was a nuclear reactor, but what he writes is worth repeating [15]:
The story is simple, Syria was building a nuclear power plant with the help of North Korea. This, it seems, did not please Israel very much, so with US authorization, it launched an air strike on Syrian sovereign land, destroying the power station. In this attack, 10 North Korean workers died. Imagine if it had been the other way around, if North Korea had bombed a nuclear facility in another country, the one that had been set up, right?
That is something the DPRK haters don’t consider. Such arguments which put the situation in a different context is always an important way of debunking lies about countries which are under attack by imperialists.
Ambassador of Syria to the DPRK, Tammam Sulaiman, with his wife, Isis, in Pyongyang. Photo by Tammam Sulaiman, published by NK News, date unknown, likely sometime after 2013, as that’s when he began as ambassador and moved to Pyongyang.
Fast forward to 2010 (Juche 99). That year, the foreign minister of the Zionist state, Avigdor Lieberman, declared, when visiting Japan in May that Iran, Syria, and the DPRK were an “axis of evil” (echoing Bush II’s old rhetoric), declaring that they “pose the biggest threat to world security because they are building and spreading weapons of mass destruction.” This was coupled with an upon that year published in a Yale University comment blog, declaring that “to prevent further proliferation, North Korea’s activities need to be exposed, penalized, and disrupted.” [16] Of course, the latter is what the imperialists want without question. The former could more accurately be applied to the U$ since it is the largest arms dealer in the world. With that, some still have the galls to call for gun control, while this racket remained unchecked!
In 2011 (Juche 100), the situation changed. The imperialist attack on Syria began. You could say that the protests had “good roots” originally, but that isn’t even assured. What is clear is that the DPRK replenished the lost equipment of the Syrian government with T-55 tanks, “trucks, RPGs and shoulder-fired missiles,” if one believes the varied claims in bourgeois media. [17] If one discounts these, it is still the fact that Kim Jong Un “joined the Assad government [not literally] to actively fight against the anti-government rebels in Syria, many of whom are affiliated with Al-Qaeda,” with the DPRK’s government saying it is a duty to “help a legitimate sovereign government in the fight against international terrorism in Syria.”
Then we come to 2013 (Juche 102). That year, Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria, cited the war in Korea, along with other aggression in “Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq” as the mainstay of U$ policy, while also recalling that “American policy in South America where it instigated military coups and caused the deaths of millions; tens of governments were toppled as a result of American policy.” In terms of the relationship between the two countries, in August, Kim Yong Nam met Syrian Prime Minister Wael Nader Al Halqi in Tehran, with the latter saying “Syria regards the DPRK as a military power with tremendous military force and a country of comrades-in-arms struggling against the common enemy” while others recognized that the DPRK has time and time again “expressed its support for Syria, condemning foreign forces and calling for the expulsion of the country.” [18] That same year there were claims by the notoriously unreliable Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), an one-person outfit of Rami Adel Rahman founded in May 2006 which is based in the “two-bedroom Coventry home of Syrian immigrant Rami Abdel Rahman” with unknown sources on the “ground in Syria” whose “director” admits that he is “not a media organization,” that officers of the DPRK who spoke Arabic were deployed around Aleppo, reportedly playing a key role in the battle for Qusair, a symbolic victory for the government, while others ringed their hands with false claims about they claimed was a “Pyongyang-Damascus axis.” It should give comrades pause that KCNA is saying that this is misinformation floated by foreign media, meaning that one should not accept this just because it is in bourgeois media, not at all.Even if you took from Kim Jong Un’s meeting with a Syrian government delegation that year that the DPRK would support Syria, which is the only “Mediterranean nation to maintain diplomatic relations with North Korea without formally recognizing the South,” or supposedly “carefully read” the denial by the DPRK foreign ministry to think that “North Korean arms and military advisors may indeed be engaged on the battlefields of the Syrian civil war,” it is better to stick with the facts, not unsubstantiated claims. As such, it is clear that Syria and the DPRK support each other, with Kim Jong Un exchanging “personal letters on ten different occasions,” more than any other leader of a foreign country, including the Chinese! Both countries face a “an acute security dilemma” as they work to force foreign troops out of areas which are their homelands, with both countries with a “long history of extensive bilateral military-to-military ties.”
“Activities of the 9th session of the Syrian-DPRK joint economic committee kicked off Wednesday…The minister hailed the stances of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in support of just Arab causes and its support to the people in Syria in its battle against terrorism. DPRK Minister of Foreign Trade…Ri Ryong Nam expressed readiness to help in economic and industrial projects and bolstering bilateral relations. He affirmed that the Syrian people will be victorious in the battle against terrorism despite the US conspiracies.”- SANA, Jun 2014
In 2014 (Juche 103) relations were strengthened without a doubt. That year, Syria asked the DPRK to “help monitor its presidential elections” which they probably thought of as an honor, as this is an important duty for any country. [19] Also, the DPRK was one of the 20 countries which urged the “independent international commission of inquiry on human rights in Syria” probe into “grave human rights violations committed by terrorists in Syria.” Also, the ambassador of the DPRK, Jang Myong Ho, to Syria, expressed that he was “confident the Syrian people and army will achieve stability and security in the country,” the Syrian Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Mohammad Amer al-Mardini, discussed, with Jang Myong Ho, possible “cooperation prospects in higher education and scientific research,” and Syrian Prime Minister, Dr. Wael al-Halaqi, said that both of their countries have been “standing up to the US, imperialism, and Zionism for decades, facing attempts to control them, destabilize them, and interfere in their internal affairs.” Additionally, apart from the minister of the DPRK received by Bashar Al-Assad himself, receiving a delegation from the DPRK and accepting the credentials of the ambassador, there were discussions about cooperation in varying areas, including in agriculture, there were calls to bolster economic ties between the two countries, and the signing of various agreements. With that, the sentiment of common solidarity was expressed.
We then get to 2015 (Juche 104). Apart from publishing a timeline that listed September 9th as the day in 1948 (Juche 37) that the DPRK was founded, or the day in 1973 (Juche 62) that Cuba cut “diplomatic relations with the Israeli occupation,” Syria dedicated a park in Damascus to Kim Il Sung in September. [20] The park, which is 9,000-square-metres, lies “in the southwestern Damascus district of Kafr Souseh,” with the ceremony to name the park held on the 70th anniversary of the formation of the WPK and the DPRK, with Syrian officials praising Kim Il Sung and the government of the DPRK. At the ceremony where the park was opened, which was accompanied by a monument to Kim Il Sung, a member of the Al-Baath Arab Socialist Party and had of the Syrian-Korean friendship association, Fairouz Moussa, spoke about the relations between the two countries, as did Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister of Syria, Fayssal Mikdad, and the Ambassador of the DPRK in Damascus, Jang Myong Ho. The same year, the DPRK supported Syria’s fight against terrorism, while Syria affirmed “support for peacefully settling the situation on the [Korean] peninsula and keeping away the specter of war that jeopardizes regional and international peace and security,” voiced support for the statement of the DPRK, Bashar Al-Assad emphasizing that Syria and the DPRK “are being targeted because they are among those few countries which enjoy real independence and because they stand in one ditch against the very enemy that seeks to change the national identity of their peoples,” Assad naming Tammam Ahmad Suleiman as “Syria’s ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)” and Syria congratulating Cuba on reaching an “agreement with the United States that lifts the blockade imposed on it,” while renewing he call to “lift and stop all unilateral coercive measures imposed on Syria and the peoples of other countries such as DPRK, Venezuela and Belarus.”
In a great rebuttal of the claim that Cuban or DPRK troops were in the country, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said in an interview with the Syrian Ikhbariya TV, that “Cuban or North Korean forces [are not] on the Syrian soil” because “Russia’s presence is more than sufficient.” This is probably the best rebuttal of such lies. Additionally, a minister of the DPRK was received, economic support of the latter of Syria was discussed, and Syria’s support of the DPRK was also emphasized. Additionally, there were calls to enhance youth ties, have a program for cultural cooperation, and have stronger agricultural cooperationbetween the two countries. This all goes back to the idea that both countries have a common enemy, which can be countered with stronger relations, which is undeniably the case.
Photograph of Kim Il Sung park in the Kafrsouseh neighborhood of Damascus. Photo is courtesy of SANA.
In 2016 (Juche 105), strong relations between the DPRK and Syria continued abound. Echoing the claims of SOHR years earlier, the delegation of the Free Syrian Army, backed by the Saudis, claimed that “two North Korean units are there [in Syria], which are Chalma-1 and Chalma-7,” with one bourgeois analyst having to admit that “there is no hard evidence that North Korean troops are on the ground fighting alongside the pro-Assad forces or that Pyongyang is currently providing material support to the Syrian government…the evidence is not conclusive…there are no publicly accessible pictures of North Korean soldiers on the ground and no reports of North Korean soldiers killed, captured, or wounded in Syria,” showing the weakness of their case. Hence, their claims about units from the DPRK in Syria are laughable since they are so weak they are like a line of dominoes ready to be pushed over with the tap of one’s finger. [21]
The relationship between Syria and the DPRK was as strong as ever. In August, The same month, Tammam Sulaiman and other officials from the Syrian embassy visited “the Youth Movement Museum on Wednesday on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the DPRK and Syria.” In November, Sulaiman and Syrian embassy individuals visited the Mansudae Art Studio on “the 46th anniversary of the corrective movement in Syria” and paid tribute to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, along with being briefed on the fact that studio was “built as the world-level art production base under the care of the peerlessly great persons of Mt. Paektu,” looking around various “production rooms and the art exhibition hall.” While the Syrian media reprinting statements of the DPRK resisting U$ imperialism and calling for a peace treaty ending the Korean war, along with reprinting Kim Jong Un’s New Years Address, the DPRK criticized terrorist acts in Syria while reiterating their “full support and solidarity with the just struggle of the government and people of the Syrian Arab Republic to foil the hostile forces’ challenge and aggression” and harshly criticizing “air strikes against Syria being made by the U.S. and the West under the pretext of “anti-terrorism war.””
There were other forms of exchange between the two countries. Varied Korean organizations attended events in Syria, while there were calls to enhance cooperation between the two countries, especially in the area of health, with support of the DPRK by Syria also emphasized. In Rodong Sinmun, there are varied news articles on Syrian-Korean relations. Apart from congratulating the ruling party of Syria, with this same ruling party congratulating the WPK in turn, the vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the WPK, Ri Su Yong, met the Syrian ambassador, Sulaiman in June. In a show of further solidarity, Bashar Al-Assad sent 13 messages to Kim Jong Un throughout the year on topics such as honoring Kim Jong Il five years after his death, cooperative relations between the two countries, thanked Kim Jong Un for remembering his birthday, and consolation on the damage to people’s lives, property, and infrastructure in North Hamgyong Province from a flood, and many other topics including congratulating Kim Jong Un on his election as “chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK at the Fourth Session of the 13th Supreme People’s Assembly” on June 29. [22] The same was the case for messages from Kim Jong Un himself. He sent eight messages to Assad on similar topics, such as honoring the “anniversary of the corrective movement in Syria,” the 51st birthday of Assad, remembering (and hoping for stronger) cooperation between the two countries, and expressing “deepest condolences and sympathy to Bashar Al-Assad over the death of Anisa Makhlouf,” his mother. [23]
The Tishreen War Panorama, painted by artists from the Mansudae Art Studio, via http://www.nkeconwatch.com. Within Damascus’s October Liberation War Panorama Hall.
In 2017 (Juche 106), the two countries continued to hold together in a strong bond of solidarity. In interviews that year, Bashar Al-Assad cited the DPRK as one of the countries “which say the truth as it is and take a principled and moral position…[and] do not do the West’s bidding” also saying this list included “Belarus, Russia, [and] Iran” and also said that the U$ wants to “control all the states of the world without exception” saying that “what is happening to Syria, to Korea, to Iran, to Russia, and maybe to Venezuela now, aims at re-imposing American hegemony on the world.” Bourgeois media that year grumbled about Kim Jong Un congratulating Syria’s ruling party on its “founding anniversary,” the gratitude Assad showed toward Iran and the DPRK for supporting the Syrian fight against terrorism, and once again claiming that war materials from the DPRK “ended up in Syria,” citing magical UN reports we can’t see, feeding the never-ending Orientalist rumor-mill (even claiming there are Korean workers in Damascus). [24] These outlets, coupled with Zionists, did acknowledge that Syria and the DPRK “share anti-imperialist world views that bind them together” and have a “symbiotic relationship” which should be seen as a positive, with others angry about the alliance between the two countries, saying it “poses a long-term security threat to the United States and its allies in the Middle East and Asia,” with some support for murderous measures against the country. It was also noted that the sloppy cruise missile attack by the orange menace could be designed to intimidate the DPRK (and send a message to China), but this didn’t work because the former state said that the strike on Syria vindicates the push to strengthen their nuclear program as a form of self-defense.
Moving away from the horrid bourgeois media, it is worth looking at state media which is more accurate in delineating relationships between the two countries. In March, Kim Jong Un congratulated Bashar Al-Assad “on the 54th anniversary of the March 8 revolution in Syria” while in April another message was sent to Assad, with another message of congratulations, this one saying that the “Baath Arab Socialist Party has achieved great successes in their struggle for building an independent and prosperous country and safeguarding the unity and dignity, regional peace and security for the past seven decades since its founding” and called for stronger relations between the two countries. In August, a delegation from the Syria Baath Children Organization, led by Waddah Sawas, director of the Technology, Information and External Relations Department, visited Mangyongdae, Kim Il Sung’s birthplace, and also “toured the Tower of the Juche Idea, the Youth Movement Museum, Pyongyang Primary School No. 4, [and] the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace,” to name a few attractions. With the Syrian media noting the Korean people and the Korean embassy in Damascus marking the birth of Kim Jong Il 75th birthday on February 16, there were also calls for stronger cooperation, and relations in general, especially in the area of economics. To the chagrin of anti-Korea outlets like NK News, the DPRK declared in November it wanted to help Syria rebuild itself (a noble declaration) after all these years of war.
Before getting to Rodong Sinmun, there was an interview with Sulaiman, the Ambassador o Syria to the DPRK. [25] It was in an anti-Korean outlet, but what it said is worth noting. Sulaiman works day-to-day, helping maintain the friendship between the two countries, while following “news from Syria, day-by-day, minute-by-minute,” noting that
In every meeting, every function, every symposium, every international meeting, the DPRK expresses support to us, they express solidarity – not only the media, even from the people. It is not only a policy issue, it is a massive popular thing for the Korean people to stand in support of Syria, with the Syrian people.
This is broadly not recognized by haters of the DPRK. He goes on to say that while there is no military cooperation between the two countries now, there is a history of “normal military cooperation and technical experience exchange,” laughing off the idea that missile scientists and weapons experts from the DPRK helped out in the early years of the imperialist attack on Syria. Sulaiman, who was in New York City from 1994 (Juche 83) to 2000 (Juche 89) at the UN, then in Australia until 2013 (Juche 102) when he moved to Pyongyang, “initially as chargé d’affaires at the embassy.” In describing his experience, he said that the country is “very beautiful” and “very friendly” even to foreigners with a lot of diplomatic activity back-and-forth, with continual opportunities to meet others, as he marvels “at their organization and punctuality in assembling all the different ambassadors, heads of missions or staff of UN organizations … (to) go at a certain time to visit the landmarks and different places. I like it very much.” As NK News grumbles that Syria doesn’t use the “human rights” charade against the DPRK, Sulaiman says that “we in Syria respect the people of Korea – the DPRK – the leadership, (and) the relations we have,” doesn’t feel any alienation in the North, and while he complains about the “expense of some of the stuff and materials that are brought to Pyongyang,” like a bar of laurel soap coming from Aleppo, basic things like vegetables have a “fine” price. Instead of summarizing everything else he says in the article, it is worth quoting what he has to say:
We have a bi-annual joint high-level ministerial commission that meets once in Pyongyang and once in Damascus. And then there are agreements in the economic field, in the cultural, educational, tourism, sports, and many other things. But in the last years because of the situation in Syria mainly – I wouldn’t say in Korea…things are a bit halted. [Now] it is from our side that things are not going as normal as one would expect…Of course, we belong to different cultures in the Arab and Asian regions, but we have a lot in common to address the issues that really are at stake in the current times. The relations are strong, basically, because we share the same values: the same suffering, the same mentality, the same orientation…[both DPRK and Syria suffer from] the same colonial problem: when the U.S. intervened during the Korean War and, of course, the same thing happened in our region with Israel…Western countries [which impose sanctions]are the main reason for the wretched case of the people in either country…I will answer anything you ask about human rights; anything,..But put it across the board. If it is across the board and to the same standard, we accept it, no question, no problem. [As long as U$ officials go to Saudi Arabia] and bow to them… where women aren’t allowed to drive cars and are forced to wear headscarves, [criticism of the DPRK is unfair when] they only single out one country, then we refuse to see it. If you ask ‘why is North Korea making nuclear armaments?’ [then] I as a friend of Korea, I would say ‘first put all countries under question and then I’ll answer you.’ Ban Ki-moon never showed any integrity in his work. Not towards North Korea, not towards Syria…I lived in in New York, because of my work with the United Nations, for six years and when I see…these so-called accusations against Trump, that he is President Putin’s ally, I ask myself this question: ‘Why not?’ “hat is wrong with having good relations with Russia? Why must there be animosity between the U.S. and Russia?”…The only thing the U.S. could do is a military invasion of this country…my feeling is that this is impossible: I don’t think the U.S. can intervene in a country like the DPRK. I think this country is more fortified than one can imagine, because there is unity between the people and the leadership…escalation will do more damage to the U.S. and its interests in the region than damage to this country…I visited many other countries, [but when] I look at this country I see that out of severe poverty… they do miracles here, really…And it’s not like I’m saying what the state media says. In our country we don’t have this: we thought that we were living in prosperity before the war. This country, after the sanctions and with the skills that they have, they are making miracles…I look at it and believe this is really a great country and I wish every country was like North Korea in their achievements and miracles. What if they were not under sanctions? They would do even more.
Beyond what Sulaiman has to say, the Koreans showed their thanks and solidarity. At the Tenth Plenary Session of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in Turkey from November 21 to 23, Ri Jong Hyok, SPA deputy and director of the National Reunification Institute, leading the SPA delegation, made a speech at the plenary session, saying in the conclusion that “I would like to express unreserved support to and solidarity with the peoples in Asian countries including Iran, Syria and Palestine who are struggling to put an end to the interference of foreign forces and to defend the sovereignty of the nation.” Additionally, Rodong Sinmun noted that the Socialist Unionist Party of Syria formed a “committee for remembering leader Kim Jong Il” with this committee headed by General Secretary Adnan Ismail, and the committing organizing “political and cultural events in praise of Kim Jong Il’s exploits in the period from Nov. 16 to Dec. 18.” Additionally, apart from criticism of the cruise missile attack, called the “Shayrat missile strike” on Wikipedia, on Syria by the orange menace on April 7th, representatives of the DPRK at the UN criticized U$ scheming to “overthrow the legitimate government of Syria by continuously stretching out its claws of aggression” and turning a “blind eye to the heinous acts of Israel…while condemning in every manner only the Syrian government fighting to protect its national sovereignty and security should not be tolerated any longer.” [26] Interestingly, the Koreans criticized the Chinese response to the military attack, saying they may have felt it wasn’t a “big deal” and implying they were courted by the imperialists, again showing the independence of the country from domination. In terms of the relationship between the two countries on varied occasions Syrian delegations, of the Syria Baath Children Organization, Syrian General Sports Union, and members of the Syrian embassy there, were in the DPRK, specifically visiting in Mangyongdae (birthplace of Kim Il Sung), Pyongyang, as recounted in seven articles in Rodong Sinmun, and an agreement about “exchange and cooperation in sports” was inked. [27] Apart from this, there were also the typical diplomatic greetings. Assad sent greetings to Kim Jong Un on nine occasions that year on topics ranging from cooperation between the two countries, founding anniversaries of the WPK, birth of Kim Il Sung and the DPRK, to name a few, especially thanking the DPRK for its support (and solidarity). [28] In response, Kim Jong Un sent his greetings, with the president of the SPA (Kim Yong Nam) even sending a message to Assad while Kim Su Kil of the WPK met the Syria’s Baath Arab Socialist Party at the 19th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Russia. Unlike previous years, the same number of messages were sent to Syria by the Koreans, covering subjects such as “congratulation and militant greeting to the Syrian president on his 52nd birthday” and on Assad’s re-election, than from Syria’s leaders. [29]
Photo from the website of the lnternational Institute of the Juche Idea (IIJI), accessed Feb 26, 2018. Recently, a seminar on the idea of Juche was held in India, with the IIJI as some of the attendees.
This year, 2018 (Juche 107) the relations continue to strengthen without question. While the bourgeois media declares that “the US intends to make Syria an international pariah state much like North Korea,” the reality of the situation is that there are “deep-rooted friendly relations binding the two countries,” with the Koreans praising the Syrians shooting down “an Israeli F-16 jet which had attacked the Syrian territory, stressing that Syria has the right to defend itself by taking all measures to protect its sovereignty.” [30] Additionally, just this year, Assad has sent greetings on variedoccasions, anniversaries of Korean leaders were marked, and there were efforts to enhance cooperation in the areas of media and the parliaments of each respective country.
With all of this, as the imperialists (as do the Zionists) work to try to seize the resources of Syria and destabilize the country (even meeting with the “opposition“) the efforts of reconstruction in the country are going forward. For example, there is a government “plan to re-launch all stalled and halted private sector investment projects in all provinces, and to provide facilitations to encourage investors to activate these projects” which would undoubtedly benefit the state’s bourgeoisie. As the state of Syria participates in the 12th session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), the Russian ambassador at the UN “stressed that any decision on Syria should to be taken by the Syrian people themselves without any foreign intervention or dictates” with the Chinese echoing this, which is positive, but doesn’t exclude bourgeoisie from their countries, and elsewhere, shaping the situation for their benefit. The latter is definitely the case for Russia whose ambassador to Syria, Alexander Kinshchak, declared in its state media outlet, TASS, that fellow BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) should “establish a foothold in Syria’s promising market” since the “the country’s economy has suffered an enormous damage” due to the conflict in that country, saying they should work to help rebuild the country’s economy. He specifically said that “in particular, as a result of their deliberate strikes, dozens of vital fuel and energy infrastructure facilities in Syria’s north as well as bridges, roads, educational and medical institutions have been destroyed.”
In recent days there have been a number of developments. For one, Syrian militias favoring the government have joined the U$-backed Kurds to fight alongside them regardless of shelling by the Turkish aggressors, which violates UN Security Council resolution no. 2401, and there has been fighting in East Ghouta, with Syria heroically fighting against U$-backed terrorists. Resolution 2401 is a ceasefire resolution (for 30 days), which passed the UN Security Council unanimously but does not “apply to military operations against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as ISIL/Da’esh), Al Qaeda and Al Nusra Front.” Even with that, there are reports, even in conservative media, that U$ troops are staying in Iraq and Syria indefinitely, and that the Zionists are supporting more rebel factions in Syria.
Still, there is hope for a positive outcome with a Syrian Dialogue Congress, and efforts to talk with the “opposition.” This would stand against the “Takfiri terror” or Wahhabi terror” supported by the capitalist poles of power, terror which is not “Islamic.” Otherwise, the Indians have proposed to help with rebuilding the country and the Russian bourgeoisie want closer ties with Syria. As the years go on, the relationship between the DPRK and Syria will ever remain, becoming stronger and stronger.
[2] Steve Mollman, “The war in Syria has been great for North Korea,” Quartz, Apr 19, 2017; From “North Korea and the World” project by the East-West Center and the National Committee on North Korea (NCNK); Jay Solomon, “North Korea’s Alliance with Syria Reveals a Wider Proliferation Threat,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Nov 2, 2017; Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015. For this section, pages 277, 278, 279, 280, 284, 285, 287 of his bourgeois anti-communist article are used.
[3] “North Korea and the World” project by the East-West Center and the National Committee on North Korea (NCNK); Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013; Franz-Stefan Gady, “Is North Korea Fighting for Assad in Syria?,” The Diplomat, Mar 24, 2016; Jay Solomon, “North Korea’s Alliance with Syria Reveals a Wider Proliferation Threat,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Nov 2, 2017.
[4] Isabella Ginor, Excerpt from “The Cold War’s Longest Cover Up: How and Why the USSR Instigated the 1967 War,” Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal Vol 7., No 3, Sept 2003, reprinted on a Zionist website; “Six Day War: impact on Jews in Arab Countries,” sixdaywar.co.uk, accessed Feb 25, 2018; Judy Maltz, “The Rise – and Rise – of French Jewry’s Immigration to Israel,” Haaretz, Jan 13, 2015; Daphna Berman, “The 40th Anniversary of the Six-Day War / Rate of Return,” Haaretz, Jun 1, 2007.
[6] Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013.
[7] Jay Solomon, “North Korea’s Alliance with Syria Reveals a Wider Proliferation Threat,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Nov 2, 2017; Franz-Stefan Gady, “Is North Korea Fighting for Assad in Syria?,” The Diplomat, Mar 24, 2016; “North Korea and the World” project by the East-West Center and the National Committee on North Korea (NCNK);Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015; Geoffrey Cain, “Syria’s other ally: North Korea,” GlobalPost (reprinted in Salon), Sept 9, 2013; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013.
[8] Jay Solomon, “North Korea’s Alliance with Syria Reveals a Wider Proliferation Threat,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Nov 2, 2017.
[9] Franz-Stefan Gady, “Is North Korea Fighting for Assad in Syria?,” The Diplomat, Mar 24, 2016; Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013.
[11] Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013. In 2001, he writes, the government of the DPRK signed three long-term loan agreements with the Kuwaitis “to finance the development and modernization of basic infrastructure in North Korea.”
[12] Ibid.
[13]”Syria and North Korea: A Real Axis of Evil,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2013; Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015.
[14] Tak Kumakura, “North Koreans May Have Died in Israel Attack on Syria, NHK Says,” Bloomberg News, Apr 27, 2008; Samuel Ramani, “Why Did North Korea Just Threaten Israel?,” The Diplomat, May 3, 2017; Victor D. Cha and Gabriel Scheinmann, “North Korea’s Hamas Connection: “Below” the Surface?,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2014; Aaron Kalman, “Israel used 17 tons of explosives to destroy Syrian reactor in 2007, magazine says,” Times of Israel, Sept 10, 2012; Jay Solomon, “North Korea’s Alliance with Syria Reveals a Wider Proliferation Threat,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Nov 2, 2017; “Syria and North Korea: A Real Axis of Evil,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2013; Gregory L. Schulte, “North Korea and Syria: A Warning in the Desert,” YaleGlobal Online, Apr 28, 2010; Geoffrey Cain, “Syria’s other ally: North Korea,” GlobalPost (reprinted in Salon), Sept 9, 2013; Elizabeth Shim, “North Korea troops fighting in Syrian civil war, delegate says,” UPI, Mar 22, 2016; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013; Gary Samore, and Bernard Gwertzman, “A Syria-North Korea Nuclear Relationship?,” Council of Foreign Relations, Sept 19, 2007; Steve Mollman, “The war in Syria has been great for North Korea,” Quartz, Apr 19, 2017.
[16] “Syria and North Korea: A Real Axis of Evil,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2013; Gregory L. Schulte, “North Korea and Syria: A Warning in the Desert,” YaleGlobal Online, Apr 28, 2010.
[17] Ariel Nathan Pasko, “North Korea: The Israeli Connection,” BreakingIsraelNews, accessed Feb 7, 2018; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013. One article (Krishnadev Calamur, “Who Are Syria’s Friends And Why Are They Supporting Assad?,” Reuters, Aug 28, 2013) also says that “Moscow has long-standing strategic and financial interests in Syria…China and Syria have close trade links…Iran has few allies in the Arab world and its most important one is Syria.”
[18] A Spanish-speaking comrade named Fekerfanta, “Proletarian Nationalism of North Korea,” From Pyongyang to Havana, Aug 8, 2013; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013; “Syria and North Korea: A Real Axis of Evil,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2013; Julian Ryall, “Syria: North Korean military ‘advising Assad regime’,” The Telegraph, Jun 6, 2013; Jonathan Spyer, “Behind The Lines: Assad’s North Korean connection,” Jerusalem Post, Nov 2, 2013; Steve Mollman, “The war in Syria has been great for North Korea,” Quartz, Apr 19, 2017; Adam Taylor, “Are North Koreans fighting in Syria? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Washington Post, Mar 25, 2016; Bruce E. Bechtol Jr, “North Korea and Syria: Partners in Destruction and Violence,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 2015; Geoffrey Cain, “Syria’s other ally: North Korea,” GlobalPost (reprinted in Salon), Sept 9, 2013; Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: Entering Syria’s Civil War,” 38 North, Nov 25, 2013.
[19] Steve Mollman, “The war in Syria has been great for North Korea,” Quartz, Apr 19, 2017.
[20] Elizabeth Shim, “North Korea troops fighting in Syrian civil war, delegate says,” UPI, Mar 22, 2016; Steve Mollman, “The war in Syria has been great for North Korea,” Quartz, Apr 19, 2017; “Syria names park in capital after N Korea founder,” Al Jazeera, Aug 31, 2015.
[21] Franz-Stefan Gady, “Is North Korea Fighting for Assad in Syria?,” The Diplomat, Mar 24, 2016; Elizabeth Shim, “North Korea troops fighting in Syrian civil war, delegate says,” UPI, Mar 22, 2016; Adam Taylor, “Are North Koreans fighting in Syria? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Washington Post, Mar 25, 2016.
[24] Tim O’Connor, “Syria’s Assad Sends Thanks to Iran, North Korea,” Newsweek (reprinted in Yahoo! News), Sept 15, 2017; Steve Mollman, “The war in Syria has been great for North Korea,” Quartz, Apr 19, 2017; Tom Phillips, “Syria strike designed to intimidate North Korea, Chinese state newspaper says,” The Guardian, Apr 10, 2017; Michelle Nichols, “North Korea shipments to Syria chemical arms agency intercepted: U.N. report,” Reuters, Aug 21, 2017; Jay Solomon, “North Korea’s Alliance with Syria Reveals a Wider Proliferation Threat,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Nov 2, 2017; “US missile strike on Syria ‘carries message for North Korea and China’: analysts,” DW, Aug 4, 2017; “Syria strike ‘vindicates’ North Korea’s nuclear choice,” BBC News, Apr 8, 2017; “N.K. highlights friendly ties with Syria amid chemical weapon attack row,” Yonhap News Agency, Apr 7, 2017.
[25] Chad O’Carroll, “A long way from Damascus: Life as Syria’s ambassador to North Korea,” NK News, Feb 1, 2017.
Kim Il Sung and Yasser Arafat of the PLO. Date of photo not known.
The same year that the DPRK was founded, the murderous apartheid and Zionist state of “Israel” was created, and given sanction by the United Nations, which was then dominated by imperialist powers. For the years to come, the DPRK would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their Palestinian comrades.
In 1966, relations between the DPRK and Palestinian resistance fighters began, with a “solidarity meeting” held in April 2016 to honor 50 years of relations. While refusing to recognize the murderous Zionist apartheid state, calling it an “imperialist satellite,” the DPRK has said that it “fully supports the struggle of the Palestinians to expel the Israeli aggressors from their territory and regain their right to self-determination” and has helped Palestine “in many areas, such as maternity or education.” [1] Not only did the DPRK finance and hand “arms to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” along with the PLO, and DFLP, through the 1970s and 1980s, but during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (Juche 72), Koreans sent air support to defend the territory Syria along with 19 military advisers to Egypt (like the Cubans who also sent troops) and a MiG-21 squadron to Egypt, where, Zionist F-4s engaged them in a dogfight in the “skies south of Cairo” and the Koreans did very well. After the war, Kim Il-Sung met with Syrian and Egyptian ambassadors in Pyongyang, promising to give them assistance, including military aid, with the Egyptians reportedly rewarding “North Korea with missile technology and designs.” This was coupled with the reported visit of George Habash, leader of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) in September 1970 (Juche 59), along with providing weapons and financial support.
With such support in the past, there have been claims since then that the DPRK has sent weapons to Hezbollah through different “trafficking network[s],” helped build underground facilities for Hezbollah in 2003 (Juche 92), that 100 Hezbollah fighters “traveled to North Korea for a year of training,” and that Hamas has ties with the DPRK or even “Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades” having weapons from the former. Others, even those with a horrid imperialist viewpoint, admit that in the late 1980s, Palestinian resistance fighters, which they call “Palestinian terrorists,” belonging to the “PLO and from Syrian and Libyan-backed groups” stopped being trained, claiming that training of Hezbollah began in years to come, especially in the 1990s and years after that, claiming that the DPRK backed all sorts of “terrorist” groups, as they call them. [2] One recent article, in bourgeois anti-DPRK 38 North, claimed that there was a “historical, and possibly continuing arms relationship between North Korea and non-state actors in the Middle East” like Hezbollah and Hamas, saying that Palestinian resistance fighters like a founding member of Fatah received training by the DPRK in the 1960s, but couched supposed current support by using words like”allegedly” and “reportedly.” They admitted, however, that there was not “proof” that the weapons heading to Gaza in 2009 intercepted by IDF (“Israeli” Defense Forces) were from the DPRK, and if one goes with the assumption that these weapons were from there, they were “decades old…likely produced in 1988,” reportedly coming through Iran. [3] Further undercutting the argument, 38 North admitted, in the closing words of their article, “none of these postulations can be proven as fact, but as new details arise and other arms shipments bound for Hamas or Hezbollah are seized, they should be kept in mind.” So, what was the point of this horrible article? Nothing, other than smearing the DPRK following in the words spewed by the empire’s military establishment and Zionists talking about arms smuggling (claiming arms were sent to the fascists in Myanmar), talking about a “nefarious North Korean role” while admitting, as The National Interest did, “no smoking-gun evidence that North Korea assisted Hamas directly in constructing its tunnels, the evidence is very suggestive,” showing the weakness of their argument. More likely than not, one could say that the weapons that 38 North writes about may have come from Iran, with the DPRK sending them during the Iran-Iraq War, and some elements, possibly within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) felt that it would be in Iran’s interest to send weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, meaning it was not state policy. Even the bourgeois publication, The Diplomat, admitted that “even though North Korea can no longer match its pro-Palestinian rhetoric with military support, the DPRK remains one of Israel’s most strident international critics.” [4] As the foreign ministry of the DPRK said in June 2014, about claims it gave missiles to Hamas,”this is utterly baseless sophism and sheer fiction let loose by the US to isolate [us] internationally. Lurking behind this propaganda is a sinister intention of the US to justify its criminal acts of backing Israel. The US is working hard to deliberately link [us] to the so-called ‘terrorist organisations’ defined by it in a bid to divert the focus of international criticism to Pyongyang.” We should take their words to heart and not make broad declarations that they are giving arms and support to Palestinian resistance groups.
“Salam Rabaa, the Palestinian owner of Rabaa restaurant and his son gesture with their right hands imitating a poster of North Korean leader North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un” in Dec 2017 as noted later in this section, via AFP.
The Zionists, not content with the “harsh and well-deserved criticism” tried to hurt “the DPRK’s dignified social system” by allying with the ROK, and declaiming the nuclear weapons (without realizing their hypocrisy) of the DPRK, and not recognizing that “the Korean- and Palestinian people share many important things in common – their struggle against a foreign aggressor on their respective lands, freedom and sovereignty for the people” with both the peoples “of Korea and Palestine…forged together as brothers in arms against common imperialist foes.” Even a self-defined Korean-American, Zavi Kang Engles, who holds Orientalist views on the DPRK, declaring in Mondoweiss that “North Koreans still suffer under a brutal regime, marked by poverty, starvation, and captivity” and that they have “relatives in North Korea, but I know nothing of them, nor if they’re even still alive” posing it as some scary and forbidden place, in line with bourgeois media, wrote something similar back in June 2015:
As a Korean-American concerned about the influence of the United States on other countries, I’ve begun to wonder something: do Korean people have more in common with Israelis, as the official story would have us believe, or with Palestinians? In recent years, the Israeli government has been strengthening ties with the South Korean government, which is headed by the conservative President Park Geun-Hye, daughter of the former US-backed dictator Park Chung-Hee. Prominent government officials on both sides propagate a false narrative of kinship between Israel and South Korea, asserting economic and geopolitical similarities…The governments of South Korea and Israel have gone beyond mere words with concrete steps towards joint economic collaboration…Israel is also a major arms supplier to South Korea…These recent developments are deeply unsettling to those who understand realities in both places behind the political platitudes…at the same time, both the Korean and Palestinian people saw their lands violently divided at the whim of imperialist interests…the true parallel to ordinary Koreans and their history is not Israelis, but Palestinians…Both the Koreans and Palestinians also continue to suffer the consequences of borders imposed and created by outside imperialist countries, with the United States playing a significant role in both cases…While South Korea is a technologically and economically advanced country with a high standard of living, it is still occupied by almost 30,000 US troops, despite constant protests from Korean citizens. Furthermore, South Korea represents only half the fate of the Korean people who had been unified for hundreds of years and were only divided in 1948, a consequence of their country being used as a pawn in a proxy war…Though to outsiders, North and South Korea may now simply be two enemy nations, for many Koreans, it’s a recent division that literally hits home…Of course, the suffering of Palestinians and Koreans cannot be conflated but, as the above facts attest, the similarities between Palestinians and Koreans run far deeper than the shallow sentiments expressed by Israeli and South Korean officials. It worries me, as a Korean-American, when I see the South Korean government so eagerly align itself with Israel, against its own constitution…If Park’s administration acted according to the Korean constitution and adhered to the anti-colonial sentiments so many Koreans hold, there is no doubt that they would call for an end to the Israeli occupation and work in solidarity with the Palestinians…the more authentic, shared experiences of oppression and occupation between Koreans and Palestinians…Through solidarity actions such as participating in BDS and sharing the stories that elucidate our shared experiences of oppression, we can actively work to dismantle these political entities that fail to represent our truths in the interest of selective political and economic gains.
There is also the case of Jindallae Safarini (also spelled Saphariny), a girl of Palestinian descent, born in the DPRK in 1985, “thanks to the health advances of the country” and given her first name by Kim Jong-Il himself. Her parents, one of whom was a former Palestinian ambassador, not able to have any more children, and with the help of doctors, “they got Jindallae’s mother to become pregnant,” making Jindallae “Kim Jong Il’s Palestinian foster daughter” and demonstrating the “love and care that Dear Leader Kim Jong Il showed for everyone.” [5] As she noted in her interview with KCNA, she came back to the DPRK in 2005, went back to China, and felt she had to “do something good,” after talking with her father, establishing the nonprofit Jindallae Children′s Foundation in November 2012 to help children (which she says she “loves”), especially for “health services,” in the DPRK, which she calls her “second homeland.” While bourgeois media claimed they couldn’t “find” her (they are bad at researching), there is a page on the website of United Family Healthcare in Beijing, clearly referring to her. It notes that she received a “medical Degree from the Peking University Health Science Center in 2008” the same university where she “completed her Master of Medicine in Obstetrics and Gynecology” in 2011 (Juche 100), that she “studied Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University,” and that after completing her “residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Peking University Health Science Center’s Third Hospital,” she jointed “Beijing United Family Hospital and Clinics as a Physician Assistant” in 2012 (Juche 101), and is currently “a full-time Obstetrician and Gynecologist.”
Jindallae smiled when she said that “DPRK is my second homeland” and that people call her the “daughter of Korea.” She not only speaks very good English but she is articulate for a 27-year-old.
In June 1986 (Juche 75), Kim Il Sung gave a speech to a committee of the people and the political bureau of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)’s central committee. While he mainly talked on the subject of the non-aligned movement, endorsing it and calling it anti-interventionist, anti-imperialist, anti-war, and anti-colonialist, he also strongly condemned Zionists. He argued that Zionists and South African racists, along with “other stooges” are “shock forces” of imperialists, with the latter groups pursuing “the racist and expansionist policy of aggression.” On one hand he said that South Africa’s racist government pursued “the vicious policy of apartheid, of racial discrimination, and the policy of brutal repression” while he condemned Zionist occupation of Arab lands to create a “Great Zionist Empire” within the Middle East. In another breath, he declared that the “expansionist, aggressive schemes of the Israeli Zionists” must be foiled because “Zionism is a form of racism and colonialism,” saying that the “Palestinian and other Arab people” have just cause to fight for the “restoration of land lost to them.” This statement can be coupled with a June 1985 Special National Intelligence Assessment of the U$ Intelligence establishment, saying that while “active liberation movements” have declined, the DPRK has less ability for involvement, but still gives arms and training to PLO, which includes small number of advisers, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, antitank weapons, mortars, antiaircraft machine guns, and renewed pledges of support to Arafat with arms shipments. This was likely the case, at the time, and it shows the solidarity of the DPRK with Palestinian liberation.
Kim Il Sung’s speech was not out of the ordinary. The DPRK has reportedly given arms to Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Gaza as an act in solidarity with armed struggle by Palestinians. Capitalists shout that the Koreans are supporting terrorism but the real terrorism comes from Zionist forces murdering innocent Palestinians in cold blood. Since Yassar Arafat of the PLO declared independence of Palestine in 1988 (Juche 77), the DPRK has recognized the State of Palestine, saying it covers the whole Zionist state and occupied territories, except for the Golan Heights, which the DPRK sees as part of Syria. [6] Arafat was reportedly a “frequent visitor to Pyongyang,” visiting Kim Il Sung six times, with this Kim awarding Arafat the “Star of Palestine” in 1993 (Juche 82), showing the connection between Palestine and Korea.
Around that same time, in November 1992 (Juche 81), as the Times of Israel claims, “three Israeli diplomats boarded a plane from Pyongyang to Tokyo,” hoping they could “reverse their bitter decades-old enmity and embark on a new era of fruitful cooperation,” dreaming of “setting up an Israeli mission in Pyongyang, and of persuading the reclusive regime to stop selling arms to Israel’s enemies in the Middle East.” [7] They further say that the diplomatic mission was disrupted by Mossad, meaning that “nothing tangible would come of the diplomats’ project to bring Jerusalem and Pyongyang closer together” ans was cut short by “then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in early 1993, presumably due to US pressure” with some still lauding the effort. They further claim that some of leadership of the DPRK, along with a “Korean businessman,” appeared to be ready to consider opening the country to the West” as they were suffering an economic crisis, claiming they received “a friendly welcome in Pyongyang,” making them think that the country was open to rapprochement. Supporters claimed that if the effort had gone forward, “North Korea today would be a state like China” since some, reportedly, “in the leadership were ready to steer the country into a different, more pro-Western direction.” Let’s say this story was true. It could be the case based on the fact that the DPRK was in an economic crunch after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and seemed to lower its direct support for international causes, in terms of assistance, after that point. Even so, it seems fantastical. It could and likely is made-up propaganda created by the Zionists.
Instead, it is better to deal with the reality, that the DPRK has always supported the
…Palestinian people’s right to self determination and the Palestinians people’s rightful struggle against Zionism. President Kim Il Sung had a close relationship with Yasser Arafat and the support for the Palestinian struggle was always supported by the DPRK by providing arms and aid. After the Cold War the material support declined, but the DPRK have always condemned Israeli attacks and the DPRK is still today supporting the Palestinians people’s struggle for national liberation. The DPRK was there to recognize the State of Palestine when it was proclaimed by the Palestine Liberation Organization. What many so called socialists, communists and anti-imperialists tend to forget is that the struggle against Zionism in Palestine and the Korean people’s struggle against imperialism is one and the same. If we decide not to support one oppressed people’s struggle against an oppressor and we let the imperialist oppressor wins, then we have failed the other oppressed people and helped their oppressor. The DPRK, Cuba, Syria, and Iran for example are countries that always have supported the Palestinians people’s struggle but if we let these countries fall, then the Palestinians people’s struggle will turn out even harder then what it is today if they won’t have material nor political support by some…Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il supported the righteous struggle of the Palestinian people
Yasser Arafat with Kim Il Sung in 1993.
Fast forward to the 2008-2009 conflict. During that time, the DPRK condemned the Gaza flotilla raid, doing the same during similar raids in in 2010 (Juche 99) and 2014 (Juche 103), rightly calling them crimes against humanity, angering the Zionists. [8] Additionally, in December 2008 (Juche 97), the DPRK denounced “Israel’s killing of unarmed civilians as a crime against humanity, a serious provocation against the Palestinians and other Arab people and an open challenge to the Middle East peace process.” They were right to say that, without a doubt.
In February 2017 (Juche 106), the DPRK sent a delegation to a “conference in the Islamic Republic of Iran in support of the Palestinian struggle” in Tehran called the 6th International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada (Uprising). Many other countries across the world attended, with delegations from over 80 countries, including Bosnia, Syria, India, Malaysia, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Russia, China, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Iraq, to name a few, with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas also sending delegations. The conference was described in the Pyongyang Times in late February [9]
Choe Thae Bok, speaker of the Supreme People’s Assembly, paid an official visit to Iran, leading a delegation. He met Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. He courteously conveyed the warm regards from Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un to the Iranian counterpart who expressed thanks for this and asked Choe to pass on his best wishes to the DPRK leader. Choe Thae Bok also met with the parliamentary leaders of Iran, Palestine, Niger, Malaysia and Madagascar and other figures. The DPRK delegation attended the 6th international conference for supporting the Palestinians which was held in Teheran on February 21-22. The meeting brought together parliamentary delegations from over 50 countries and about 700 personages including representatives of organizations for solidarity with Palestine. The participants discussed how to fight against Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its expansion of Jewish settlements and how to promote international solidarity to support the Palestinians in their drive to win statehood. In the opening session Iran’s supreme leader and parliamentary speaker made congratulatory remarks. Choe Thae Bok told the event that President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il had described the Palestinian issue as a sacred liberation struggle and a matter of life and death for the Palestinian people, adding that the great leaders had rendered material and moral assistance to the Palestinians’ just cause since they rose up against Zionism. He stressed the need to grant the Palestinians the right to self-determination and to disallow the intervention of the US that overtly aids and abets Israel, in order to ensure peace in the Middle East and resolve the regional issue in a comprehensive and fair way. The DPRK will as ever strengthen militant solidarity with Iran, Palestine and other countries to reject all sorts of aggression, interference and inequality and to build a new independent world, he said. The meeting released a joint statement in support of the just cause of the Palestinian people.
The same year, in April, the defense minister of the murderous Zionist apartheid state would say that the standoff between the DPRK and the murderous empire affected them. In response, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK, responded, saying that “Israel is the only illegal possessor of nukes in the Middle East under the patronage of the US,” also arguing that the Zionist state is a “disturber of peace in the Middle East, occupier of the Arab territories and culprit of crimes against humanity.” [10] They are undeniably right: just recent the IDF killed a Palestinian in cold blood, and hospitals in Gaza have had to shut down because of the deadly siege by the Zionists, the latter of whom have been destroying EU-built schools time and time again.
The relationship between the Palestinian resistance and the DPRK has been occasionally reciprocated. For example, Mahmoud Abbas, PLO president, sent a greeting to the DPRK in August 2017, praising the “historic friendship” (evidenced by the embassy of the State of Palestine in the DPRK), wishing “the Korean people continued stability and prosperity; and that the historical friendly relations between Palestine and North Korea and their two peoples will continue to develop and grow,” while he also sent a message the same day to the ROK. [11] Another example in in April 2017 when Hamas condemned “the Israeli insult to Pyongyang and emphasizes that the occupation is the leader of evil.” As one site favorable to the DPRK remarked, “the DPRK have, and will always, provide support in fields such as diplomatic, educational and military, to the Palestinian people in their righteous struggle for freedom and independence” while saying that the fact that “the DPRK is providing arms and trainings to liberation movements in the Middle East is very disturbing to the imperialists” although I would say that isn’t specifically a fact.
There has been some support among the common Palestinians, whom may remember or recognize the “long history of warm relationship” between the Palestine and the DPRK. In late 2017, a Gaza strip restaurant displayed a poster showing “Kim Jong Un next to a North Korean and a Palestinian flag announces a special offer: an 80 percent discount to North Korean customers” which was meant to show gratitude that Kim Jong-Un criticized “President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, as the capital of Israel,” as one restaurant owner, Raba, noted. [12] He also said that Kim “is not a Muslim, a Christian or an Arab, he’s not even in the Middle East, but he is supporting us,” and that he doesn’t believe “Erdoğan’s words.” Another media outlet, connected with Russia’s RT, interviewed the restaurant owner and others, with one frame of their video showing the poster:
One Zionist claims that “Pyongyang regularly voices support for Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.” [13] The perception of such support was so strong that family of Otto Warmbier, a citizen of the murderous empire, concealed he had a “Jewish background and identity,” that he “became active with his campus Hillel at the University of Virginia (UVA)” and had even visited the Zionist state, where he was “given a Hebrew name,” with his mother being Jewish while he was as well, indicating that he was perhaps a Zionist! Undoubtedly those in the DPRK likely recognized this, but if they had been told the whole truth, it may have been different. After all, Zionists are horrible, upholding an inherently “racist ideology” which promotes “segregation and ethnic cleansing,” the foundation of the whole Zionist state, the same state which demands a PA takeover of Gaza, wanting “Hamas disarmed and rendered impotent, the PA it controls in charge.”
The ties between Korea and Palestine reiterated again and again in the media of the DPRK. In Rodong Sinmun there are 35 results for the term “Palestine.” These include a speech by the DPRK permanent representative at an emergency meeting of the UN’s Security Council on December 21, 2017, saying that
the status of Kuds [also called Jerusalem] remains so sensitive that it, for sure, should be solved fairly by means of regaining the national rights of the Palestinian people and striking a comprehensive and lasting solution to the Middle East problem. The U.S. and Israel should bear full responsibility for all the consequences of tension and instability that will be entailed in the Middle East region owing to its reckless and highhanded act…My delegation avails itself of this opportunity to reiterate its support and encouragement to the struggle of Palestinian people retrieving their legitimate right to setting up the independent state with East-al-Quds as its capital and to the struggle of the Arab people for their cause of justice.
Other articles in Rodong Sinmun quote Ri Jong Hyok, deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK and director of the National Reunification Institute, as saying to the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in later November 2017, “I would like to express unreserved support to and solidarity with the peoples in Asian countries including Iran, Syria and Palestine who are struggling to put an end to the interference of foreign forces and to defend the sovereignty of the nation,” and greetings sent to the President of Palestine (also see here). Additionally, the Palestinian ambassador had a reception in Pyongyang in October of last year, with Ri Su Yong saying that “the DPRK government [is looking] to boost the militant friendship and solidarity between the peoples of the two countries” and that the “Korean people will as ever extend invariable support and solidarity to the Palestinian people in the just cause to put an end to the Israeli aggressors’ occupation and retake the legitimate national rights including the founding of an independent state,” similar to what Ri Young Ho said in February, Kim Jong Un at the beginning of the year, Kim Yong Nam in January. Other greetings were sent from Mahmoud Abbas to Kim Jong Un in October, August, and February of last year, while he also referred to the “friendly relations” with the DPRK, sent a floral basket (and another), and even a New Years card. In 2016, it was the same. The Palestinians sent floral baskets in December, September, August, and February, held receptions in October and April, and messages from Abbas (also see here) to which the Koreans replied with greetings (also see here), a messages (also see here, here, and here) from Kim Jong Un, a face-to-face meeting, along with honoring other anniversaries.
It can be said with confidence that relations between the DPRK and Palestine will be strong for years to come, while the Zionists try to “crack down” on BDS.
Notes
[1] A Spanish-speaking comrade named Fekerfanta, “Proletarian Nationalism of North Korea,” From Pyongyang to Havana, Aug 8, 2013; Ariel Nathan Pasko, “North Korea: The Israeli Connection,” BreakingIsraelNews, accessed Feb 7, 2018; Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr., “North Korea and Support to Terrorism: An Evolving History,” Journal of Strategic Security, Vol 3, No 2, Summer 2010; Moath al-Amoudi, “Is North Korea supplying arms to Palestinian factions?,” Al-Monitor, Aug 22, 2016; Benjamin R. Young, “How North Korea has been arming Palestinian militants for decades,” NK News, Jun 25, 2014; Samuel Ramani, “Why Did North Korea Just Threaten Israel?,” The Diplomat, May 3, 2017; David Cenciotti, “Israeli F-4s Actually Fought North Korean MiGs During the Yom Kippur War,” Business Insider, Jun 25, 2013; David Cenciotti, “An unknown story from the Yom Kippur war: Israeli F-4s vs North Korean MiG-21s,” The Aviationist, Jun 25, 2013; Michael Freud, “Fundamentally Freund: When Israel fought North Korea,” Jerusalem Post (opinion), Oct 7, 2014; Barak Ravid and AP, “Israel Demands World ‘Respond Decisively’ to North Korea Nuclear Test,” Haaretz, May 25, 2009. Bechtol is part of the U$ Marine Corps command, so its not surprising he would write such drivel.
[2] Bechtol claims that the DPRK trained those with the “Basque Spanish ETA, Palestinian Abu Nidal organization, Irish Republican Army [IRA], Italian Red Brigades, Japanese Red Army [JRA], Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines…[the] anti-Turkish Kurdish PKK group…[the] Tamil Tigers (LTTE)” and says that collaboration between the DPRK and Hezbollah began thanks to their supposed ties with the IRGC. While it makes sense that the DPRK would give arms to the IRA, along with the PKK, JRA, Italian Red Brigades, and Abu Nidal/Fatah helping the others just don’t make sense, like the ETA, Moro Liberation Front, and LTTE, whom are bourgeois nationalist or reactionary forces showing this supposed conspiracy to be absurd.
[3] Andrea Berger, “North Korea, Hamas, and Hezbollah: Arm in Arm?,” 38 North, Aug 5, 2014; Vasudevan Sridharan, “Israel-Gaza Conflict: Hamas Turns to North Korea for Missile Supplies,” International Business Times, Jul 17, 2014; Victor D. Cha and Gabriel Scheinmann, “North Korea’s Hamas Connection: “Below” the Surface?,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2014; Reuters, “Israel: North Korea Supplying Weapons to Six Mideast States,” Haaretz, Oct 4, 2008; AFP, “Israel: North Korea shipping WMDs to Syria,” The Daily Star, May 10, 2010; Zachary Keck, “North Korea’s Middle East Pivot,” The Diplomat, Jul 29, 2014.
[4] Samuel Ramani, “Why Did North Korea Just Threaten Israel?,” The Diplomat, May 3, 2017; Damien McElroy, “North Korea denies reports of missile deal with Hamas,” The Telegraph, Jul 29, 2014.
[5] Isaac Stone Fish, “The Palestinian flower of North Korea,” Foreign Policy,Dec 5. 2012; GlobalPost, “Even a bad-boy dictator needs friends,” PRI, Dec 2, 2014.
[6] Ariel Nathan Pasko, “North Korea: The Israeli Connection,” BreakingIsraelNews, accessed Feb 7, 2018; Benjamin R. Young, “How North Korea has been arming Palestinian militants for decades,” NK News, Jun 25, 2014; Samuel Ramani, “Why Did North Korea Just Threaten Israel?,” The Diplomat, May 3, 2017.
[7] Raphael Ahren, “The curious tale of Israel’s short-lived courtship of North Korea,” Times of Israel, Aug 10, 2017.
[8] Ariel Nathan Pasko, “North Korea: The Israeli Connection,” BreakingIsraelNews, accessed Feb 7, 2018.
[11] Shlomo, “Anyone Surprised? PLO Leader Abbas Sends Greeting to North Korea Dictator,” JTF News, Aug 16, 2017; Algemeiner Staff, “Hamas Praises North Korea After Pyongyang Regime Threatens to ‘Mercilessly Punish’ Israel,” Algemeiner, Apr 30, 2017; Samuel Ramani, “Why Did North Korea Just Threaten Israel?,” The Diplomat, May 3, 2017; Gary Willig, “Abbas congratulates North Korean dictator on ‘Liberation Day’,” Israel National News, Aug 15, 2017.
[12] Sofia Lotto Persio, “Who Likes North Korea? Kim Jong Un Finds Grateful Fans in Gaza,” Newsweek, Dec 15, 2017.
[39] Michael Freud, “Fundamentally Freund: When Israel fought North Korea,” Jerusalem Post (opinion), Oct 7, 2014; Eric Cortellessa, “Otto Warmbier’s family kept his Jewishness under wraps while North Korea held him hostage,” Times of Israel, Jun 22, 2017.
Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, meets with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in Sept 2016
On February 8, 1963, as I’ve written on this blog before, the CIA gave “economic assistance” for the coup that day by the Ba’ath Party, thinking this would benefit U$ policy. Because it was against “Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim (or Qassem) [who] enacted a land reform program, constructed a massive urban development for Revolution City…and partially nationalized the oil industry.” However, this is a bit simplistic. As the Ba-ath Party, fully called the Arab Ba’th Socialist Party – Iraq wrote in their report, titled “Revolutionary Iraq 1968-1973,” the situation was a bit more nuanced. While thousands of communists were killed in the February 8 coup, on November 18 there was another coup led by those favoring Nasser in the Ba’ath Party, which the Ba’ath Party described as a “shock…[and] loss of the revolutionary gains and the loss of many Party martyrs who fell while bravely fighting the regressive move.” The Ba’athists were out of power and on February 23, 1966, the Ba’athists in Syria would engage in a “military coup against the national authority of the Party as represented by the National Command…[leading to a] vertical and horizontal split within the Party…[with] psychological, organizational and political effects of such a split…in Iraq,” leading to further schisms. Those who took power in Syria would be Nureddin al-Atassi from 1966 to 1970 (he was the second Ba’ath Party president in Syria, after Amin al-Hafiz who served from 1963 to 1966), then Ahmad al-Khatib (1970-1971), and finally Hafiz Al-Assad (1971-2000) who would soon be followed by his son, Bashar al-Assad. It was 1966 that the DPRK established diplomatic relations with the Syrians. On July 17, 1968, two years after those in Syria took matters into their own hands, Saddam Hussein and Salah Oman al-Ali engaged in a successful coup in the Republic of Iraq. That year, the DPRK would establish diplomatic relations with Iraq.
Three years later, Kim Il Sung talked to a delegation of Iraqi journalists, saying that in the past Korea “was a colonial, semi-feudal society in the past,” having to fight off U$ imperialists, he said they currently had “an advanced socialist system, under which all people work and live a happy life helping each other” with achievements through the leadership of WPK and the people, with a “dedication to the idea of Juche.” In response to a question from one of the journalists, Sung said that the Iraqi people had, by that point, attained “national independence through their protracted arduous struggle against the domination of foreign imperialism,” adding that “antagonism and discord between nations…are advantageous only to the imperialists and simply detrimental to the people.” He also applauded a “peaceful, democratic solution of the Kurd national problem,” and said that the government of Iraq stands “firm in the ranks of struggle against imperialism and colonialism.” Later on in press conference he said that “the Korean and Iraqi peoples are close comrades-in-arms fighting against the common enemy…part of the great unity of the Asian and African peoples against imperialism and colonialism,” while also focusing on a number of other matters like the “expansion of the aggressive war by the U.S. imperialists in Indo-China,” noting that those of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos have made Indochina “a graveyard for the aggressors,” while adding that the “Korean people will assist those fighting against U.S. imperialism in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos.” It seems evident why Sung supported the Iraqis despite their problematic history. For one, the Ba’athists, at least openly, had an ideology to “guide for the masses [and show]…the way for unity, freedom and socialism,” and that they were engaging in an “Arab revolution” and differently from in 1963, when the party failed to lead “a revolutionary Party” after this revolution it became necessary to go a different path. As such, “imperialist countries such as the U.S., Britain and other reactionary regimes…mobilized all of their political, technological, material and highly developed informational potential” to bring down their government. Additionally, the party, at the time, dedicated itself to “unity, freedom and socialism in order to rebuild a united, free and democratic Arab society,” with a duty to “achieve a truly democratic, socialist and integrated state which could be the model for the other states in the Arab World… and the Third World,” while strongly fighting “the imperialist Zionist enemy.” Subsequently there was a “decisive move of nationalization” with the government talking country of “65% of the oil producing sector of the national economy” and was basically in “control of 99.75% of the land from which oil is extracted.” They also worked to establish a “progressive front” in the region while making the society as a whole more democratic. It is the fact that the Arab Ba’th Socialist Party declared itself as a “socialist revolutionary Party which considers socialism imperative for the liberation, union and resurgence of the Arab Nation,” that they received Korean support, even through they were just economic nationalists in reality. Some remnants of “socialism” or what can really more actually be called bourgeois nationalism stayed on for years. Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote about this in 2006, noting that the Ba’ath party was broadly based among professionals, that the state subsidized fertilizer, electricity, and gasoline costs, along with varied state-owned enterprises. [1] At the same time, there was “loud and boisterous” stock exchange in Baghdad, which was re-opened by the U$ after the war, a sign of capitalism (not socialism), and obvious presence of a petty bourgeoisie in the country itself, and Saddam consolidated more power for his enrichment, while the population suffered, with his government backed by the imperialists. Of course, after the 2003 invasion, the U$ reversed all these elements, engaging in mass privatization by abandoning “Saddam’s centrally-planned, socialist welfare state for a globalized free-market system” (I’m not sure if it was a “socialist welfare state,” but it wasn’t a state which had privatized industries) and resulting widespread anger by the Iraqi population, thanks to unemployment caused by these horrid policies in this new “capitalist utopia.”
On September 22, 1980, Iraq, led by Saddam, invaded Iran, leaded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The war, which drained the national coffers of Iraq, putting the country “tens of billions of dollars into debt,” in a war which lasted almost 8 years to August 20, 1988. [2] Years later, in 1991, he would invade Kuwait (apparently with U$ permission), resulting in “debilitating United Nations sanctions” which cut off “Iraq from the world.” In the Iran-Iraq war, from 1980 to 1988, Canadians, Danes, Egyptians, East German revisionists, Hungarians, Polish, Qataris (initially), Romanians, Singaporeans, Sudanese, UAE, Yugoslavian revisionists, Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Jordanians supported the Iraqis and no others. However, there were a number of individuals who gave arms to both sides: the Soviet revisionists (arms to Iran covertly), Austrians, Chinese revisionists, French imperialists, the West Germans, Italians, Japanese, Portuguese, South African racists, Spanish, Swiss, Turks, the U$ imperialists (to Iran covertly as uncovered in the Iran-Contra scandal), and UK imperialists. There were a number of others that directly gave to Iran: the Ethiopians, the Belgians, the Argentinians, reportedly the Zionists (covertly to establish more influence), Netherlands, ROK, Libyans, Pakistanis, Syrians, Swedish (covertly), and the DPRK, last but not least. This is no surprise since in 1982, the latter had extended its “international solidarity to the revolutionary state of Iran to fight in the war against Western-backed Republic of Iraq” while the Koreans had established relations with the DPRK in 1973, while the Shah was still in power, but relations was not fully forged until after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, five years after Hafiz Al-Assad had visited Pyongyang himself. During the ensuring war, the DPRK would become a “major supplier of arms to Iran” and it would have a “history of cooperating on missile technology” with Iran as one website reported. As one might imagine, this makes it no surprise that Iraq cut off “diplomatic relations in October 1980,” with the Koreans following suit by continuing their alliance with Iran for the next 38 years to the present-day and never again re-opening diplomatic relations with Iraq. As the war raged between Iran and Iraq, the weapons from Korea flowed in so much that the country “accounted for 40% of all Iranian arms purchases.” One commentary by a Zionist, Kenneth R. Timmerman, with parts within the text about the Koreans being an arms conduit for other countries removed as it makes them seem to be a colony of the Chinese or Soviets when they are not, reported in the late 1980s that
…The North Koreans produce a certain amount of T-54/T-55 tanks and other equipment under license from the Soviet Union. They also continue to purchase large quantities of weaponry from both the USSR and the People’s Republic of China…The first delivery [to Iran]…through North Korea occurred in October1980…the next major deal, for an estimated $1 billion, was negotiated…by North Korea…in exchange for cash and 2 million tons of Iranian crude oil. The equipment was of Chinese origin, and was most likely taken from existing Korean inventory. Deliveries are said to have occured in stages over the1981-83 period, and included 150 T-62 main battle tanks, 400 artillery pieces, 1000 mortars, 600 anti-aircraft cannons, and 12,000 machine guns and rifles…an additional 300T-54/T-55 Korean-built tanks should be added to the list. Weapons deliveries from North Korea were worth $800 million in 1982 alone…Since then, Iran is said to have refused large quantities of locally-produced North Korean equipment, due to its poor quality…[In August 1983] the North Koreans sent 300 military advisors to Tehran…Soviet willingness to supply military assistance, training, and weapons to Iran was codified by a pair of military agreements signed with the Iranian government in July 1981….These agreements resulted in the arrival of some 3000 Soviet advisors in Iran, the building of new ports and military airfi[e]lds by Soviet and North Korean technicians, and the construction of the largest Soviet listening base outside the Warsaw Pact
Others, relying on Timmerman and some other sources, note that in 1985, Iran says it will finance the “North Korean missile program in exchange for missiles and missile technology,” the same year that the country received R-17 Elbrus (Scud-B) missiles from the Libyans and Koreans. Additionally, that year, work on the Mushak-120 missile in Iran, “reportedly begins with assistance from China, North Korea, and others at a Chinese-built factory near Semnan,” while in the summer, “Iran approaches both North Korea and China looking for ballistic missiles and missile technology.” More than this, Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaker of the Iranian Parliament (from 1980-1989) signs a deal, that year, worth $500 million, to “receive North Korean missiles based on Soviet Scud designs” from the Koreans, while he also visits China and the DPRK “to establish military cooperation.” As a result, the Koreans agree to “give Iran HN-5A SAMs, and to help in building an assembly site for them” and they also “offer aid to build production factories for the HN-5A and the HQ-2, to engage in technology transfers for Iran’s missile program, and to assist in the building of an assembly site for the missile that is the same as the North Korean Scud-Mod.” From 1985 to 1988, the DPRK receives 240 Scud-B missiles from the Soviets, and 100 are “re-sold to Iran,” further showing their solidarity. By March 1986, Iran is receiving arms from the DPRK, Libya, and Syria, even paying the Koreans over the next five years (1986-1991) money in “oil purchase debt” for the weapons they had purchased. Beyond this, the “Defense” Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the U$ declared that
the Middle East has been the major market for North Korean arms, with Iran and Libya making most purchases. Sales to Iran peaked in the early 1980s at the height of the Iran-Iraq war…The weapons North Korea exports include large quantities of munitions, small arms, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defense artillery, SCUD-B short-range ballistic missiles, and some naval craft…North Korea presents itself as a fellow revolutionary struggling with constraints of relations with the superpowers…During the Iran-Iraq war, North Korea trained Iranian gunners to operate the Chinese mobile surface-to-air system and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in unconventional warfare techniques
In another part of the same report, the DIA declared that “the current size, organization, disposition, and combat capabilities of the North Korean Army…maintains North Korea’s territorial integrity and assists in internal security, civic action projects, economic construction, and a variety of agricultural programs.” Then there’s the New York Times article in 1987 declaring that the DPRK was involved in arms trafficking to Iran, serving as a conduit for the soviets. [3] With all these claims, it is hard to know how much or what the Koreans sent to Iran. A trade register showing the DPRK as the supplier and Iran as the recipient noted that between 1982 and 1987, the following weapons were delivered:
That may be the most accurate you can get on support Korea lent to the Iranians. Also consider the Special National Intelligence Assessment in 1985 which declared that there were 50-100 Korean advisers, T-62 tanks, SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, antitank missiles and launchers, small arms, field artillery, mortars, rockets, and naval mines from the Koreans in the country at that time. They also outlined, in varying other documents how the Koreans were arming the Iranians, to the chagrin of the imperialists.
Kim Il Sung and other Koreans come to Iran in May 1989 in Pyongyang, before the Supreme People’s Assembly, with his late son, Ahmed Khomeini, saying that going to the DPRK was “a decent thing to do” as noted in the YouTube video of the meeting of these two individuals. The video also shows other scenes from Khamenei’s visit to Pyongyang the same year.
Such support was re-paid in 1989 when then Iranian President and later Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, met with Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam reportedly “sought to acquire Rodong missile systems from North Korea” and sent a “$10 million down payment from Baghdad,” but Iraq never “received any missiles or missile technology from the deal” showing that the Koreans would not abandon their solidarity with the Iranians against imperialism, clearly knowing what side Saddam was on, the side of repression and global capitalism, not national liberation. Since that time, the two countries have not restored diplomatic relations, even after “the Iraqi population of around 33 million has only been subject to short periods of relative peace as competing interests struggle for control” since the 2003 invasion as Oxfam declared. There were a number of mentions of Iraq on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the DPRK but these were in reference to “depleted uranium shells seriously affecting human health and the environment” used by U$ imperialists in Iraq, forms of U$ war which could be used to bring down “the social system of the DPRK,” the false pretenses of such imperialists to “overthrow legitimate governments in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya,” and noting that “the U.S. deleted Iraq and Libya from the list of “state sponsor of terrorism” that gave in to its pressure [and] it also deleted Cuba,” showing that the “the label of “state sponsor of terrorism”” is just an imperial tool that can be attached or removed at “any time in accordance with its interests.”
The relation between the DPRK and Iran has been ironclad since the 1980s. After all, in May 1979, Kim Il Sung sent Khomeini a telegram congratulating him on the “victory of the Islamic Revolution,” and on June 25th of the same year, Khomeini met with the “DPRK Ambassador Chabeong Ouk in Qom,” on what was the “29th anniversary of the aggression of U.S. troops against the meek nation of Korea” to which “Khomeini replied in kind, calling…for the expulsion of American troops from South Korea.” [4] The Jewish Virtual Library, which is highly Zionist, says with alarm that “Iran is North Korea’s principal customer for weapons and technology, and it has been the site of a number of missile tests carried out on North Korea’s behalf. North Korea may have sold one of its most sophisticated missiles, the Nodong…to Iran…North Korean experts are also believed to have helped Iran with its centrifuges.” While most of this is likely poppycock, it does say that even the Zionists are afraid of the Koreans. These same people consider the Koreans part of the “anti-American Middle East axis” (of Syria and Iran) and that the Korean relationship with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has existed since 1983. In years since the 1980s, the Koreans worked to help fortify Iran, even though they likely did not smuggle in “missiles in pieces” as Zionists declare, instead creating “friendship farms” in each country in 1996, farms which hold “cultural exchanges, commemorations of Khamenei’s visit to North Korea, and commemorations of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il” every year. By the 2000s, some Iranian officials, “concerned with Iran’s integration into the global economy expressed alarm,” said the DPRK was a negative example. Take for example, the former chief of the IRGC and Secretary of the Expediency Council, Mohsen Rezaee, who said that if Iran followed “a reactionary stance internationally and a policy of developmental stagnation domestically,” it would do no better than the DPRK. Even with this, relations remained strong, with a visit in 2007 by Iran’s deputy foreign minister to Pyongyang “as negotiation with its officials for studying and developing bilateral relations” continued, with both countries signing a “plan for exchanges in the cultural, scientific and educational fields.” In 2012, a scientific and technological cooperation agreement was signed between the two countries, showing that they are dedicated to strong relations. The next year, the Iranian Parliament approved Mohamed Hasan Nami as communications minister, a person who holds a degree from Kim Il Sung University in state management, and images showed that “Iran maintains a seven-building embassy compound in Pyongyang, at the center of which stands the first mosque in North Korea.” Then, in February and September 2014, Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister, met with “high-ranking North Korean delegations in February and September 2014.” Even so, there was some evidence of “growing distance and diverging trajectories” which bourgeois analysts said would “eventually cause Iran to see its friendship with North Korea as a liability,” claiming it has little to offer the Iranians, leaving behind a “relationship that once thrived on friendship farms and mutually admiring founding leaders.” However, as recent developments show, this observation was short-sighted. After all, if one Iran-hater, Amir Taheri, is right, the Iranians adopted tactics, used by the Koreans during the Great Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953), during the Iran-Iraq War, with Khomeini’s “resistance economics” loosely based on Juche ideology. [5]
In 2017 and 2018, relations between Iran and the DPRK have become even stronger. In May 2017, Choe Hui Chol, the vice-minister of Foreign Affairs, met with the Iranian ambassador in Pyongyang, Seyed Mohsen Emadi, with Chol mentioning the “eye-opening successes being made by the DPRK in bolstering the Juche-based rocket force under the energetic guidance of…Kim Jong Un” and he hoped that the “traditional relations of friendship between the two countries” begun by Iranian leaders and Kim Il Sung “would grow stronger in conformity with common interests of their governments and peoples.” In response, Emadi thanked Chol for his comments, adding that the “traditional relations of friendship, provided by the preceding leaders of the two countries” is “favorably developing” under the care of Kim Jong Un, adding that both countries should strive for closer cooperation “in the international arena including the UN and expand the bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation in politics, economy, culture and other fields.” [i6] The following month, Kim Yong Nam sent a message of sympathy to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani expressing “deep sympathy and condolences to the Iranian president and through him to the victims and bereaved families” for terrorist attacks. He added that two countries should strengthen cooperation “in the struggle to oppose all forms of terrorism and ensure world peace and stability.” The same month, officials of the Foreign Ministry, Ministry of External Economic Relations, Korean Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the General Bureau for Affairs with Diplomatic Corps visited the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang, expressing “deep sympathy and consolation to the victims of the incidents and their bereaved families and reiterated the consistent principled stand of the DPRK government against all forms of terrorism.” Later on that month, the Indonesian Ambassador in Pyongyang, Bambang Hiendrasto, hosted a reception at the Taedonggang Diplomatic Club, “on behalf of embassies of member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation(OIC)…as regards the end of Ramadan” with Choe Hui Chol present, along with “ambassadors of Indonesia, Syria, Iran, Palestine and Egypt and charges d’ affaires ad interim of Nigeria and Pakistan, OIC member states, and embassy officials and their families.”
The following month, August, Kim Yong Nam attended the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani in his second term in the Majlis Building in Tehran. Other countries attended as well such as EU representatives, but this showed the connection between the two countries. At his inauguration, Rouhani made a speech, expressing “the stand of his government to develop the economy, strengthen the defence capability, ensure peace and democracy and realize constructive cooperation with the international community” while he also “affirmed that Iran would cope with the U.S. moves for scraping the nuclear agreement with vigilance and make all efforts to ensure peace and stability in the Middle East region.” Nam, attended the inauguration with numerous others such as Choe Hui Chol. At the sidelines of the inauguration, Nam, spoke with Robert G. Mugabe, president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, who was also present, showing they were, at that time, part of the anti-imperialist front. Afterwords, Nam attended “a banquet arranged by the Iranian President.” [7] The same month, Nam talked with Rouhani, noting that “the line of simultaneously developing the two fronts set out by the Workers’ Party of Korea is being implemented…under the guidance of…Kim Jong Un” and outlined the “achievements gained in the struggle for independence.” He also said there needs to be further development of “friendly and cooperative relations between the DPRK and Iran and the Non-Aligned Movement.” Rouhani responded by saying that “Iran-DPRK relations have developed on a very high stage, expressing the belief that the friendly relations between the two countries which have jointly struggled against the U.S. will boost in broad fields in the future.” Earlier on, Nam had met “Speaker of Majlis Ali Larijani and First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri of Iran.” Also that month, Pak Pong Ju, Premier of the DPRK, sent a “congratulatory message on Thursday to Eshaq Jahangiri” on his re-appointment as First Vice President of Iran, wishing him “bigger success in his work for the independent development and prosperity of the country and the friendly government and people of Iran happiness and prosperity.” The same day, Ri Yong Ho sent a “congratulatory message to Mohammad Javad Zarif” on his re-appointment as Iran’s foreign minister.
Photos of Iran’s old embassy (right) and new embassy in Iran (left). With photos from Wikimedia for the old embassy in 2011, and for the new embassy, after 2017, from KCNA.
The same month, the murderous U$ imperialists passed a host of sanctions aimed against Russia, Iran, and the DPRK, to which Iran responded by “vowing to pass retaliatory bills regarding the passage of the sanctions bill as a blatant act of hostility against Iran.” More important, a new embassy of the DPRK was inaugurated in Tehran, with “Ebrahim Rahimpour, vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, personages of the Tehran City Government, friendly organizations, media and different social standings and members of an Iranian construction company,” and numerous Korean officials attending. [8] Cho Hu Chol, at the inauguration said that the “premises of the DPRK embassy were built a new to boost exchanges, contacts and cooperation between the two countries for world peace and security and international justice,” stressing the “consistent stand of the DPRK government to invariably develop the strategic relations between the two countries” which had been “forged and strengthened” by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, working with Iranian leaders “in the common struggle for independence against imperialism.” Ebrahim Rahimpour, in his speech, said he was pleased with the new embassy, and noted that “the Iranian people…remember the DPRK’s sincere help and solidarity to Iran when it was in hard times, will fully support the struggle of the Korean people at all times.” The same day, the embassy hosted a reception.
The month afterwords, September, Rouhani sent a message of greeting to Kim Jong Un, congratulating “Kim Jong Un and the Korean people on the occasion of September 9, the birthday of the DPRK.” In the same message he “hoped that the bilateral relations would favorably develop in all fields through cooperation and joint efforts of the peoples of the two countries.” Around the same time, the daily paper, Kayhan, which reflects the views of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ran editorials “praising North Korea’s “brave defiance of Arrogance” by testing long-range missiles in the face of “cowardly threats” by the United States” with one editorial even inviting “those who urge dialogue with the US to learn from North Korea’s “success in humiliating the Great Satan.” [238] There were some responses from Western favorites, the reformists, with one of them expressing regret that Iran was asked to “downgrade to the level of “a pariah in a remote corner of Asia,” but even so, Kim Yong Nam came to Tehran on a 10-day visit heading “a 30-man military and political delegation” and was “granted a rare two-hours long audience with Khamenei.”
In October, the next month, relations were still strong. The Iranian Ambassador in Pyongyang, Seyed Mohsen Emadi and his staff members visited the “Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum on the occasion of the DPRK-Iran friendship week” with guests looking around the museum’s rooms while they were briefed on “the fact that President Kim Il Sung led the Fatherland Liberation War to victory,” and Emadi made “an entry in the visitor’s book.” He also wished the “the Korean people bigger successes” under the guidance of Kim Jong Un. Additionally, Emadi and his staff “toured the Tower of the Juche Idea, [and] the Sci-Tech Complex,” while staff members of the embassy “did friendship labor at the DPRK-Iran Friendship Ripsok Co-op Farm in Mundok County.” The same month, Kim Jong Un sent messages to varying “foreign party and state leaders in reply of their congratulatory messages and letters on the 69th founding anniversary of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” including those from Cuba, Nepal, Maldives, Bangladesh, Syria, Cambodia, Thailand, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Tajikistan, Indonesia, Mali, Belarus, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Congo, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria, Tunisia, Eritrea, Dominica, Egypt, Iran, and the “co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kim Il Sung–Kim Jong Il Foundation…secretary general of the United Nations…and the director-general of the International Institute of the Juche Idea.”
In the last two months of the year, relations were clearly still strong. In November, Kim Yong Nam sent a message of sympathy to Hassan Rouhani on a terrorist attack in the country, saying that “upon hearing the sad news that Kermanshah region located in the west of Iran was hit by earthquake, claiming heavy human and material losses, I express my deep sympathy and condolences to you and, through you, to the victims and their families. I hope that you and your government will recover from the consequences of this disaster at the earliest possible date and bring the life of the citizens in the disaster-stricken region to normal.” The month after, Kim Jong Un received a message from Rouhani which extended “greetings to Kim Jong Un and the Korean people on the occasion of the New Year 2018” and hoped that “global peace, justice and equality would be ensured and violence removed in the New Year.”
Foreigners at prayer in the Iranian Embassy in Pyongyang. Photo by Jaka Parker, published by NK News.
This year, 2018, relations couldn’t be stronger. The imperialists have labeled countries like Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and the DPRK“states of special concern for religious freedom,” undoubtedly a fake label. At the end of January, in Tehran, the two countries signed a “2018-2021 memorandum on cooperation…in the fields of culture, arts, education, mass media, sports and youth” which was inked by Kang Sam Hyon, the DPRK’s ambassador in Tehran, and “the vice-chairman in charge of international affairs of Iran’s Islamic cultural liaison organization.” [10] The next month, February, the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang hosted “a reception…on the occasion of the birth anniversary of leader Kim Jong Il.” Present at the reception was Kim Yong Dae, vice-president of the SPA Presidium, Thae Hyong Chol, president of Kim Il Sung University, “Kim Jong Suk, chairwoman of the Korean Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, [and] Ryu Myong Son, vice department director of the C.C., Workers’ Party of Korea.” Also, Seyed Mohsen Emadi, Iranian ambassador there and his staff members were there. In a speech, Emadi said that “historic relations between the two countries forged by their preceding leaders had been further strengthened thanks to Kim Jong Il,” and he expressed the “will to continue mutual cooperation in line with the desire and aspiration of the two peoples.” Kim Yong Dae added, in his speech that “the Korean people would as ever value the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries forged in the joint struggle for independence against imperialism, sincerely wishing the Iranian people success in their struggle for ensuring regional peace and stability.” The same month, Kim Yong Nam sent a “message of sympathy” to Rouhani, in “connection with a recent passenger plane crash in Iran, that claimed huge casualties,” saying that he “expressed deep sympathy and condolences to the Iranian president and, through him, to the bereaved families of the deceased.” Also that month, the Iranian embassy “hosted a reception at the Taedonggang Diplomatic Club…to mark the 39th anniversary of the victory in the Islamic revolution of Iran.” Present at the reception was Thae Hyong Chol, president of Kim Il Sung University and chair of the DPRK-Iran Friendship Parliamentary Group, Ri Yong Chol, vice department director of the WPK’s central committee, and Choe Hui Chol, along with other “officials concerned and diplomatic envoys of different countries and representatives of international organizations and military attaches of foreign embassies” in Pyongyang. Around the same time, Kim Yong Nam, “sent a message of greetings…to Hassan Rouhani…on the occasion of the 39th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic revolution of Iran,” in which he noted that “after the victory in the revolution the Iranian people have achieved a lot of successes in the struggle to defend the gains of revolution and build a powerful state while repelling the ceaseless pressure and interference by the hostile forces.” In the same message he expressed “the belief that the good ties of friendship and cooperation between the DPRK and Iran would grow stronger, wishing the Iranian president bigger success in his work for the country’s development and stability and the people’s well-being.”
We then get to more recent news. Iran continues to resist imperialist efforts to isolate it, allying more with the Chinese revisionists, the Russian capitalists, and the socially democratic Syrians, while European imperialists work to appease the orange menace with new sanctions. [11] The Saudis have also been strongly aggressive, doing the errand work for the imperialists as they always do. With the full-throated occupation of part of Syria by the U$, as Stephen Gowans pointed out recently, the Iranians are right to call the U$ foolish, especially in light of Mike Pompeo, neo-con of the CIA who has taken the reins of the U$ State Department from oil man Tillerson, who some thought was “moderate” but actually just engaged in imperial diplomacy. At the same time, varied Iranian minister have survived an impeachment process in their parliament, the country is aiming to launch its first operational satellite next year, and the ICAPP (International Conference of Asian Political Parties), headquartered in the ROK, met in Tehran recently for its 29th meeting. Also there were reports of the Cuban ambassador meeting with Iranian officials, and efforts to increase exports from a refinery run by ROK in the country. The protests, which had some elements with U$ backing, are over, with a massive turnout favoring the government. The Iranian government, defiantly, has said that they will negotiate over their ballistic missiles (which do not have nuclear warheads), with Iranian Armed Forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri saying that “the condition for negotiating Iran’s missiles is the destruction of the nuclear weapons and long-range missiles of the United States and Europe,” echoed by Rouhani saying that “We will negotiate with no one on our weapons…[our missiles] are defensive and are not designed to carry weapons of mass destruction, since we don’t have any.” This is while Iran has said it was ready for the U$ to quit the nuclear deal and opposes the U$ moving their embassy to the Zionists to Jerusalem, saying they will defend themselves if there is Zionist aggression.
At the same time, there has been some other news. For one there has been some victories, such as the British-drafted resolution on Yemen failing in the UN Security Council, or Rouhani being more relaxed when it comes to headscarves in the country. However, there have been some ruminations of developing a cryptocurrency in Iran to bypass U$ sanctions, which will only benefit the Iranian bourgeoisie. There have also been recent stories about the hidden workings of the British empire (in the past) in Iran and India, along with new findings about the clerical involvement in the CIA-backed coup in Iran against Mohammad Mossadegh or how “Operation Merlin” poisoned U$ intelligence on Iran. Most worrisome is an article in Bloomberg back in February [12] stating that
Iran’s armed forces…must divest from energy assets and other businesses to help save the Persian Gulf nation’s economy, President Hassan Rouhani said. Armed forces…must withdraw from all their commercial holdings, Rouhani said Tuesday…“Not only the Social Security Organization but all government sectors, including banks, have to divest their business holdings, and this is the only way to rescue the country’s economy,” Rouhani said. “Government officials, non-government institutions and the armed forces and others — everyone has to divest their commercial businesses.”…Rouhani’s government, now in its fifth year, has faced unprecedented scrutiny from ordinary Iranians frustrated that their living standards haven’t improved since the nuclear deal…The government needs to reduce its dependence on crude as a source of official revenue and must boost contributions from taxes, Rouhani said…Iran also holds the world’s largest proven reserves of natural gas. Paris-based Total SA signed a deal in July to develop part of the giant South Pars gas field, pledging $1 billion in investment. Total is the only major Western energy company so far to commit to investing in Iran since the easing of sanctions. Within the nation’s energy industry, divestment will focus on downstream petroleum projects including refineries, petrochemical plants and storage facilities…The program will emphasize assets owned by the government or semi-government entities, and Iran will seek to attract foreign companies “with investment, know-how, and equipment”
Now, this is troubling. Not because of the work conditions in the country for the proletariat or the supposed “mass and arbitrary detention” and tough “Internet censorship regime” that the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) bemoans. Rather it is that moving away from such state assets is a form of privatization. The Tudeh Party of Iran, which is in exile and did not participate in the country’s elections in the past or recently in 2016, Iran’s communist party as you could call it, dislikes the current government. In a statement on March 1 of this year, they talk about “grand capitalism” in Iran and privatization of factories, which is connected to a statement in January in which they state that Iran has, currently a “system underpinned by neoliberal capitalist socio-economics that has destroyed the productive infrastructure of the country and has driven Iran to unprecedented levels of poverty and deprivation.” Around the same time they released another statement saying that “the way to save Iran is not to replace one dictatorial regime with another kind of dictatorship and tyranny. Our people are striving for a national, popular and democratic republic.” While I am a bit wary of Tudeh as it is an exile, and is not based in the country itself, I think they make good points about the economic system in the country, which is becoming more and more capitalistic.
With all of this, there is still no doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as it currently stands, is resisting U$ imperialist aggression in the region. It is for this reason that the Koreans continue to support it, even though they do not desire a similar government in their country. For the years to come, the relations between the countries will remain strong unless the Iranian leadership capitulates to the imperialists and cuts off relations entirely to appease the capitalist poles of power. If that happens, that would be a sad day for the peoples of Iran and Korea.
Notes
[1] Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), pp 4, 30-31, 40, 47-48, 54, 61, 70, 78-80, 107, 116-118, 122, 124-127, 131, 134, 135, 137, 140-143.
[2] Ibid, pp 125-126.
[3] John Tagliabue, “How $18 Million Got Soviet Weapons To Iran,” New York Times, May 27, 1987.
[4] IranWire, “North Korea’s Deadly Partnership With Iran,” The Daily Beast, Aug 11, 2017; Victor D. Cha and Gabriel Scheinmann, “North Korea’s Hamas Connection: “Below” the Surface?,” The National Interest, Sept 4, 2014; Ariel Nathan Pasko, “North Korea: The Israeli Connection,” BreakingIsraelNews, accessed Feb 7, 2018.
[5] Amir Taheri, “Khomeini or Kim? Khamenei’s Real Teacher,” Gatestone Institute, Sept 3, 2017.
[11] Also see articles about a Russian firm re-developing Iranian oil fields, a trade zone between Russia and Iran, that Iran will not seek U$ permission to operate in the region, that Iran does not seek domination of any region, and there are efforts to expand Iran-China ties. The Bahrainis have even blamed the Iranians for discord in their country, using them as a scapegoat. Iran says that its main priority is to increase security in the region, as it maintains connections with nearby countries, and is about to inaugurate an “offshore project which will stop flaring gas in the Persian Gulf.”Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei told the Syrian Minister of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) that “Syria is in the forefront of resistance against terrorism, and we are all responsible to support Syria’s resistance. Honorable President Bashar al-Assad played a prominent role of being a great defender and warrior and is highly regarded by its nation and the region…the great powers [US, the Soviet Union, NATO, the Arabs and regional countries against Iran] do not necessarily achieve what they look for…This gives insight, hope and power to the nations. So if we and you and the rest of the resistance groups remain decisive in our decisions, the enemy will not be able to defeat us.” The same was said in two articles in SANAhere, here, and here.
[12] Golnar Motevalli and Arsalan Shahla, “Iran Orders Armed Forces to Sell All Energy, Business Assets,” Bloomberg News, Feb 7, 2018.
Editor’s Note: This post has been re-posted on a pro-Palestinian website, likely because it is so good and insightful of the reality of the Zionist state. For that, I am glad, without question.
More of the world is finally recognizing the murderous Zionist state, often called the “state of of Israel,” for what it truly is: an apartheid state. As South African diplomat Clinton Swemmer put it, “Israel is the only state in the world that can be called an apartheid state. We remain deeply concerned at the denial of the right of self-determination to the Palestinian people, in the absence of which no other human right can be exercised or enjoyed.” [1] At the same Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Council, many criticized the Zionist state for “human rights abuses” and called on the government to not only “cease settlement construction” but to allow “for a creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines.” Of course, the Zionist representative declared that the critics were not using “appropriate language of the UN” and were “politicized.” Others, like Prof. Richard Falk and Desmond Tutu have also called the Zionist an “apartheid state,” with the Zionists claiming in response that Arab countries engage in “apartheid,” in conjunction with Zahava Gal-On, leader of a left-wing party, within the Zionist state, named Meretz, saying that “the occupation must be a temporary solution. We turned it to a permanent solution. There is one name for this: apartheid.” [2] This article will prove these charges correct, while noting that the murderous Zionist state is a unique form of apartheid. This means that this Zionist state does not have to be compared with apartheid in South Africa, which even some pro-Palestinian individuals do, as this comparison gives the upper hand to the Zionists. [3]
Under the Rome Statue, the “crime of apartheid” is easily defined, in Article 7 as “inhumane acts…committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Such inhumane acts, constituting crimes against humanity, since they are “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” may consist of the following:
murder
extermination
enslavement
deportation
imprisonment
torture
rape
sexual slavery
enforced prostitution
forced pregnancy
enforced sterilization
enforced disappearance of persons
Along with any sort of “persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity” on “political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender” grounds, or any similar inhumane acts which cause “great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” The International Convention on the Crime of Apartheid, (also see here and here) also called the apartheid convention, which the murderous Zionist state has not signed, defines the term as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them,” specifically saying that these acts include:
“Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person”
the “murder of members of a racial group or groups”
“the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity”
subjecting members of a racial group “to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”
“arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups”
“Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part”
“Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association”
“any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof”
“Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour”
“Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid”
In this case, both the Rome Statue and Apartheid Convention will be used to define the murderous Zionist state as an apartheid state without question. While Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston, acclaimed scholars Angela Davis and Barbara Ransby say that the Zionist state is one that has apartheid, reactionary leftist Noam Chomsky claims that whatis happening now is “much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel,” showing how much he serves the imperialist centers of power by refusing the utter the words “apartheid” and “Israel” together. It shows that Chomsky doesn’t understand that the word apartheid is a word with a “very specific legal meaning” rather than a “slur” as the Zionists would like to call it.
Table of contents of sections within this sub-section:
Palestinian women hold a banner likening the situation in the Gaza Strip to a pressure cooker during a protest in Gaza City demanding that Egypt open Rafah crossing, 1 January, via Electronic Intifada
As mentioned before, inhumane acts include, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, and enforced disappearance of persons. For a state to commit inhumane acts, it does not have to do all of these things, but only some of them, as not every state is a horror house. These are specific aspects that a state commit, making it an apartheid state: the denial of the “right to life and liberty of person,” murder or serious “bodily or mental harm” on a racial group(s), “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” which includes torture, and “arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment.”
ECOWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) notes, in their full report which the Zionists and U$ imperialists didn’t want the world to read, that social racism plays a “vital role in apartheid regimes, by providing popular support for designing and preserving the system,” adding that a “finding of racial discrimination is based less on how groups are labelled than how they are treated.” They further add that the claim of Palestine as the “exclusive homeland of the Jewish people rests on an expressly racial conception of both groups,” the “Israelis,” and Palestinians. Furthermore, they add that in the war after independence, this racism became state policy:
…the Zionist movement took over territory far beyond what had been assigned to the Jewish State under resolution 181(II) and, by so doing, rendered moot its labyrinthine provisions, including acquiescence by the internationally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people
It was reported in 2009 by bourgeois media, relying on a report by a nonprofit Palestinian group named SAWA, that “trafficking and forced prostitution in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza operate on a small-scale basis,” rather than an activity which is sophisticated and organized. [4] However, it was noted that forced prostitution and trafficking is “frequent and widespread” with women and girls involved in it having “few means of escape” with poverty and unemployment playing a huge role in “pushing girls and women into prostitution” which makes them “vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers.” Furthermore, it was noted that those who engage in prostitution, and ultimately drawn into human trafficking, were “violently abused by their families,” specifically their fathers, even forced into marriages, with traffickers threatening “girls with violence if they refuse sex with clients.” Even if women somehow escape these horrific circumstances, there are “few social networks or shelter houses” they can turn to, and may be “ostracized by their communities and families” with the law treating them as criminals. Specifically there is a lack of willingness by “law enforcement to investigate these cases and prosecute the traffickers.” This basically means that the Zionists and the PA are turning a blind eye to prostitution and human trafficking, showing that they are allowing these inhumane acts to happen to the Palestinian people, specifically Palestinian women, which is disgusting.
The conditions of prisoners are also horrific. Repressive tactics used in U$ prisons mirror those used by the Zionists, with 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in the latter state going on hunger strike for 40-days ending in May 2017 with the threat of force-feeding (with actual force-feeding seemingly abandoned because of public outcry) and other repressive measures, with many of the hunger strikers hospitalized after the hunger strike ended. [5]
UNICEF revealed in a report in September 2017 that there was “rampant child abuse…including rape, forced marriages, and beatings” in occupied Palestine, and Palestinian communities in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan (likely because of unsavory elements), noting that “in the State of Palestine, 70 per cent of students are exposed to violence at school.” [6] Of course, a so-called “human rights NGO,” Human Rights Voices (HRV) was angry about the report, saying it “place[s] the blame for Palestinian behavior on everyone but Palestinians, results in other shocking conclusions,” angry that the report blamed the Zionist occupation as the “root cause of the violence Palestinian Arab children experience” even though this is the reality. Not surprisingly, it turns out that HRV,claiing it is even-handed on its website, has stories blaring about “Palestinian terrorists,” Gazans “carrying knives,” along with extensively quoting the Zionist ambassador, and basically claiing the UN is “bias” against the Zionists, even advocating for the orange menace to follow through on his threats to UN funding!
These is more than these horrific acts. The Zionist occupiers, as noted by the spokesperson of Gaza’s ministry of health Dr. Ashraf Elqedrah, declared war on the Gaza strip in 2006 after Hamas won elections there,implementing a blockade, with the health sector devastated, with “medicines, medical consumables, laboratory materials and blood banks have all been hit by the siege. Dr. Elqedrah added that there are deficits in medical supplies, with spare parts unavailable if medical equipment breaks down, with daily power cuts meaning that hospitals “rely on back-up generators…intended for emergency use,” with these generators breaking down, and needing fuel to operate which is short supply. Furthermore, Palestinians in Gaza used to be able to travel abroad for surgery, but the Rafah Border Crossing, “the only window to the outside world…has been closed by Egypt for months on end.” If that isn’t enough, military offensives against the people of Gaza have “targeted hospitals and medical facilities” with some facilities still not repaired from the last bombing, with “development of existing facilities…affected by the severe shortage of materials caused by the Israeli-led siege.” This is coupled by “punitive measures taken by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Ramallah” with thousands of health workers are affected, hurting the local economy. In the closing of his article, Dr. Elqedrah states the obvious, showing the murderous nature of the blockade:
The Israeli blockade is sold to the world as a matter of “self-defence” in order to “defeat terrorism”, but the reality is that Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians in an act of collective punishment that amounts to a serious crime under international law. Unless and until the world wakes up to this fact and moves to end the blockade, the health sector in the Gaza Strip will break down completely. Is the international community ready to accept such an eventuality?
If that isn’t enough, as a recent book argued, the Zionists have engaged in covert state-sponsored killings. These killings, numbring nearly 2,700, taking place from after World War II to the present, are mostly “against Palestinians, but also Egyptians, Syrians, Iranians and others.” They likely even used “radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who was the founder of the Fatah movement that was part of the Palestine Liberation Organization.” Furthermore, Zionist tactics were “later adopted by the US, especially after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and recently by the former President Barack Obama, who launched several hundred targeted killings”! Hence, an assassination machine was formed by the Zionists, taking the form of “car bombs, mail bombs, airstrikes and explosive devices attached to cars by operatives on motorcycles,” along with other methods. Clearly, the Zionists would do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain control.
Every day, Zionists call for killing and other violence against more Palestinians, whether it be rape, injury, and imprisonment. This has manifested itself in airstrikes by Zionist warplanes targeting sites in the Gaza strip in response to “rockets coming from the Gaza Strip,” and blowing up “tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip.” Just recently, a Palestinian 19-year-old was shot in the head by the IDF as Palestinians resist apartheid while those like horrid Thomas Friedman openly advocate the killing of Palestinians.
In October 2016, the UN Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” Michael Lynk, wrote that there had been “continued use of administrative detention, punitive demolitions, movement restrictions and other measures continue to negatively affect the human rights of the Palestinian people on a continuous basis.” They added that “attacks and alleged attacks by Palestinians against Israelis are…responded to with disproportionate and deadly force” with a sense of “desolation and desperation among children” with “psychological and physical ailments” including, but not limited to, “bed-wetting, anxiety and depression” as a lack of accountability leads to a “cycle of continued violence” with the message being sent that “Palestinian lives do not matter, while the Palestinian population becomes both more fearful and more desperate.” By October 2016, there were more than “6,000 detainees currently held on alleged security grounds, as well as approximately 700 administrative detainees.” Lynk also wrote that detainees are “often deprived of basic legal safeguards,” held on secret evidence, subjected to abuse, and subjected to “Israeli military law…while Israeli settlers in the same geographic area are subject to the Israeli civil and criminal legal system.” These are, as they concluded, some of the measures employed “on a case-by-case basis, that often amount to collective punishment” meaning that the entire group is punished “for the actions of a particular individual.”
Deliberate living conditions “calculated to cause its or their physical destruction” of the Palestinian nation
One of the 11 infographics on a pro-Palestinian website, explaining part of “Israel-Palestinian apartheid”
A report by Jad Isaac of Applied Research Institute, based in Palestine, noted that the Zionist occupiers imposed new environmental rules and restrictions, “yet another chapter in the long legacy of environmentally disruptive policies and actions.” The Zionist restrictions plated a major role in causing environmental changes in occupied Palestine, such as “land degradation, depletion of water resources and the degradation of water quality” which impacted the social fabric, helping to induce threats to public health, inadequate “distribution of social institutions,” and “economic hardship.” Specific restrictions include severe limits to water sources and wells, strict instructions for drilling, and more limited grazing areas available to shepherds coupled with military orders issued to facilitate “confiscation and closure of land” and efforts to deprive “Palestinian farmers from using their full share of water and other natural resources.” Additionally, many Palestinian farmers have been “forced to leave their land and join the labor market in Israel,” with many Palestinian workers relying on work in Israel proper as “their only source of income,” while sizable areas of land “have been neglected and returned to semi-desert.” In short, there has been “environmental destruction and human displacement” caused by “27 years of land confiscation, and settlement and road building,” with the Zionist occupiers depriving “Palestinians of their natural agricultural potential” and now control “70% of the West Bank…[and] 22% of Gaza” as they exploit Palestinian water resources meaning that only 5.5% of West Bank land cultivated by Palestinians is irrigated, while “about 70% of the area cultivated by Jewish settlers is irrigated,” with Jewish settlers paying lower prices for water than Palestinians!
Issam Abu-Ghallous of the University of Mississippi added to this in an academic article on child labor in occupied Palestine. They noted that impositions by Zionists in response to the Intifada in Palestine severely restricted “movement of people and goods,” with the movement of Palestinian laborers into the Zionist state blocked, creating “temporary high unemployment,” with deterioration of job availability in years to come and as a result, “the probability of younger Palestinian children joining the labor market increases.” Furthermore, by 2009, 70% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were described as poor by UNICEF, with families across Occupied Palestine pulling their “kids out of school” so these kids can work due to “severe economic needs” and child labor has become “necessary for the employment of parents”! The study concluded by saying that
…economic shocks in Palestine as a result of Israeli policies have significant…effects on child labor supply. The restriction of labor force movement and the closure of the Israeli labor market reduced child labor. On the other hand, the reduction of income, which leads to increase in poverty, following Israel’s holding of the Palestinian aid funds, caused an increase of Palestinian child labor supply…it does not seem that the economic crisis in Palestine after the second Intifada contributed to the creation of child labor phenomenon. Due to reliance on the Israeli labor market and the effect of Israeli regulations on the Palestinian economic performance, Palestinians have always relied on child labor. What can be inferred from this study is that the recent economic crisis augmented the child labor supply
So, basically, the apartheid system is causing child labor to increase and be maintained in occupied Palestine! In 2004, UNICEF released a report, saying that after the Palestinian Intifada in September 2000,
Unprecedented restrictions have been imposed on the movement of Palestinians between different areas, and the land has been truncated into 300 isolated ghettos, enforced by 120 Israeli military checkpoints, in addition to the destruction of many main roads and side roads inside the cities, and the closure of many others with barricades. The Israeli occupation forces displaced over 75,000 Palestinians by enforcing the complete demolition of 720 houses, and the partial demolition of 11,560 houses. Education was similarly affected as Israel closed down 850 schools completely…[with Zionist aggression in response to the Intifada] facilities belonging to the security services and to some of the other Palestinian civil institutions were destroyed. The Palestinian airport (the building of which cost US$ 19 million) was destroyed, and the groundwork for a Palestinian seaport under construction in Gaza was also destroyed…Palestinian society is living in a situation of general instability.
Take for example what happened in mid-2006. International aid was frozen and Gaza suffered from “an interruption in electricity and water supplies after its power plant was bombarded by Israel,” showing that the Zionist occupiers don’t care if Palestinians die at all, wanting to be the oppressors and dominating force. [7] At the present, in Gaza, as Palestinians are suffering “health issues,” as a direct result of food restrictions by the Zionist occupiers, with the latter embarking on “destruction, displacement and deprivation” as they continue their colonial conquest. It is clear that the Zionists wish to reflect “similar repercussions on the remaining fragments of Palestinian territory and there is no swifter way to achieve this than by inviting the international community to participate,” forcing a form of dependency on those living in Gaza.
There is a related measure aiming to weaken and erase the Palestinian nation: “using tourism and infrastructure projects in order to legitimize its illegal Jewish-only settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank”! This adds to the more than 130 demolitions that “took place in East Jerusalem,” last year, while “hundreds of Palestinians were displaced,” with a “strict permit system to marginalize Palestinian residents in Jerusalem” to eliminate Palestinian culture from the city! This is not a surprise considering the violent birth of the Zionist state, showing it to be genocidal:
The Zionist militias that orchestrated the genocide of the Palestinians prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948 merged together to form the Israeli army; and the leaders of these groups became Israel’s leaders. Israel’s violent birth in 1947- 48 was the culmination of the violent discourse that preceded it for many years. It was the time when Zionist teachings of prior years were put into practice and the outcome was simply horrifying…The ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the time was orchestrated by several Zionist militias. The mainstream Jewish militia was the Haganah which belonged to the Jewish Agency. The latter functioned as a semi-government, under the auspices of the British Mandate Government, while the Haganah served as its army. However, other breakaway groups also operated according to their own agenda. Two leading bands amongst them were the Irgun (National Military Organization) and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang). These groups carried out numerous terrorist attacks, including bus bombings and targeted assassinations. Russian-born Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun which, along with the Stern Gang and other Jewish militants, massacred hundreds of civilians in Deir Yassin…Some of the other terrorists-turned-politicians and top army brass include Begin, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Rafael Eitan and Yitzhak Shamir. Each one of these leaders has a record dotted with violence…So, when government ministers like Ariel and Bennett call for wanton violence against Palestinians, they are simply carrying on with a bloody legacy that has defined every single Israeli leader in the past. It is the violent mindset that continues to control the Israeli government and its relationship with Palestinians; in fact, with all of its neighbors.
Ramzy Baroud added in CounterPunch that for the Palestinian people there are few options: “perpetual Apartheid or ethnic cleansing, or a mix of both” with the ‘Regularization Bill,’ which passed in February 2017, allowing the Zionist government to “retroactively recognize Jewish outposts built without official permission on privately-owned Palestinian land.” While the UN General Assembly says that the settlements are illegal, the response is the building of “new housing units…throughout the Occupied Palestinian territories,” and paving the “way for the annexation of large swathes of the Occupied West Bank” with the construction of “more ‘Jewish-only’ bypass roads will be constructed, more walls erected, more gates to keep Palestinians away from their land, schools and livelihood will be put up, more checkpoints, more suffering, more pain, more anger, and more violence.” The Palestinian leadership is not blameless, as it foolishly entrusted the “the US, Israel’s main enabler, with managing a ‘peace process’ that has allowed Israel time and resources to finish its colonial projects, while devastating Palestinian rights and political aspirations,” a terrifying result.
There are varying practices of the Zionists which are aimed at breaking apart feelings of Palestinian nationalism as noted by Michael Lynk: “the use of punitive home demolitions” (re-instituted in 2014), restricting the freedom of movement by making populations go through “Israeli security arrangements,” having a long-standing land/air/sea blockade on Gaza (which started in 2007), “planning practices and policies” aimed against Palestinians, the division of the Palestinian economy (making it hard to build a “sovereign economy” as occupied Palestine is a “captive trading market” for Zionists), and turning the West Bank “into an archipelago of small islands of densely-populated areas disconnected from one another.” Additionally, a lack of secure transit access, inhibiting 35% of Gaza’s farming land by decreeing that a strip of land 300 meters within Gaza is a “restricted buffer zone,” tightly restricting the “maritime zone that Gazan fishermen can utilize” have been other attempts to weaken the unifying effect of Palestinian nationalism. For Gaza, as Lynk wrote in his report, there has been “widespread social anguish” while in the West Bank it it not as hellish, but it is not “flourishing.” Additionally the Zionists have illegally annexed East Jerusalem, entrenched a “colonial-like regime in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” which has created “two separate and unequal systems as regards laws, roads, justice regimes, access to water, social services, freedom of mobility, political and civil rights, security and living standards.” There are also discriminatory measures toward Bedouins in the West Bank who “are often subject to relocation plans developed by the Israeli Government.” [8]
In 2010, the humanitarian imperialist Human Rights Watch even released a report saying that the Zionists differently treat “Jewish settlements” compared to “nearby Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem” with a “two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” They specifically argued that the different treatment “on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin and not narrowly tailored to meet security or other justifiable goals, violates the fundamental prohibition against discrimination under human rights law.” [9] Like their other report, civil society groups provided information and assistance, including ACRI, Al Haq, B’Tselem, Bimkom, EAPPI, OCHA, Peace Now, Yesh Din, and Who Profits.
Just recently, the Zionists seemed to be “worried” about Gaza, even saying publicly that” Gaza’s economy and infrastructure stand on the brink of collapse” which people have been saying for years, as their army has, for over 10 years, enforced a “a blockade on goods coming in and out of the tiny coastal enclave that left much of the 2-million-strong population there unemployed, impoverished and hopeless.” As a result, three separate military assaults have been launched, destroying “Gaza’s infrastructure, killed many thousands and left tens of thousands more homeless and traumatised” which has made Gaza, effectively an overcrowded “open-air prison.” But, the reason the Zionists are concerned is that “diseases will quickly spread into Israel” if epidemics break out, and that “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could be banging on Israel’s door” if the economy in Gaza collapses. However,U$ and Israeli politicians are not “taking the army’s warnings to heart” with things seemingly set to be even worse with Netanyahu declaring that that there”could be no improvements, no reconstruction in Gaza until Hamas agrees to give up its weapons” and the U$ is cutting aid. Perhaps this will lead the PLO to sever their ties with the Zionists completely, as they seem set to do.
The horrid living conditions are evident. At the height of summer 2017, the Zionists cut off water to a Palestine village, while there were purposeful efforts to disable Palestinian teenagers, annexing territories which will uproot 100,000 Palestinians, and plundering of Palestinian resources by German firms that tried to whitewash their activities! If that isn’t enough, Palestinians in the West Bank are literally drowning in the waste of Zionist settlers, which is horrifying:
…many Israeli settlements do not have proper waste treatment facilities. About 12 percent of settlement sewage remains untreated and travels down into streams near Palestinian communities…Palestinian communities are severely affected by settler-produced waste owing to many of their villages having been forced to move to lower agricultural lands after Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory…the pollution had caused the local extinction of several species that had once inhabited the area, including deer, rabbits, and foxes. Boars are now the only animals left alive there…Since the 1980s, the Bedouin village of Wadi Abu Hindi, located in a valley squeezed between Israel’s Maale Adumim and Qedar settlements near the town of al-Eizariya, east of Jerusalem, has been affected by a massive nearby dumping ground for Israeli rubbish…In addition to the landfill and fears of a forced eviction from Wadi Abu Hindi, the residents also have to contend with Israelis from the Qedar settlement releasing their pool water into the below valley where the Bedouin reside…Caused by Israeli dumpsites, settler waste, and Israeli restrictions on Palestinians preventing them from developing waste treatment facilities. More than half of all waste produced by Palestinians in the West Bank remains untreated
Such efforts go beyond what happened in 2014 in Gaza: six UNRWA schools were bombed, Gaza’s only power plant was destroyed, and plunging thousands into darkness.
Efforts to prevent Palestinians “from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life” of the Zionist state and creating conditions “preventing the full development” of the Palestinian people
Israeli soldiers patrol a street in the West Bank city of Hebron’s Old City on 14 January, courtesy of Electronic Intifada
In particular these efforts, which can be legislation or not, deny members of a racial group(s) “basic human rights and freedoms” such as the rights to work, “form recognized trade unions, education, “to leave and to return to their country,” to a nationality, to “freedom of movement and residence,” to freedom of opinion and expression, and to “freedom of peaceful assembly and association.”
The ECOWA full report on apartheid Israel says specifically that Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 who had not fled or been expelled became citizens but were administered under emergency laws, with denial of their civil rights such as the franchise to vote, until 1966! Furthermore, there is a “race-based immigration policy” with measures in place which are specifically “designed to prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from challenging the doctrine and laws that purport to establish Israel as a Jewish State.” More specifically, the summary ECOWA report argues the “right of return” for Palestinians is denied to over 6 million people.
Freedom House, an appendage of the murderous empire, of course, claims that Palestinians have an active role in the Zionist state, saying that they pushed against Israeli occupation starting from 1921 onward. [10] However, they even have to admit, in a chapter written by a seemingly well-respected Palestinian scholar, that even as Palestinian women face obstacles from “within their own culture and society,” including restrictive “personal status laws” on the domestic front, they face impositions “as the result of occupation, war, and civil unrest,” writing that
…the Israeli occupation…heavily influences the ways in which the PA conducts its affairs, how Palestinians conduct their daily lives, and the personal security of all Palestinians. The areas under PA rule are not contiguous, but are separated by numerous checkpoints, roadblocks, and other physical and administrative barriers erected by the Israeli authorities. These barriers have significantly curtailed Palestinians’ freedom of movement, and combined with a general lack of security, they have had a devastating effect on the local economy…[the apartheid wall in the West Bank has caused women to] experience further separation from their families, farmlands, water resources, schools, and hospitals. When the wall is completed, it will stand eight to nine meters tall and stretch more than 700 kilometers, adversely affecting the lives of an estimated one-third of the Palestinian population in the West Bank…Palestinian women and men from the West Bank and Gaza who marry Palestinians with Israeli citizenship face difficulty in transferring citizenship to their family members…Israeli checkpoints and barriers, including the separation wall, also restrict freedom of movement. The separation wall in particular has made women the “most isolated social group” in Palestine…Such restrictions on free movement have prevented some women from reaching hospitals and health care centers in time to give birth; as a result, several have died in transit at checkpoints… Many women—and some men—holding Jerusalem identity cards and married to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza cannot obtain Jerusalem identity cards for their spouses, meaning the spouses are not allowed to live in Jerusalem…Palestinians from Jerusalem risk losing their residency status if they are unable to present documents demonstrating continuous residence for the past seven years and proving that their “center of life” is in Jerusalem. Those who lose their status are effectively barred from returning to their native city…Women and men are generally free to assemble peacefully within the PA-administered areas, so long as they avoid Israeli checkpoints.
The rest of the report isn’t worth quoting here as it mainly focuses on internal Palestinian laws by the PA and Hamas, saying they are restrictive, with diatribes against them. Still, the above shows that the apartheid nature of the state is clear in that this report acknowledges restrictions against Palestinians, especially Palestinian women, making the apartheid system utterly sexist and, even more accurately, patriarchal.
The denial of freedom of movement is evident. Just recently, the Zionist occupiers deported a Palestinian child who was reportedly in Jerusalem without a military permit and did not notify the parents. Then there are infringements on workers rights allowed in the West Bank by 206 companies, as noted in a recent UN report, which are “doing business linked to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and it urged them to avoid any complicity in “pervasive” violations against Palestinians,” companies which “play a central role in furthering the establishment, maintenance and expansion of Israeli settlements.” 143 of these companies are “located in Israel or the Jewish-only settlements, followed by 22 in the United States” with 19 from “other countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, France and Britain.” The report says that settlements lead to violations which are “pervasive and devastating, reaching every facet of Palestinian life,” with restrictions on “freedom of religion, movement and education and lack of access to land, water and jobs.” It further said that businesses operating in occupied Palestine have a responsibility to “carry out due diligence” and consider if they can even do business there in a “manner that respects human rights.” Of course, the Zionists attacked this report, saying it was “fundamentally illegitimate” and proves the UN’s “bias to try to delegitimize Israel” since they fear that the list of 206 companies could be “used by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.” At the present, about 600,000 Jewish settlers “live in over 230 illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem” and they tend to be “ultra-conservative Jewish people that reject the idea of a Palestinian people or state and believe that the West Bank should be part of the Israeli state,” the perfect people for furthering the colonialist goals of the Zionists.
With this, the Zionist state is undeniably not a “moral democracy,” as it has pursued a “discriminatory policy against a fifth of its Palestinian citizens inside the 67 borders” but is rather a democracy that “only applies for the masters of the system” meaning that on almost every level, “from official legislation through governmental practices as well as social and cultural attitudes, Israel is only a democracy for one group…that given the space that Israel now controls, is not even a majority group anymore.” Furthermore, even with the reputation by the Zionists that they are “outwardly liberal and open, there are still recently opened racially segregated schools.” Such “institutionalised discrimination and systematic oppression over any group based on race is the definition of apartheid.” Even James “Mad Dog Mattis” warned the Israeli right-wing in 2013 [11] that
If I’m Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here to the east and there’s 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them, either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote — apartheid. That didn’t work too well the last time I saw that practiced in a country.
In 2014, Professor Iian Pappe argued that the Zionist state had passed the crossorads, deciding if it “wants to be a democracy or to be a racist and apartheid state, given the realities on the ground” and it made the decision that it “prefers to be a racist apartheid state and not a democracy,” which it hopes would be given license by murderous empire, proving it “with the immunity to continue with the necessary implication of such a policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, wherever they are.” Add to this that the education system of Arabs within the Zionist state has “been placed under the control of the general intelligence apparatus” with no school headmaster or teacher “appointed without the approval of the intelligence services.” Even the syllabus itself is supervised by “specialists” in order to “domesticate the Arab population and turn it into a loyal one.” At the same time, Zionist authorities have issued orders to demolish thousands of homes and impose “heavy fines on Arab citizens” with the net effect being the “exhaustion and impoverishment of the Arabs.” This is made worse by the fact that corporations benefit from “the low cost of Palestinian agricultural labor in settlements.” [12] Additionally, the Zionist state is currently maintaining a “system of formal and informal housing segregation both in Israel and in the occupied territories” while the “Jewish residents of the occupied territories enjoy various rights and privileges denied to their Palestinian neighbors.” The “educational systems for the two populations in Israel (not to mention the occupied territories) are kept largely separate and unequal” and it is “not legally possible in Israel for a Jewish citizen to marry a non-Jewish citizen.” [13]
That’s not all. There are dozens upon dozens of discriminatory laws ranging from stop-and-frisk, anti-NGO measures, laws against stone throwers, and anti-boycott measures. Some, as noted by the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel or Adalah are as follows:
There are pages, pages, and more pages of many other laws as well. These laws undoubtedly restrict freedom of expression, opinion, and assembly, fulfilling yet another aspect of an apartheid state.
There is no written constitution in the Zionist state, and even the basic law of human dignity and liberty asserts that there can be violations of rights of the populace through laws “befitting the values of the State of Israel, enacted for a proper purpose, and to an extent no greater than is required” with these values including keeping the “State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” which is already inherently racist, with the “freedom of occupation” provision since repealed. Adding to this, as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote, while the Palestinian labor movement had its roots stretching back to 1920, it was
effectively destroyed during the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1947–48, when the newly established state of Israel expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians and occupied 78% of what had been historic Palestine. By the mid-1950s all Arab organisations, including trade union bodies, of pre-1948 Palestine had ceased to exist…Today, the Palestinian labour force in Israel is still faced with problems similar to its situation in pre-1948 Palestine, i.e. concentration in the low-wage sector, unequal pay, lack of infrastructure and other obstacles that contradict the principle of decent work, including the lack of labour law enforcement and inspections…In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where unemployment averages more than 50%, numerous unions come together under the umbrella of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU). Under conditions of military occupation, with checkpoints, barriers and the Wall, it is not easy for unions to function properly, but the PGFTU has been at the forefront of drafting labour legislation and campaigning to safeguard the rights of both workers and the unemployed.
So, that shows that trade unions are not allowed anymore. As for nationality, Palestinians are seen as second-class citizens without a doubt, so their nationality is seen as sub-par to that of Jewish citizens. This is evident by the fact that Israel had to be declared a “national home” rather than a state because there were well-established Palestinians already in the country, with the “national home” being for Jewish people specifically and aimed to make the area a “Jewish state.” Even in 1919, a U$ legal scholar wrote in the New Republic that “Zionists are quite willing to ignore the rights of the vast majority of the non-Jewish population of Palestine” with this undoubtedly happening after the state was created with UN sanction. As one Washington post columnist Richard Cohen admitted, state of Israel “is the legal creation of the United Nations,” and did not exist prior to 1948. [14]
Ever since the Zionists “launched a surprise attack against Egypt [in 1967] and began its military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Syrian Golan Heights,” the Zionists have “ruled over millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories by military decree, granting them no political rights while relentlessly colonizing their land” and because this is so entrenched, it has led many “observers to conclude that the creation of a sovereign and territorially contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel (i.e. the two-state solution) is no longer possible.”
Efforts designed to divide the population along racial lines
Prof. Richard Falk, as quoted above, in an interview in October 2016.
Specifically, these efforts, which include the “creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups,” prohibition of “mixed marriages among members of various racial groups,” and the “expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof.”
The summary of the report by ECOWA, which the murderous empire and murderous Zionists didn’t want the world to see, just like the full report, makes these efforts abundantly clear. This summary, which “anchors its definition of apartheid in international law,” argues that the Zionist government was designed inherently for apartheid, renders any opposition to this system of racial domination illegal, rejects “the return of any Palestinian refugees and exiles” which total “some six million people” to territory under control of the Zionists, and the Palestinian people are strategically fragmented. Furthermore, these fragments are “ostensibly treated differently but share in common the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime.”
The full ECOWA report is even more explicit, adding that the state itself is “politically constructed” as for the Jewish people, with the mission of preserving it that way compelling or even inspiring “general racial policies.” These include “demographic engineering, in order to establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel” and designing domestic governance “to ensure that the State upholds and promotes Jewish nationalism.” As a result of this, the State has an “essentially racist character,” with “racial-nationalist privileges” embedded in the state’s “legal and doctrinal foundations,” and is “designed to be a racial regime” with different forms of administration used to “control Palestinian populations depending on where they live.” If that isn’t enough, the state “maintains an apartheid regime by administering Palestinians under different bodies of law” by pursuing efforts to “weaken the Palestinians politically and contain their demographic weight.” This manifests itself in the fact that the fragments which constitute “occupied Palestinian territory,” as the UN defines it (the West Bank, of the Jordan river, and Gaza Strip) are dominated by a similar system. The 4.6 million Palestinians who live in these fragments, “2.7 million in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip” are governed by military law, rather than civil law, which is “codified as orders issued by the commander of the territories and administered by the…IDF” along with other “designated arms of the occupying power.”
In July 2017, Matthew Vickery wrote in TruthOut that every month it seems the Zionists move to “expand the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank,” with these settlements splitting “the West Bank into Palestinian islands surrounded by settler-only land, roads, and military zones,” and integral part of the “Israel’s military occupation and a major aspect of the continued, decades long, suppression of the Palestinian people.” Such divisions undoubtedly divide the populace along race lines as, child workers, as he writes, are “poverty-stricken, and the lives these villagers used to live before occupation…has been completely destroyed” with the land stripped away from them, annexed by the Zionists, with restrictions on Freedom of movement, hemming the workers “into islands of Palestinian land surrounded by Israeli settlements, roads, and military controlled zones.”
Even evidently problematic and likely anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon, who falsely claimed that calling the Zionist Israel a “‘colonial state’ and an ‘apartheid’ apparatus” was introduced “for the obvious reason that they wanted to disguise the extent of the crime committed by Jewish nationalism” (this is false because it was posited by the racist prime minister of South Africa in 1961 and later used by Palestinians) admitted that the Zionist state is “a racially driven ethnic cleanser, it wants the Palestinians gone” in an article titled “call it colonialism, call it occupation – just don’t call it ‘apartheid.'” Others, who are more credible, has said the same. Tanya Williams, the Green candidate for Twickenham, South West London argued that “it needs to be pointed out that they [Israel] are a racist state and an apartheid state.” Even John Kerry declared infamously in April 2014 [15] that
A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.
Add to this what the anti-Zionist and British-based group, No To Pinkwashing, argues. They write that the Zionist state claims that they “support LGBTQ…rights to try to divert attention from their human rights crimes against Palestinians” with the pinkwashing playing on the racist stereotypes “that Muslims and Arabs are all violently homophobic and transphobic, while Israelis are western and “civilised”.” However, the reality is that there is an “apartheid state built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” with the Zionists not wanting peace as “Israeli settlers are seizing Palestinian land to build settlements,” and attacks on Gaza killing thousands.
As Ben White wrote, the Zionist state is founded on violence. When it was established in 1948, “around 90 percent of all Palestinians who would have been inside its borders were expelled, and prevented from returning” with millions of Palestinians still denied access to “their homeland, their lands and properties expropriated, purely because they are not Jewish.” Furthermore, the Zionists have “systematically discriminated against Palestinian citizens” and for 49 years of its existence, subjected “non-citizen Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to a military regime characterised by colonisation and segregation.” This meant that by the mid-1970s, the”average Palestinian village in Israel had lost 65-75 percent of its land.” At the present, there has been the expansion and establishment of “more than 100 illegal settlements, in defiance of international law” with these settlements build on stole Palestinian land with the settlers being Israeli citizens meaning they are not “ruled by military law.” As White concludes, at the present, there is “a de-facto single state…between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea” maintained by the Zionists, with successive governments, since 1967, incorporating “the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, into the fabric of the state, through settlements, a road network, and so on.” As a result, within this state, “Jews and Palestinians are afforded or denied rights based on ethnicity, ID card, and geography.” That sounds like racial division without a doubt. This merged state can be called the murderous Zionist apartheid state, or Zionist state for short, as to not use the term “Israel.”
In international institutions, there seems to be no recourse for such institutionalized racial discrimination. While the Zionist state signed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 1979 (which criminalizes “racial segregation and apartheid“), policy reforms did not follow, as it refuses to “comply with its international law obligations” with state discrimination against “non-Jews.” From this, the CERD (Committee) on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) concluded that “Israel systematically segregates and discriminates against non-Jews,” saying that they are
articularly appalled at the hermetic character of the separation of two groups, who live on the same territory but do not enjoy either equal use of roads and infrastructure or equal access to basic services and water resources. Such separation is concretized by the implementation of a complex combination of movement restrictions consisting of the Wall, roadblocks, the obligation to use separate roads and a permit regime that only impacts the Palestinian population…The Committee draws the State party’s attention to its General Recommendation 19 (1995) concerning the prevention, prohibition and eradication of all policies and practices of racial segregation and apartheid, and urges the State party to take immediate measures to prohibit and eradicate any such policies or practices which severely and disproportionately affect the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and which violate the provisions of article 3 of the Convention…[there is] increased concern that Israeli society maintains Jewish and non-Jewish sectors, which raises issues under article 3 of the Convention. Clarifications provided by the delegation confirmed the Committee’s concerns in relation to the existence of two systems of education, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic, which except in rare circumstances remain impermeable and inaccessible to the other community, as well as separate municipalities: Jewish municipalities and the so-called ‘municipalities of the minorities.’
Furthermore, they rejected the argument about “military exigencies,” saying that the Zionists must “ensure equal access to justice for all persons residing in territories under the State Party’s effective control,” while denouncing the treatment of Palestinian children. Later, in 2000, “five judges ruled on Ka’adan v. The Israel Lands Administration,” saying that “discriminatory housing and land policies” are illegal with CERD wanting this enforced, and saying that the “discriminatory Law for the Regulation of the Bedouin Settlement in the Negev” should be eliminating, arguing that it legalizes the “ongoing policy of home demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities.” However, even as “CERD’s observations and recommendations are important…it lacks enforcement authority” with the Zionists talking “full advantage” of this without a doubt.
In 1976, the Koenig Memo or Koenig Document was published, making recommendations as”to how to deal with Palestinians living inside the state of Israel, who are considered citizens according to Israeli law” with its open publication “seemingly part of a plan to incite intimidation and hostility towards Palestinians.” This document was the first to state “hidden truths” with the assumption throughout that “Arab citizens are to be regarded as enemies and backwards, lacking understanding of modernity or democracy” while saying that their should be a “strategy aimed at domesticating Arabs and guaranteeing Jewish supremacy” with the latter including the crushing of Arab defiance, weakening Arab leaders, denying work and educational opportunities to Arabs, and tighter control. Basically the document advocates “racial discrimination against Arab citizens,” perceiving “Arabs as a superficial and backwards community that need special treatment and constant observation,” creating a new “fascist reality that haunts Arabs in every aspect of their lives.” Furthermore, it says Arabs should migrate while denying “them their legitimate rights as citizens of the state.” While no documents or official papers show the Zionists adopted this, it is well-known that it is “binding for the Israeli government” and it has become “a strategy, indeed almost a constitution, adhered to by successive Israeli governments.” With the memo’s adoption and implementation, it has been used as a “reference point and as an essential source for successive Israeli governments, and as an agreed strategy against the Arab population” with some calling it a “constitution for an apartheid system that has been established inside the occupied territories of modern day Israel.”
There are other aspects as well. There is a racist trade union called Histadrut which was “key Zionist organization responsible for the formation of the Israeli state,” seen as a “normal trade union” outside the Zionist state. Additionally, in March 2013, buses “running from the West Bank into central Israel” started to have “separate lines for Jews and Arabs,” showing that racial segregation is alive and well despite official denials. [16]
Exploitation of the labor of Palestinians, particularly by “submitting them to forced labour”
Palestinian civilians who were “captured during the fall of Lydda and Ramle around the time of July 12, 1948 and taken to [forced] labour camps. In the July heat they were thirsty and were given a drop of water carried by a child under soldiers’ guard” as noted by a pro-Palestinian site, reprinting from Al-Akbar EnglishThere is no doubt that there is exploitation of Palestinian labor, as the Zionist state is inherently capitalist. In the Investment Climate Statement of the U$ State Department, a report written for U$-based investors in June 2017, this is clear. [17] The economy of the Palestinian fragments is described as “small and relatively open” with several large “holding companies dominating certain sectors” with Palestinian businesses having a “reputation for professionalism as well as the quality of their products” and large Palestinian enterprises “internationally connected, with partnerships extending to Asia, Europe, the Gulf, and the Americas.” However, the local market is small, movement and access of goods and people between the Palestinian fragments is restricted, and external markets imposed by the Zionists has a “deleterious effect on the private sector and limit economic growth.” Furthermore, they grumble that Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip eliminates “opportunities for meaningful foreign direct investment in Gaza are few,” but admit that the economy of the West Bank is de-coupled from Gaza, along with restrictions by the Zionists “on the flow of imports and exports.” That’s not all. Citing data of the Palestinian Authority (PA), they write that the unemployment rate, in 2015 was about 27% overall, being about 18% in the West Bank and about 42% in Gaza, with the overall unemployment rate among women being about 45%, among those aged 20-24 it is about 43% in the West Bank and about 58% in Gaza. They say, moderately that these Palestinian fragments create a “challenging business environment affecting domestic and foreign investors alike.” Of course, the PA will not really help solve these problems, even with their National Policy Agenda for 2017 -2022, described in the report as putting forward a “path to independence, government reform, and sustainable development” which are just rhetorical words as it translates to deregulation, supporting petty bourgeoisie, and looking ahead to “economic opportunities following the resolution of the political conflict with Israel.” If Palestine was to become a state under the PA, it would like engage in deregulation and likely privatization (which currently hasn’t occurred) as it has “participated in the 2005, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015 WTO Ministerial meetings as an ad hoc observer” and is looking to gain permanent observer status for the PA itself. Currently, as the report notes, the major sources of inward direct investment in the country are: the U$, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, and Cyprus.
The report of the U$ State Department is telling, but of course it doesn’t tell the whole truth, but only enough of what is told to investors. These reports are definitely more accurate about the reality than the human rights reports which are utter propaganda without question. After all, it is evident that thousands of Palestinians (mostly male) were interned in 22 “Israeli-run prisoner of war camps” during the 1948 war, with conditions of utter slavery, and these Palestinians were “expelled from the country at the end of the war”! More specifically, these Palestinian civilians were made into forced laborers, exploited “to support its war-time economy,” with those imprisoned forced to “do public and military work,” in camps “surrounded by barbed wire fences, watchtowers, and a gate with guards” where established “after the unilateral declaration of Israel’s statehood on May 1948.” Before that “prisoners were a burden in the beginning phases of the ethnic cleansing,” with four “official” camps which were on or adjacent to military installations, administered by former British officers, and visited by the ICRC (International Crescent of the Red Cross) actively. Along with one other recognized camp, there were 21 “unrecognized” camps, with smaller amounts of prisoners, not noted in official sources! Most of the camps were within “the borders of the UN-proposed Jewish state” although four camps were in the “UN-assigned Arab state and one was inside the Jerusalem “corpus separatum.”” While it is known that 5,000 individuals were interned in the four “official” camps, it is not known how many were interned in the other 22 camps, with abuses by prison guards “systematic and rife” in the camps themselves with some avoiding such abuse because of their political ideology or because they knew their rights. This was coupled with wide-scale “kidnapping and imprisonment of Palestinian civilians,” in 1948, with campaigns like Operation Dan ” when 60-70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the central towns of Lydda and Ramleh” or Operation Hiram with a large “round-up of civilians came from villages of central Galilee,” some of which were taken to concentration camps. It would be until 1955 that “most of the Palestinian civilian prisoners would finally be released” while the Zionists ignored the condemnations of the ICRC and other groups! This story which has been barely mentioned at all in most histories and was only recently unearthed and brought together in the Journal of Palestinian Studies, showing that the current discriminatory nature of the apartheid system are an inherent part of the state’s history, meaning that a new state must be formed. As one book put it, the apartheid state is a bourgeois republic with Zionism permeating “all aspects of life” and is led by a bourgeois leadership, meaning that in this state the working people will be exploited, oppressed, and “governed” in this class-divided society.
Such forced labor has continued at the present. Even humanitarian imperialist Human Rights Watch (HRW) discovered in a 74-page report, released in July 2015, that hundreds Palestinian children, as young as 11 years old, are “being employed under dangerous conditions in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” [18] Only being given 13 pounds a day, some children worked outdoors in 100-degree temperatures, with even “hotter conditions inside greenhouses” meaning that settlements the West Bank are “profiting from rights abuses against Palestinian children” as one director put it, while children are dropping out of school, taking on this “dangerous work” because they feel they have no choice. Much of the produce that they pick, clean, and pack is exported to the EU or the U$, with the children working up to 12 hours a day and many suffering injuries, with the whole thing denied by the occupation authorities of course. The original report by HRW, which has only limited suggestions for “change” distinguishing not just the media summary, shows it is even more horrific [19]:
The work that children perform can be both grueling and hazardous. Some children who work on settlement farms described vomiting, dizziness, and skin rashes after spraying pesticides with little protection, and experienced body pain or numbness from carrying heavy pesticide containers on their back. Many suffered cuts from using sharp blades to cut onions, sweet peppers, and other crops. Heavy machinery also causes injuries…None of the children interviewed received medical insurance or social insurance benefits, and the majority of those who needed medical treatment due to work injuries or illness said they had to pay their own medical bills and transportation costs to Palestinian hospitals…[there are] many examples of children working in Israeli agricultural settlements in violation of international law as well as Israeli and Palestinian law…Another factor underlying abuses against Palestinian children in settlements are Israel’s policies that severely restrict the traditional Palestinian economic activity in the Jordan Valley – agriculture – while supporting settlement agriculture
With research assistance by groups such as the Jordan Valley Solidarity Center, the Ma’an Development Center, and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, this report is definitely more legitimate than others on countries the empire hates without a doubt.
This HRW report is not unique as their is undoubted exploitation of Palestinians. In July 2017, Matthew Vickery wrote in TruthOut that illegal Israeli settlements “provide employment to thousands of Palestinians — men, women, and children as young as 12,” constructing and building structures “that deconstruct their own aspirations for self-determination.” He remarks that these child workers are “often forgotten about by the outside world and activists, vilified by their fellow Palestinians, and used as propaganda by settlement companies and the Israeli government,” adding that these workers “talk of dangerous conditions, of life-altering injuries, of being paid well below the legal Israeli minimum wage (to which they are entitled), and being subjected to humiliating and threatening treatment” at hands of employers, IDF soldiers, and “unscrupulous middlemen.” With their traditional livelihoods destroyed, they feel that working in settlements is the “only viable way for thousands of rural Palestinians to steadily provide for their family” with the work “forced upon them by occupation,” with many Palestinians having trouble even getting to the settlements because of the Zionist military’s restrictions. Still, the Zionist occupiers and explicit policies has “forced workers into taking up such degrading employment” with the settlement work basically serving as a “nuanced form of forced labour” with workers “exploited for economic gain and forced to build and reinforce occupation with their own hands” with 15% of the workers working on “land that was stolen from their family”!
Other reports have shown the prevalence of child labor. A 2011 dissertation said that “lack of employment opportunities and lack of employment opportunities with adequate income for adults is probably the underlying cause for child labor in Palestine” which are conditions undeniably caused by the Zionist occupiers. The International Trade Union Federation noted back in October 2008 that “Israeli checkpoints make a natural gathering place for child workers because of the permanent queues of people waiting to pass through the barriers” with these children at “significant risk of being caught in crossfire or being abused by other children, the Israeli army or the Palestinian police,” with conditions leading to this including home demolition, with “the homes of over 12,000 people were demolished in the West Bank and Gaza Strip” demolished between 2000 and 2003. In 2004, UNICEF released a report, writing that
Most of the children referred to the importance of the bad economic conditions of the household as a main factor that makes them enter the labour market and the intervention of this factor with other social, psychological and institutional factors…[with] meeting household basic needs…Contribution in improving the household living conditions…Feelings of responsibility for helping the father in his work…Feeling the need for pleasing one of the relatives especially the father…Gaining “value“ within the family…Learning a craft…Hatred to school and considering it as unfruitful…Provision of personal needs…Inheritance of a business owned by the household…Planning to improve future living conditions…Fatalism…Influence of peers and desire to socialize…[and] Preparing girls for marriage [were reasons these children engaged in labor]…In some cases, children were forced to work and in other cases, children entered the labour market despite the opposition of the family. In many cases, children enter the labour market gradually without being “noticed“ by family members or school teachers. A “code of silence“ smoothes the entry of children into the labour market…Most of the children declared that their work is important for the household and that they work for the benefit of their households…Exploitation of children in the Palestinian labour market was manifested in many aspects. It was shown that one-half of the working children are below 15 years of age, and work for long hours that exceed 6 hours a day and reaches 14 hours for some children…30% of working children are enrolled in schools while 70% of them dropped out…Many of the children have the feelings of shouldering the responsibility and solving the problems of their families and they work driven by these feelings…Although the children could not express in-depth understanding of human rights and child rights and do not have clear knowledge about laws and legislation, but in identifying the required
interventions, they showed that they are the most capable to identify their problems and propose solutions.
Persecution of persons and organizations, depriving them of “fundamental rights and freedoms” just because they oppose the apartheid system
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas gestures during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah on 14 January. During a two-and-a-half-hour speech Abbas declared that “today is the day that the Oslo accords end,” courtesy of Electronic Intifada
The summary of the ECOWA report, cited earlier, said that any opposition to apartheid has been rendered illegal. The full ECOWA report adds that constitutional law in the Zionist state has made “resistance to oppression illegal” with any Palestinian parties “legally prohibited from challenging the racial regime itself”!
For years, it was evident, even among the intelligence agencies of the murderous empire that “Israeli occupation would become permanent if it did not end quickly” with the political orthodoxy funding, fueling, and protecting the apartheid state while they “attempted to render illegitimate all forms of resistance to it.”
More recently, similar to apartheid South Africa, the Zionist occupiers have begun banning groups from coming into the apartheid state for their involvement in the BDS movement, a “BDS blacklist” as people are calling it. These include CodePink, led by reactionary leftist Medea Benjamin (who, to her credit, seems like a dedicated pro-Palestinian activist who once learned about “communal living and socialism” but obviously doesn’t hold those beliefs now), War on Want, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Friends Service Committee, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, France-Palestine Solidarity Association, BDS France, BDS Italy, European Coordination of Committees and Associations of Palestine, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, The Palestine Committee of Norway, Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden, BDS Kampagne, American Muslims for Palestine, National Students for Justice in Palestine, BDS Chile, BDS South Africa, and BDS National Committee. [20] Outside the apartheid state, there has been censorship by the patrons of the state, with anti-BDS moves in Canada, the murderous empire, and in Western Europe.
The Zionists argued that this ban was necessary because they (the BDS movement) are harming “Israeli civilians,” declaring that “no country would have allowed critics coming to harm the country to enter it. These people are trying to exploit the law and our hospitality to act against Israel and to defame the country. I will act against this by every means.” There’s no need to defame the apartheid state, because its own spokespeople already do that!
Beyond this, within the apartheid state, a Palestinian MP got 6 months in jail without a trial, citizenship was revoked for another individual without a trial, and Palestinians are systematically imprisoned on no or false charges! Such actions have been happening for years. In 2014, police harassed those protesting against the Gaza invasion inside the apartheid state (also see here) and killed others in the West Bank. In the West, there have been efforts by Zionists to suppress the BDS movement.
The racist nature of Zionism
Tiamiou Ajibade, ambassador to the UN at the debate, in 1975, over the resolution declaring Zionism to racist. Dohomey was changed to Benin in 1975 when the country became the People’s Republic of Benin which would be officials Marxist-Leninist until 1989,although it seemed to abandon these principles by the later 1980s, if the summary of this republic by Wikipedia has any merit.
In 1975, the United Nations debated a resolution calling Zionism a form of racism. Of course, the Zionists opposed it, but so did the Costa Ricans, the UK, and the U$, while Dohomey supported the resolution (as indicated by the above picture). Zambia was also supportive, with the UN representative there telling the UN General Assembly that
Mr. President, my country broke off diplomatic relations with Israel because of sympathy in support of our Arab brothers. We still condemn the expansionist policies of Israel and the racial overtones of its territories in the occupied territories.
The roll call for the resolution shows that many of the African countries voted for calling Zionism a form of racism, with the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany also voting for it. [21] It passed, with 72 votes in favor, 32 votes opposed, and 35 abstentions! Right after that, the video shows a U$ ambassador angry the world isn’t listening to them. The full resolution passed that day, November 10, 1975, determining that “zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” It was a glorious victory for the world, against Zionism, and in favor of Palestinians, without a doubt. As Mondoweiss put it, “the countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.”
Sadly, in December 1991, with pressure from the murderous empire and the Zionist state, the UN General Assembly voted to revoke the resolution, with the Soviet Union disgustingly voting in favor, as did countries across the Americas, except for Cuba. The same was the case in Europe, with some support even across Africa. Still, apart from Cuba, there were a core of countries which opposed the resolution, and rightfully so:
Afghanistan
Algeria
Brunei
Bangladesh
People’s Korea
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Jordan
Lebanon
Libya
Malaysia
Mauritania
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Syria
UAE
Viet Nam
Yemen
This revocation was a propaganda coup for the murderous empire and the Zionists, showing hat the political landscape of the world had changed from 1975 to 1991, in favor of the capitalist poles of the world! This resolution passed because “the Soviet bloc, which helped pass the resolution, had collapsed; and two, Israel and the US demanded that it be revoked or they refused to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference” as one site put it.
Of course, the ADL, Tablet Magazine, and Jewish Virtual Library, to name a few, scoff at the idea that Zionism is racist. However, as Bill Christison and Kathleen Christisonwrote in CounterPunch in 2003, in the drive to “establish and maintain a state in which Jews are always the majority, Zionism absolutely required that Palestinians, as non-Jews, be made to leave in 1948 and never be allowed to return” with the dirty secret being that “this is blatant racism.” They continued, writing that
…Israel’s drive to maintain dominion over the occupied Palestinian territories is motivated by an exclusivist, racist ideology…[the] small minority of Palestinians…faced considerable discrimination…[we must not ignore] Zionism’s fundamental racism…the animating force behind the policies of the present and all past Israeli governments in Israel…has always been a determination to assure the predominance of Jews over Palestinians. Such policies can only be described as racist…house demolitions [are] the preeminent symbol of Zionism’s drive to maintain Jewish predominance…the advance of Zionism has been a process of displacement…Zionism’s racism has,…been fundamental to Israel itself since its establishment in 1948. The Israeli government pursues policies against its own Bedouin minority very similar to its actions in the occupied territories…After Zionist/Israeli leaders assured that the non-Jews (i.e., the Palestinians) making up the majority of Palestine’s population (a two-thirds majority at the time) departed the scene in 1948, Israeli governments institutionalized favoritism toward Jews by law…from the beginning, Zionism has been based on the supremacy of the Jewish people…racism…underlies Zionism. Most centrist and leftist Zionists deny the reality of Zionism’s racism…Needing an enemy has meant that Zionism has from the beginning had to create myths about Palestinians, painting Palestinians and all Arabs as immutably hostile and intransigent…most of those who support Israel as a Zionist state, would be horrified to be accused of racism, because their racist practices have become commonplace…The notion that the Jewish/Zionist state of Israel has a greater right to possess the land, or a greater right to security, or a greater right to a thriving economy, than the people who are native to that land is extremely racist…Zionism by its nature is racist and that this reality goes unnoticed by decent people who count themselves defenders of Israel. Is it anti-Semitic to say that Zionism is a racist system? Certainly not…There is also a strong moral reason for denouncing Zionism as racist…This is a racist philosophy. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is not genocide, it is not a holocaust, but it is, unmistakably, ethnicide. It is, unmistakably, racism.
Some Zionists have openly admitted Zionism’s racist character. Take Abe Foxman who declared that “every nationalism is racist. It sets its laws of citizenship, it sets its own capital” but said that only calling Zionism racist is anti-Semitic somehow, even though it isn’t. Specifically, Zionist ideology is the “purest form of racism. Zionism is Jewish disguised racism as a raison d’etat.” Israeli aggression, as one writer put it, shows that Zionism is racist. Furthermore, there are a number of other reasons that Zionism is racist:
Israel ethnically cleansed Palestinians
Zionism was always about settling on Palestinian land and expelling the indigenous population; it is a racist, settler-colonial ideology
As an officially Jewish state, Israel is an officially racist state
Zionism has a history of collaboration with anti-semitism
Some may be ringing their hands that Zionism isn’t “defined.” Well, if we use the definition of “political Zionism” posed by post-structuralist Judith Butler (whose views on gender I will discuss in another post) at the beginning of her book, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, here to mean Zionism in general, it means the “massive dispossessions of Palestinians in 1948, the appropriations of land in 1967, and the recurrent confiscations of Palestinian lands that continues now with the building of the wall and the expansion of settlements.” She further adds that this means “colonial subjugation in the West Bank and Gaza” which is characterized by “violent dispossession, surveillance, and ultimate control by the Israeli state over Palestinian rights to mobility, land, and political self-determination.”
You could argue that this definition is too limiting and does not recognize that Zionism is a movement. However, as other have argued, not only is there a strong anti-Zionist Jewish tradition but when practiced “Zionism is indistinguishable from the Israeli nationalism that sees the oppression of Palestinians like Ertefaa or Munib as necessary collateral for Jewish survival” meaning that “Israel does not speak for all Jews.” [22] There is no doubt, however, that varied legal authorities and international organizations consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be occupied, including the International Court of Justice, International Committee of the Red Cross, UN Security Council resolutions 446, 465, 478, UN General Assembly resolution 58/292, the UN’s OSHA oPt (see here and here), the European Union (in a confidential report and here), the UN Human Rights Council,and even humanitarian imperialists Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. International law expert, David Kretzmer said at one point that he couldn’t “understand how someone claims that Israel is not an occupying force in the West Bank, after over forty years of government petitions to the High Court of Justice, citing authority as an occupying force in an occupied territory.”
The idea that Zionism is racist is nothing new and even goes back before 1975. At the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Israel, they argued that Zionism is a form of bourgeois nationalism which promotes capitalist interests. Furthermore, as noted by a Soviet writer, not only is Zionism based on the idea of a “chosen race” but it was criticized by Vladimir Lenin himself, who said that the idea that Jews form a nation is “reactionary politically,” with such critical comments of Jewish action, especially nationalism dating back to Karl Marx himself, with none of these comments being anti-Semitic in any way. Stalin held a similar but different critique of Zionism as well.
…the Bund’s third argument, which invokes the idea of a Jewish nation, is undoubtedly of the nature of a principle. Unfortunately, however, this Zionist idea is absolutely false and essentially reactionary…that is precisely what the Jewish problem amounts to: assimilation or isolation?—and the idea of a Jewish “nationality” is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy (the Bundists). The idea of a Jewish nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish proletariat, for it fosters among them, directly or indirectly, a spirit hostile to assimilation, the spirit of the “ghetto”…to call a fight for the Zionist idea of a Jewish nation, for the federal principle of Party organisation, a “fight for the equality of the Jews in the world family of the proletariat” is to degrade the struggle from the plane of ideas and principles to that of suspicion, incitement and fanning of historically-evolved prejudices. It glaringly reveals a lack of real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle…Instead of proclaiming war on this historically evolved isolation (further increased by the general disunity), they [the Bundists] elevated it to a principle, seizing for this purpose on the sophistry that autonomy is inherently contradictory, and on the Zionist idea of a Jewish nation
A book, published in 1934, titled “Lenin and the Jewish Question,” reprinted a number of Lenin’s writings on the subject. Lenin argued in 1919 that Jews are “comrades in the struggle for Socialism” while noting there is a small group of “Rich Jews,” and arguing specifically in 1913 that “liberal bourgeois nationalism” (which can apply to Zionism) corrupts workers minds, with Jews as a caste rather than a nation. Elsewhere he says that acknowledging the historical “legitimacy of nationalist movements” does not mean one should have “apology for nationalism” by supporting only what is “progressive” in such movements, an interesting comment which shows that a stand for self-determination does not have to apply to every single nationalist effort. In yet another refutation of anti-Semitism, the People’s Commissars in August 1918 said that “the Jewish bourgeois are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeois. The Jewish worker is our brother.”
“America’s unsinkable aircraft”: Imperialist support for the Zionist state
Some time ago, FLAME, a Zionist group put an ad in The Nation, of all places, calling the Zionist state, “America’s unsinkable aircraft in the Middle East,” the same magazine whose editors claimed that firing rockets into the Zionist state is “just as atrocious as the far more deadly Israeli barrages”! This is as bad as Howard Zinn’s declaration that “the demands of the Palestinians are just, but I don’t think that terrorist acts are justified, on both moral and pragmatic grounds.” [23]
Imperialist support started with the British commitment to a Jewish “national homeland” with the Balfour Declaration, along with others like one of the so-called “Paris Rothschilds.” [24] By the 1940s, however, the British became “fearful that the Americans would try to eject them from the Middle East.” They felt that the U$ imperialists would deny them control of the oil reserves in a region “considered central to [British] imperial strategy.” [25] Ibn Saud, the ruler of Saudi Arabia,was then an important person to the British Empire. However, he was not in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine,and was even reassured by FDR in 1945 that the U$ government would not “change its Palestine policy without consulting the Arabs.” [26] This later would be disregarded. As the murderous empire supported the creation of the Zionist state, Saud declared it would “be a death to American interests in the Arab world,” saying the Arabs would destroy this state, as he said he would punish the empire “by canceling the Aramco [Arab-American Oil Company] concession,”alarming the military and foreign policy establishment and related companies. [27] With the UN’s General Assembly recommending partition (passing by the 2/3 majority) into an Arab state and a Jewish state, a proposal which Arab states opposed. Violence increased throughout Palestine, with the British withdrawing in 1948, with the new Zionist state proclaimed by the Jewish National Council on May 14, which was recognized quickly by the Soviets (who had worked to counter a US-backed trusteeship in Palestine) and the U$. [28] This was extremely disliked by the neighboring Arab states. They soon “launched a full-scale attack” against the Zionist state, with Saud saying that “sanctions against American oil concessions,” would be applied, but this didn’t happen, with the Saudi government, still formally hostile against Zionism, but Saud arguing that oil royalties helped Arab states resist “Jewish pretensions” and was still able to work with the empire,not surprisingly. [29]
With all of this, the demographics of Palestine were changing. The colonial British claimed they were an “arbitrator between the Arab and Jewish communities,” putting a “ceiling on Jewish immigration,” due to demands by Palestinian Arabs, which was reversed as a result of the “horror of the Holocaust.” [30] Furthermore, the war in 1948 led to hundreds of thousands of refugees, with the murderous empire giving aid to the Zionists and feeling there could be anti-Soviet operations there, mostly Palestinian and Muslim. Even more than that, between 1946 and 1967, over 700,000 Arabs emigrated into Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, while between 1948 and 1964, almost 900,000 Jewish people immigrated into Palestine, with many more Jews coming in than the Arabs who were leaving, with the changed demographics affecting the political environment for years to come.
With the end of the Nakba in 1948, the Zionists had taken over many lands not given to them in the UN partition, showing they would not heed Harry Truman’s suggestion, in December 1947, that “…the Jews must now display tolerance and consideration for the other people in Palestine with whom they will necessarily have to be neighbors” with raids of “restribution” into the Gaza Strip (then controlled by Egypt) and into the West Bank (then controlled by Jordan) in the 1950s and 1960s, along with numerous killings and massacres in the years to come, with 300,000 Palestinians expelled or fleeing before the Zionis state was even created! [31] This was further evident by the fact that in 1967 they had taken over control of the Golan Heights, West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, and Gaza Strip. While Sinai was later relinquished back to Egypt, the Golan Heights, which is sovereign Syrian territory, is still held illegally. With this war, the Egyptians wanted to avenge “Israel’s battlefield successes in 1956” (and likely before as well) helped by Jordanian forces, but the Zionists went on the offensive, leading to many deaths of the Egyptians, Syrians, and some Iraqis. [32] Years later, the Egyptians again want on the offensive. The Zionists were caught off guard in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, with key victories in the war’s first days, with the murderous empire resupplying the Zionists, leading to an oil embargo by Arab states after the Iraqi proposal to nationalize “all American business n the Arab world” was rejected by these same states. [33] In years to follow, the Egyptians would implement economic policies favoring the poles of capitalism,and the Iranians would back Palestinian groups in their fight for liberation. With the wars in Gaza (2006, 2008-2009, 2014) causing the death of thousands, a Jewish South African judge named Richard Goldstone released a report arguing that “Israel used disproportionate military force against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip” while also condemning “Israel for border closures, the blockade, and for the wall…in the West Bank,” leading his vilification by the Zionists without a doubt. [34]
For years, since at least 1965 (if not earlier, with elites siding more with Arab states before that time), the murderous empire has backed the apartheid state. Not only is aid from the empire used to give the Zionists planes and tanks “used to attack Palestinians” but it is used to “build new settlements on Palestinian land and buy US-made warplanes and helicopter gunships,” showing the empire is supporting Zionist terrorism. [35] After the war in 1967, the empire sold jet fighters to the apartheid state, with sales jumping to over $2 billion by 1974, with a total of over $97 billion in aid given between 1949 and 2004! There is undoubtedly a bipartisan consensus on giving the Zi0nist state weapons of war, shown by $351 million to expand the Iron Dome system and Congressional resolutions blaming Hamas, while polls show rising discontent with the apartheid state. Even a Palestinian independent weekly, named Hebron Times, was closed down in 2002 by the CIA for being “overly critical of Israel and US policy towards Palestinian people.” [36] From 1972 to 2017, the empire has used its veto 40 times to veto resolutions on:
Middle East situation, including the Palestinian question (Dec 2017)
Middle East situation, including the Palestinian question (Feb 2011)
Middle East situation, including the Palestinian question (Nov. 2006)
Middle East situation, including the Palestinian question (July 2006)
Middle East situation, including the Palestinian question (Oct 2004)
Middle East situation, including the Palestinian question (Mar 2004)
The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question (Oct 2003)
The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question (Sept 2003)
The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question (Dec 2002)
The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question (Dec 2001)
The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question (Mar 2001)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Mar 1997)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Mar 1997)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (May 1995)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (May 1990)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Nov 1989)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Jun 1989)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Feb 1989)
The situation in the Middle East (Dec 1988)
The situation in the Middle East (May 1988)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Apr 1988)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Feb 1988)
The situation in the Middle East (Jan 1988)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Jan 1986)
The situation in the Middle East (Jan 1986)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Sept 1985)
The situation in the Middle East (Mar 1985)
The situation in the Middle East (Sept 1984)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Aug 1983)
The situation in the Middle East (Aug 1982)
The situation in the Middle East (Jun 1982)
The situation in the Middle East (Jun 1982)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Apr 1982)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Apr 1982)
The situation in the occupied Arab territories (Jan 1982)
The question of the exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable rights (Apr 1980)
The question of the exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable rights (Jun 1976)
The Middle East problem including the Palestinian question (Jan 1976)
The situation in the Middle East (Dec 1975)
The situation in the Middle East (Sept 1972)
Not surprisingly this leads to anger from Palestinians. Some even have said it has led to a form of “blowback,” noting that Osama Bin Laden said that policies of the empire toward Palestine angered him, although this idea is fundamentally flawed as has been discussed on this blog in the past. [37] The support of the empire of “Israel’s brutal apartheid regime,” as even Chris Hedges describes it, of the “occupying power” has led to a confluence of policy. The Zionists transferred Stinger missiles to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, became a nuclear weapons nation as the empire turned a blind eye, even to the use of depleted uranium, leading to horrifying health effects. [38] Additionally, the economy of the apartheid state is based in high technology, with government subsidies, and “homeland security” products, but excluding anyone who isn’t of Jewish descent, with this economy expanding in “direct response to escalating violence” and built on continual warfare. Of course, the gap between the capitalists and proletariat have widened, with the Palestinian economy in a horrid state.
In the West, the Zionists have created linkages with prominent politicians/public figures. One of these individuals is Killary who declared she fully opposed BDS in a letter released online, saying it “delegitimizes” the Zionist state, with the letter itself released by a the PR agency of one Haim Saban, a dedicated Zionist (and former IDF member), Clinton partisan, and owner of Univision. [39] Obviously the letter is absurd and Zionist propaganda, claiming there is a “vibrant democracy” in Palestine and other horrible lies, with her slander about BDS easily countered by the BDS movement’s website itself. The letter is not unique, as one of the Clinton emails released show her anti-BDS sentiments relating to the Edinburgh Film Festival giving back money from the Zionist embassy.
These views are not altogether unique. The biblical-historical arguments that Zionism has a basis for a state in Palestine seem weak, basically showing it is racist. [40] For many years, the bourgeoisie loved the idea of Jewish state in Palestine, supported by Oliver Cromwell, advanced by Napoleon, and the Zionist movement gaining more steam by the 1840s with the advocacy for a state in Palestine diverting Jews from the “political struggle of the proletariat.” By 1914, the Germans asked the Turks to help the obtain a “protectorate” in Palestine, but the British were successful in the world war, leading the Balfour Declaration in 1917, as mentioned earlier, which supported a “national home” for Jewish people in Palestine, making the Zionists smile with glee. This was also supported by the U$ Senate and House of Representatives in 1922, and the League of Nations giving Britain a “mandate” in Palestine, coming to force in September 1923. The British had a hard time holding onto the area, not liking the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine pushed by the Zionist bourgeoisie while they provoked conflicts between the Arabs and Jews, meaning that by 1939 the British had to act like their policy was “pro-Arab,” even though it was that at all, since they needed Arab support in the second World War, with a massive Arab liberation movement forming in Palestine. Meanwhile, the U$ imperialists seemed to support the Zionists but claiming they were “neutral,” with the empire fully backing a Zionist state by 1947, even offering to provide financial aid!
In years since, the Zionists have been assisted by the British and French imperialists, the Germans, and many other imperialists, apart from the murderous empire.
What should be done?
“Palestinian protesters confront Israeli occupation forces near the Gaza-Israel boundary on 19 January amid ongoing demonstrations over the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” courtesy of Electronic Intifada
ECOWA, in their summary report, says that with the “weight of the evidence” showing “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Zionist state is “guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, which amounts to the commission of a crime against humanity” this means that states have a “collective duty…not to recognize an apartheid regime as lawful,” not to aid or assist this state in “maintaining an apartheid regime” and in cooperating with the United Nations or “other States in bringing apartheid regimes to an end.” The full report of ECOWA is even more explicit, endorsing the aims of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement:
This report establishes…that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid…the extreme gravity of the charge requires prompt action…Civil society institutions and individuals also have a moral duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise, and to exert pressure on Israel to dismantle apartheid structures…The competent bodies of the United Nations should consider seeking an advisory opinion from the ICJ as to whether the means used by Israel to maintain control over the Palestinian people amount to the crime of apartheid and, if so, what steps should be taken to end that situation promptly…Efforts should be made to broaden support for boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives among civil society actors…the “country” in which Palestinians are being deprived of rights could be the Palestine that was never allowed to form, and arguably should form.
As good comrades, we should follow their lead. The group, Movement for Black Lives has already done this, saying that “Israel [is] a state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military occupation of Palestine for decades,” arguing that there should be “invest/divestment campaigns that ends US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex and any government with human rights violations” and fighting the “expanding number of Anti-BDS bills being passed in states around the country” with these these bills not only harming the “movement to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but is a threat to the constitutional right to free speech and protest.”
Various communist parties in occupied Palestine and the surrounding region have sounded off on Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) argued that te murderous empire is not a neutral broker, that there could be “escalation of the resistance of the Palestinian people” in days to come, and that there needs to be a “new Palestinian political strategy” with great “importance in strengthening the anti-imperialist secularist line in the Palestinian “resistance”” although there is “a strong influence of the religious movement.” They further said that there needs to be a strengthened “role of the Palestinian left, to unify its political vision and activity on the ground, [and] to renounce its differences.” The Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) argued that the U$ illegitimate recognition of Jerusalem as the “capital” of the apartheid state “calls for the unity of all Palestinian factions to confront this new aggression and gives the incentive to escalate the resistance, all forms of resistance in the face of occupation,” adding that the PLO is an “organization that lost its revolutionary character after it renounced the provisions of the Palestinian National Charter” and what is needed to to “restructure the Palestine Liberation Organization on a revolutionary national democratic basis” with support for the PLO “after its restructuring.” Then there’s the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) which argues that the murderous empire has no right to claim Jerusalem is “the capital of Israel” in a “first rank colonial, imperial decision.” They add to this that the decision undermines “all possibilities for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” making the decision “no less dangerous than the Balfour Declaration exactly 100 years ago.” The CPI also says that now the way is opened “for the Palestinian national forces to play their national and liberating role by confronting this decision,” saying that there needs to be “an international conference to resolve the Palestinian issue, which will impose its will on the Israeli side and to rid the Palestinian people of suffering and oppression,” and noting that “Israeli society is still subject to the influence of radical Zionist ideology and embraces the entire religious narrative with regard to Jerusalem.” After noting that the CPI and the PPP issued a joint statement condemning the U$ decision, they said that Netanyahu has been part of a “campaign of racial and fascist incitement against the Palestinian Arab national minority…and the enactment of racist laws that promote the phenomena of fascism in Israeli society.” They added to this that the CPI seeks to “deepen and develop the struggle to hasten the overthrow of this government” while pushing for the end of “occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state within the borders of June 4th with East Jerusalem as its capital alongside the State of Israel with West Jerusalem as its capital.”
With 16 million communist farmers in India joining the BDS effort, we should join this effort, along with holding an anti-Zionist line like Albert Einstein. Furthermore, however, the apartheid nature of the Zionist state, giving it the name of the murderous Zionist apartheid state, is part of its being. Zionism and apartheid will need to be eliminated totally and completely in order to make a more peaceful region. With this, a revolution seems to be needed to put in place a government in the region which respects the rights of the dispossessed rather than the right-wing settlers in the West Bank and those of Jewish descent within “Israel proper” over the rights of everyone else. The aid from imperialists has to end, of course, and there should be a push from those in the imperial core against such aid and Zionist influence without question. All in all, those across the world should stand with the oppressed Palestinians and the other minorities at the bottom of the racist hierarchy in the Zionist state as a whole.
Notes
[1] Raphael Ahren, “South Africa levels apartheid charge at Israel, drawing seething response,” Times of Israel, Jan 25, 2018.
[2] Michia Moncho, “LETTER: The last apartheid state,” BusinessDay, Feb 1, 2018; Debbie Mankowitz, “LETTER: Do not compare Israel with apartheid SA,” BusinessDay, Feb 2, 2018; Middle East Monitor, “Opposition party: Israel measures in Palestinian territories ‘apartheid’,” Feb 1, 2018; “Desmond Tutu asks U.S. Christians to recognize Israel as apartheid state,” Israel and Stuff, Jun 17, 2014; Jimmy Carter, “Don’t Give Up on Mideast Peace,” New York Times, April 12, 2012. Late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1999, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, and retired retired South African ambassador to Israel Ismail Coovadia all said that Israel was an apartheid state as well.
[3] As ECOWA puts it in their report, calling Zionist Israel an apartheid state is not anti-Semitic, with the “the question of whether the State of Israel is constituted as an apartheid regime springs from the same body of international human rights law and principles that rejects anti-Semitism: that is, the prohibition of racial discrimination.” They further write that it would be “not to present the evidence and legal arguments regarding whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses the Palestinian people as a whole.” Furthermore, they add that the Zionist state is “bound by its obligations to end a crime of apartheid if authoritative findings determine that its practices and policies constitute such a criminal regime,” notes that the term of apartheid has “universal application in international law and is accordingly not confined to the South African case” and concludes that ending the apartheid regime would not “constitute destruction of the State itself.”
[4] “Report lifts veil on trafficking, prostitution of Palestinian women,” CNN, Dec 11, 2009.
[5] Azadeh Shahshahani and Audrey Bomse, “Resisting injustice: Hunger strikes in US and Palestine,” Al Jazeera (opinion), Jun 28, 2017.
[6] Gary Willig, “UN report: Widespread child abuse in Palestinian Authority,” Israeli National News, Sept 13, 2017.
[7] Suheir Azzouni, “Palestine: Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories,” Freedom House, a report which is a “chapter in Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance, ed. Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin (New York, NY: Freedom House; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010),” accessed February 3, 2018. The report says Azzouni is a “Palestinian expert on gender and human rights.”
[8] In August 2015, the OHCHR was told by Bedouins that there were “night raids, the use of police dogs, and the ensuing psychological impact on them” with women, during these operations “subjected to humiliating treatment in the presence of their families.” The OHCHR team also said that “continued exploitation of natural resources in the occupied territories in clear violation of international humanitarian law” and talked about other matters affecting the Palestinian people.
[10] Suheir Azzouni, “Palestine: Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories,” Freedom House, a report which is a “chapter in Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance, ed. Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin (New York, NY: Freedom House; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010),” accessed February 3, 2018. The report says Azzouni is a “Palestinian expert on gender and human rights.” According to some searches, she seems to be in favor of Palestinian rights, even writing an article in Mondoweiss! Interesting she would write for Freedom House though.
[11] Jeffrey Goldberg, “An American General Warns the Israeli Right,” Bloomberg, Jul 25, 2013.
[13] Saree Makdisi, “Does the term ‘apartheid’ fit Israel? Of course it does,” LA Times, May 18, 2014. She is described as a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and the author of “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation.”
[14] Richard Cohen, “A fight for Israel’s existence,” Washington Post (opinion), Jul 21, 2014.
[15] Peter Beaumont, “Israel risks becoming apartheid state if peace talks fail, says John Kerry,” The Guardian, Apr 28, 2014.
[16] Chaim Levinson, “Israel Introduces ‘Palestinian Only’ Bus Lines, Following Complaints From Jewish Settlers,” Haaretz, March 3, 2013.
[17] “West Bank and Gaza,” Investment Climate Statement, June 29, 2017, U.S. Department of State Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, accessed February 3, 2018.
[18] Robert Tait, “Israeli settlements using Palestinian child labour, report says,” The Telegraph, Apr 13, 2015.
[19] “Ripe for Abuse,” Human Rights Watch, Apr 13, 2015, accessed February 3, 2015. Also see the summary of the report at “Israel: Settlement Agriculture Harms Palestinian Children” published the same day. Their suggestions for the occupying Zionists are prohibiting “all settlers from employing Palestinian children,” imposing penalties “employers or contractors who illegally employ children,” lifting “unlawful restrictions on Palestinians in occupied territory,” dismantling the “civilian settlements in the occupied West Bank.” For the EU they say that all “settlement agricultural products” should not be eligible for preferential tariff treatment, and that “European importers” should “cease imports of settlement agricultural products.” For the U$, they say that “settlement agricultural products” should be excluded from the free trade agreement with the Zionists, and that US importers should “cease imports of settlement agricultural products.” For Palestine, they say that there should be “enforcement of laws on children’s free and compulsory education and prohibitions on child labor in areas where there is Palestinian jurisdiction,” membership in the ILO, and pressing “foreign governments to cease imports of settlement agricultural products.” Finally they say that all Businesses Active in Israeli Settlements should “cease activities in the Israeli settlement agricultural sector.” While these changes would be welcome, they are almost cosmetic, as they basically infer that the Zionists will stay as the occupying force, with all of these changes still leaving the oppressive system in place.
[20] Medea Benjamin, “I am American, Jewish and banned from Israel for my activism,” The Guardian, Jan 15, 2018; Asad Rehman, “Israel’s BDS blacklist is straight out of apartheid. The UK can’t condone it,” The Guardian, Jan 8, 2018; Peter Beaumont, “Israel imposes travel ban on 20 foreign NGOs over boycott movement,” The Guardian, Jan 7, 2018; Noa Landau, “Israel Publishes BDS Blacklist: These Are the 20 Groups Whose Members Will Be Denied Entry,” Haaretz, Jan 7, 2018. In November of last year, “Israel denied entry to a US employee of Amnesty International as part of its anti-boycott offensive under the same rules” but “Amnesty is not on the list of 20 groups published on Sunday” interestingly enough.
[21] Some Zionists in Forward and Tablet Magazine claim that “the idea that Zionism is synonymous with racism is actually rooted in Soviet Cold War tactics” citing some book by a former deputy chief of the Romanian intelligence service, Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, as a “source.” This does not recognize that opposition of Zionism was due to the policies of the apartheid state, nothing more, nothing less.
[22] Ray Fillar, “Why I am an anti-Zionist Jew,” OpenDemocracy, Apr 26, 2016.
[23] Howard Zinn, Terrorism and War (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), p 26.
[24] Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p 61.
[25] Ibid, p 396
[26] Ibid; Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 414.
[27] Yergin, The Prize, pp 425-426.
[28] Ibid, p 426. There were debates within Truman’s cabinet about the recognition of Israel, with some saying that if there was a plan to “win Jewish votes, it failed” with it seeming that Truman advisers exaggerated “the importance of the “Jewish vote,” in their efforts to convince Truman to recognize the apartheid state.
[29] Ibid.
[30] F. Robinson, The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, reprint), pp 105-106; Geoffrey Barraclough, The Times Concise Atlas of World History (London: Times Books Limited, 1982), p 141.
[31] A. Kober, Israel’s Wars of Attrition: Attrition Challenges to Democratic States (New York: Routledge, 2009), p 55; U Eilam, Eilam’s Arc: How Israel Became a Military Technology Powerhouse (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), p 27; Z. Ganin, An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership And Israel, 1948–1957 (Syracuse University Press, 2005), p 191; A. Shlaim, The Iron Wall (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), p 91; B. Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp 258-259.
[32] Yergin, The Prize, pp 554, 555-558.
[33] Ibid, pp 602-603, 607, 608-609, 663-665; Robinson, The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World, pp 113-119. Some, like former Israeli official Avner Cohen, Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein claim that the Zionists originally created Hamas, but it isn’t worth going down that road.
[34] Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class (New York: Nation Books, 2010), pp 148, 149-156.
[35] Z. Sardar and M.W. Davies, Why Do People Hate America? (New York: The Disinformation Company, 2002), pp 5-6, 47-48, 51; Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), p 116, 117, 118-119; William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2000), p 30.
[36] Sardar and Davies, Why Do People Hate America?, p 203.
[37] Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Second ed., New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2004), p xi, 3; Zinn, Terrorism and War, p 13; Michael Scheuer (originally “Anonymous“), Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Washington, D.C.: Brassley’s Inc., 2004), pp 134, 135, 227, 229-230, 257.
[38] Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (New York: Nation Books, 2010), p 142; Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class, p 28; Johnson, Blowback, pp 13, 66, 123; Helen Caldicott, The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s military-industrial-complex (New York: New Press, 2002), p xxxi, 44, 157, 158; Kevin Philips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), p 269; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador, 2007), pp 541-543, 547-8, 550, 551, 552, 555, 556, 557, 558.
[39] Annie Karni, “In letter, Clinton condemns Israel boycott movement,” Politico, Jun 6, 2015; “Hillary Clinton Condemns BDS in Letter to Haim Saban,” Forward, Jul 6, 2015; Barak David, “Clinton ‘Alarmed’ Over Calls for Israel Boycott, Urges Bi-partisan Action,” Haaretz, Jul 6, 2015; Scott McConnell, “Hillary’s Sheldon Adelson,” The America Conservative, Nov 12, 2014; Eddie Scary, “Univision owner: ‘When Hillary Clinton is president…’,” Washington Examiner, Apr 17, 2015; Connie Bruck, “The Influencer,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2010; Hadas Gold and Marc Caputo, “Inside the Univision-Clinton network,” Politico, May 12, 2015; “Hollywood, hedge fund heavies giving to Clinton super PAC,” AP, July 2, 2015; “Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists,” New York Times, April 20, 2009; “Schlepping to Moguldom,” New York Times, September 5, 2004.
[40] Galina Nikitina’s 1973 Soviet work, “The State of Israel: A Historical, Economic, and Political Study” notes that there is no clear data on Hebrew tribes before their settlement in Palestine, adding that by 135 C.E. Hebrew people lost all ties with Palestine, with Arab groups in the region intermarrying with other Arabic people.
This text comes from Venessa Beeley’s website “The Wall Will Fall.” The image comes from Diana Dayoub’s Instagram page, seemingly a photograph of Syria. I say seemingly because on Instagram it does not say where the photo was taken.
This post was analyzed for mistakes and other content in January 2019, as part of an effort to engage in self-criticism. Some changes have been made since I wrote this when I was much more influenced by revisionism than I am now.
In response to my recent post about the Democratic Party within the murderous empire, the so-called Marxist, Louis Proyect, declared in a comment: “Syria as a social democracy? You need to take your Thorazine.” Basically he was acting like I am out of my mind, in that he is implying I have schizophrenia or some other psychotic disorder which is an discriminatory and ableist (and is also untrue) sentiment. This is not surprising because he has a deep-seated hatred for the duly-elected Syrian government, liking the “left” opposition to it, engaging in Orientalist propaganda. I included part of his comment in the title of this article to further poke at this fake Marxist who stands against everything that Marxism stands for. He’s basically a butt-hurt progressive who hates anti-imperialist governments, although he acts like he is radical (which is a lie). Anyway, Proyect was responding to my above linked post which I wrote that while Gowans thinks that Syria is socialist, but I think that, Syria is not that at all. In August of last year I expanded on this topic, citing Gowans as a starting point for analysis:
…As noted earlier, the U$ wants to overthrow Syria’s duly-elected government…While you could argue, like Gowans that this is correct, more realistically, the state is socially democratic and secular. Hence, they have a national bourgeoisie…the Syrian leadership courts the Russian capitalists…If we can take that to heart, standing in international solidarity with Iran, Syria, and Russia, even though each of these countries has a national bourgeoisie, against the murderous empire, that is a step in the right direction.
I further added to this in other posts last year, writing that Bashar Al-Assad, and previous leaders since Syrian independence, were duly elected “by the people of Syria” with the empire scowling “at Syria since the 1960s. Furthermore, I added, in another post, that over 17.1 million are “living in the Syrian Arab Republic” with the government led by the “duly elected National Progressive Front (NPF) with its majority in the Syrian’s People’s Council” reaffirmed in elections in April 2016. This post aims to answer a simple question: Is Syria socialist, socially democratic, or just progressive?
Mao Zedong studying the writings of comrade Josef Stalin in the Yenan base area during the Chinese Revolution as noted on a webpage titled “Marxism-Leninism Study Guide“
In order to answer the question of whether Syria is socially democratic or progressive,. I first turned to the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA). The term “social-democracy” was originally used as an “extension of political democracy to the economic level, the elimination of capitalism and the institution of a broad based workers democracy.” However, with the failure of the Second International “to rally the international working class” against World War I, “social-democracy split,” and by 1919 most supporters of the Communist International “called themselves “Communists”” with social-democracy becoming “largely synonymous with the pale reformism of these now established socialist parties, such as the German Social-Democrats and the British Labour Party.” As for the term democratic, MIA defines this as “a political system of rule by the majority” but adding that communism works to move beyond the “limited democracy found under capitalism” and the “repressive nature of bourgeois democracy” itself. As such, the idea of “proletarian democracy” was not only representative, but participatory by avoiding the form of democracy where “one class of people decide what should be done, while another class of people do it” with the working class deciding “amongst themselves, by consensus what and how it should be done” with all positions “of authority in Socialist society must be elected solely by workers and subject to recall at any time.” Ultimately this would be the realization of a “proletarian democracy,” a significant step toward the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship which would “yield to the majority of the working people” and be a stead defense against world capitalism. As Lenin described it, in 1919, a
Proletarian dictatorship [or dictatorship of the proletariat] is similar to dictatorship of other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every other dictatorship does, to forcibly suppresses the resistance of the class that is losing its political sway. The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the other classes…consists in the fact that the dictatorship of landowners and bourgeoisie was a forcible suppression of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the population, namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian dictatorship is a forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., of an insignificant minority the population, the landlords and capitalists. It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail not only a change in the democratic forms and institutions, generally speaking, but precisely such change as provides an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism—the toiling classes…[giving] the vast majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic bourgeois republics…it is the people [who]…are now drawn into constant and unfailing, moreover, decisive, participation in the democratic administration of the state…[with] a government of the workers [who are disinterested]…in the means of production being privately owned…the dictatorship of the proletariat [like the Soviet system]…is so organized as to bring the working people close to the machinery of government…[with the] combining the legislative and executive authority under the Soviet organization of the state and…replacing territorial constituencies by production units—the factory…only the proletariat is in a position to unite and lead the scattered and backward sections of the working and exploited population…only the Soviet government of the state can really affect the immediate breakup and total destruction of the old, i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which has been…retained under capitalism even in the most democratic republics…proletarian, democracy [enlists]…the mass organizations of the working people in constant and unfailing participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of any state…[we need to]…extend the organization of Soviets among the workers in all branches of industry, among the soldiers in the Army and the sailors in the Navy and also among farm laborers and poor peasants
Such a dictatorship of the proletariat, or what you could call proletarian democracy, would be part of an overall socialist system. Of course for the term “socialism” itself MIA has varying definitions, reflecting the debate on this term. There are words of August Bebel quoted in MIA’s definition, but it is better to use to definitions of Lenin and Marx & Engels as they are the principal Marxist theorists. Marx and Engels did not specifically define socialism in the Communist Manifesto but they talk about the “expanding union of the workers” with the need to “centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes” while he also wrote, powerfully, that “what the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” They called for the abolition “of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom” with the end of “bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom,” further noting that such freedom is “free trade, free selling and buying.” Furthermore, it was argued that private property for one-tenth of the population would be abolished, while allowing any person to “appropriate the products of society” but not having the power to “subjugate the labour of others.” This would further mean, they write, that the bourgeois family, where wives are “mere instrument[s] of production,” should be abolished (along with public and private prostitution), and rescue education “from the influence of the ruling class” while abolishing “countries and nationality” and saying that the “first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy” with the proletariat using its “political supremacy to wrest…all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State,” increasing total production as soon as possible. From there, while saying that measures will “be different in different countries,” Marx and Engels proposed “generally applicable” proposals:
abolition of all land rents
abolition of land as property
a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax,”
ending all “rights of inheritance”
confiscating the property of “all emigrants and rebels”
centralizing credit in the “hands of the state” with the creation of a national bank
centralizing communication and transport in the state’s hands
having “instruments of production” and factories owned by the state
while cultivating wastelands and improving the soil
having “equal liability of all to work”
establishment of “industrial armies, especially for agriculture”
combining “agriculture with manufacturing industries”
gradually abolishing the “distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace”
free education of all in public schools
abolishing “children’s factory labour in its present form”
Combining “education with industrial production”
After that, Marx and Engels note that once “class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation” then public power will lose its political character, and that if the proletariat is compelled to make “itself the ruling class” it would sweep away “the old conditions of production…[and] the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally,” abolishing its supremacy as a class. This means, in their words, that in the place of “old bourgeois society” there would be “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
Beyond this, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, in 1875, Marx wrote that “between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other” meaning that there is a “political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” with which he talked about. Lenin was a bit more specific. He wrote in 1917, in chapter 2 of The State and Revolution, that during the period where a society is moving from capitalism to communism, there is unprecedentedly “violent class struggle” with which the state must “democratic in a new way” for those who are propertyless and the proletarian but “dictatorial in a new way” aimed against the bourgeoisie. He further added that such a “dictatorship of a single class is necessary…for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from…communism” and while this transition is bound to lead to “tremendous abundance and variety of political forms” the essence will be the dictatorship of the proletariat. In chapter 5, of the same book, he wrote more about this, saying that
The first phase of communism…cannot yet provide justice and equality [with] differences, and unjust differences…still persist[ing], but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production…and make them private property….the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism…[Marx] regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism…In its first phase, or first stage, communism cannot as yet be fully mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism…It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!…as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing further from formal equality to actual equality…By what stages, by means of what practical measures humanity will proceed to this supreme aim we do not and cannot know…only socialism will be the beginning of a rapid, genuine, truly mass forward movement, embracing first the majority and then the whole of the population, in all spheres of public and private life….Democracy…signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state…a degree of democracy implies overstepping the boundaries of bourgeois society and beginning its socialist reorganization. If really all take part in the administration of the state, capitalism cannot retain its hold….it is quite possible, after the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, to proceed immediately, overnight, to replace them in the control over production and distribution, in the work of keeping account of labor and products, by the armed workers, by the whole of the armed population…Accounting and control…is needed for the “smooth working”, for the proper functioning, of the first phase of communist society. All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of the armed workers. All citizens becomes employees and workers of a single countrywide state “syndicate”…When the majority of the people begin independently and everywhere to keep such accounts and exercise such control over the capitalists…this control will really become universal, general, and popular…The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labor and pay…this “factory” discipline…will extend to the whole of society…[a] necessary step for thoroughly cleansing society of all the infamies and abominations of capitalist exploitation…the more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary…[finally] the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its higher phase, and with it to the complete withering away of the state.
One could say that some countries in the world (like Cuba and the DPRK), are in the first stage of communism, working to move forward to improve their existing socialism, limited through the continuance of international capitalism, meaning that they cannot be “mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism.” However, this would be an utterly revisionist position meaning it is better to call those countries, like others as plain progressive. This generates the question: what should a socialist state be like within today’s world of global capitalism? Taking what Lenin said, above, to heart, he is arguing that a state would have some “unjust differences” but exploitation of one person by the other would be impossible with the means of production becoming “common property” while equality of “labor and wages” had be striven for, along with the “socialist reorganization” with workers controlling “production and distribution.” Additionally all citizens would become “hired employees of the state” with their control over society being “universal, general, and popular” with society itself becoming a “single office and a single factory” wherein all the “infamies and abominations of capitalist exploitation” will be cleansed away. This is manifested in a dictatorship of the proletariat, as Lenin described it, or proletarian democracy as it is also called, would be suppress “the resistance of the exploiters” with such a state changing democratic institutions and forms but also extending “actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism” to new heights, giving them new “democratic rights and liberties” and decisive participation in the state’s administration itself while the old machinery of bourgeois, bureaucratic, and judicial character will be broken to pieces. Marx and Engels were arguing something similar, but partially different. He said that communism’s end goal is the abolition of bourgeois independence, bourgeois individuality, bourgeois freedom (free trade, free buying and selling), private property for the one-tenth of the population, the bourgeois family, countries, and nationalities. Such socialist states, as you could call them, were envisioned by Marx and Engels, would abolish land as property, all land rents, the “distinction between town and country” over time, child factory labor, and all inheritance rights. More positively, such a state would have a heavy progressive income tax, confiscate property of rebels and emigrants, have free education for all children in public schools, centralize credit in the state with a national bank, centralize communication, transport, factories, and other “instruments of production” while establishing “industrial armies” especially in agriculture, combine manufacturing and agriculture along with industrial production and education. They also called for “equal liability of all to work,” improving the soil, and cultivating wastelands.
What about the word progressive? The Fourth Edition of the Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines it as “moving forward or upward…favoring, working for, or characterized by progressive or improvement, as through political or social reform…of or having to do with a person, movement, etc. thought of being modern or advanced, in ideas, methods, etc,” or in a bourgeois sense as used by liberals and “progressives” in the U$ which cluster around the Democratic Party, “of an educational system stressing individuality, self-expression, etc” or a person who favors “progress or reform.”
This is a lot to take in, but is worth discussing if this applies to Syria (and ultimately other countries) or not.
Gowan argues that Syria is socialist: Is he right?
This map comes from page 148 of a Library of Congress report on Syria which is discussed later in this article.
Time and time again, revisionist Stephen Gowans has said that the Syrian Arab Republic is socialist. In April of last year he wrote that the country had followed, since the 1960s, “an Arab socialist development path which is at odds with the global free enterprise project advanced by Washington on behalf of its Wall Street patron,” saying that the latter wants to “sweep away the Arab socialist impediments to the free enterprise, free trade, and free market capitalist nirvana.” Elsewhere he called Syria “pro-independence, secular, non-sectarian, [and] socialist-oriented,” citing a study by the Library of Congress along with statements by the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation to support his intention that the country is socialist, in a long line of other countries. In other articles, Gowans writes that Syria has “a parliament” and is “anti-colonial and anti-imperialist” with parts of the state “remain committed to socialist goals.” Other than this, he argues that since Syria is governed by those who call themselves socialist, saying that the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party advocates for socialism, presiding over “the drafting of Syria’s constitutions, which mandate government ownership of the commanding heights of the economy and a significant role for government in the guidance of the economy” which he says is “socialism.” He adds that those in the West have “long complained about Damascus’s refusal to fully integrate into a US-led global neo-liberal economic order.” In an older post he admits, however that Afiz Assad, when he came to power in 1970, “tried to overcome the Sunni opposition by encouraging private enterprise and weakening the party’s commitment to socialism, and by opening space for Islam.” In the same post he writes that “Syria remains too much like the socialist state the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party founders envisaged for it, and too little like a platform for increasing the profits of overseas banks, investors and corporations” even as he says that “Ba’athists continue to obstinately hold on to elements of the party’s socialist program.” He also says that the Arab nationalists, “in power since 1963” represent “socialism, Arab nationalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-Zionism.” Back in 2014, Gowans wrote that Syria is a state founded “on anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, Arab nationalism, and non-Marxist socialism” the latter being worrisome to say the least. However, in 2012, he wrote that Hafez Assad “minimized class warfare in favor of broadening his government’s base, trying to win over merchants, artisans, business people, and other opponents of the regime’s nationalizations and socialist measures,” calling the government a “secular Arab nationalist regime” instead of a socialist one. Gowans said that his personal “politics incline more to the left than the Ba’th could comfortably accommodate,” adding that the “Syrian state has been far more progressive than regressive.” As such, it seems that he only began to call Syria “socialist” in more recent years. In October 2016 he made his most cogent argument that Syria was a “socialist” state, specifically an “Arab socialist” state, a definition which problematically divorces socialism and Marxism!:
Socialism can be defined in many ways, but if it is defined as public-ownership of the commanding heights of the economy accompanied by economic planning, then Syria under its 1973 and 2012 constitutions clearly meets the definition of socialism. However, the Syrian Arab Republic had never been a working-class socialist state, of the category Marxists would recognize. It was, instead, an Arab socialist state inspired by the goal of achieving Arab political independence and overcoming the legacy of the Arab nation’s underdevelopment…Marxist socialism concerned itself with the struggle between an exploiting owning class and exploited working class, while Arab socialism addressed the struggle between exploiting and exploited nations….Socialism was against the profit-making interests of US industrial and financial capital…The Ba’athist state had exercised considerable influence over the Syrian economy…The Ba’athists regarded these measures as necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers…Washington…[wanted Syria to] serve the interests of the bankers and major investors who truly mattered in the United States, by opening Syrian labor to exploitation and Syria’s land and natural resources to foreign ownership…the Syrian government would not make Syrians work for the interests of Western banks, corporations, and investors…Assad underscored his allegiance to socialist values…[while] the constitution committed the state to progressive taxation…If Assad was a neo-liberal, he certainly was one of the world’s oddest devotees of the ideology.
His idea of “Arab Socialism” differs, in his mind, from what he has previously described as “social democracy.” He says that while “social democratic parties may self-consciously aim to represent the bottom 99 percent of society, they serve…the top one percent” and adds that the “party’s candidates and elected officials…are often willing to sacrifice principle for immediate electoral gain,” adding that “social democratic parties are dominated by a stratum whose direct personal interests are defined by the electoral successes of the party.” He further writes that “social democrats believe that it is possible to reform society in egalitarian directions within the context of capitalism…[and] working within the political institutions of capitalist society.” He ended by saying that while “social democratic parties espoused socialism as an objective, even if a very distant one, the socialism they espoused was to be achieved with the permission of capital on capital’s terms,” different from what he described as “socialism” in the Soviet Union, Cuba, the DPRK, East Germany, or the ideas espoused by figures like Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, and Vladimir Lenin, which he has written about in the past.
To take his own words, he admits that Syria has never “been a working-class socialist state” but says it embodies “Arab socialism.” The question remains from this: is “Arab socialism” really a socialist program, if we define socialism as Marx & Engels and Lenin viewed it, as noted earlier in this article? Those on /r/communism, for example, argue that Arab socialism is inherently a bourgeois ideology, more of social democracy than real socialism, even as they played a somewhat progressive role in the Arab World. More specifically, “Arab socialism” is about nationalization (as Nasser did), and engaging in “state-sponsored economic development” which occurred in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, with a consensus, as noted by Oxford Reference, that the “most urgent national needs were independence and economic development,” adding that there were “land reforms” while the “banking, insurance, foreign trade, large industries, and large private and foreign-owned companies were all nationalized.” Additionally, such economic programs was “accompanied by expansion in social, welfare, health, and educational services.”
From this, we come back to social democracy once again. If we accept, as I believe we should and will argue further in the next section, that Syria is not a socialist state on Marxist terms, it is worth returning to what social democracy is after all. One writer, Bela Kun wrote in 1932 that social democracy says that “peaceful reformist work…would assure evolution into socialism” with the latter becoming “the cause of one class, of the working class” but collaboration of many classes, with Marxism serving as a source for slogans but no longer guide the ruling party’s policy. This writer further adds that there is a “defence of capitalist rationalisation” and the opposite of “Marxian trade-union theory and practice” for example, supporting a “bourgeois dictatorship.” This is not the same as “revolutionary Social Democracy” embodied by the Bolsheviks which includes reforms, but also the policy of parties who work to engage in revolution to bring about proletarian democracy. Rather social democrats are “conductors of bourgeois influence” as Lenin described it, allying with bourgeois forces, focusing on nationalization, definitely not advocating for the “confiscation of all landed estates” which Lenin wrote about in 1911. These social democrats stand for democracy in the “name of capitalism,” the opposite of what the Bolsheviks did. Stalin further added that social democracy is characterized by “reformism and [an] anti-revolutionary character” with those of that ideology arguing that “the proletariat had to strive for was a peaceful path of transition from capitalism to socialism” with the time between capitalism and socialism when “capitalism will flourish and the proletariat languish in misery.”
Still, this does not fully define social democracy as a concept. Of course there are cookie-cutter definitions, as you could call them, from bourgeois dictionaries like Merriam-Webster calling it a movement which advocates for a gradual and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism by democratic means” or a democratic “welfare state that incorporates both capitalist and socialist practices,” and Encyclopaedia Britannica declaring that it is a “political ideology that originally advocated a peaceful evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes” becoming more moderate throughout the 20th century. The same can be said of dictionary.com which declared that social democracy is a “political ideology advocating a gradual transition to socialism or a modified form of socialism by and under democratic political processes” and Wikiquote saying it is a “political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote socialism within a democratic framework and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions,” among much more. The London-based social democrat publisher, Social Europe, attempted to define it as well, writing that “social-democracy is well known as a pragmatic political tendency…[with a] reputation…as a force for progressive change” even as they note that many social democrats talk about good capitalism and accept capitalist dogma. They add poignantly that “social-democrats have always been reformists. Social-democracy is not about overthrowing existing structures in some kind of violent act of revolution,” further saying that “markets…need to be kept in their place,” meaning that capitalism should be regulated, and not removed.
From this, and what has been said previously, one can surmise that social democracy aims to reform society within capitalism with “peaceful reformist work,” is a bourgeois ideology connected to nationalization and social welfare programs, opposes Marxian theory at its core, stands for democracy in the “name of capitalism,” and is anti-revolutionary, advocating for a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, with markets still firmly in place. However, there is more to it than this. Any reforms based on social democracy itself is “bound to fail” since it does not address “capital and its accumulation to the few at the expense of the many.” Additionally, as Minqi Li writes in the Monthly Review, “social democratic capitalism” from the 1950s to 1973 “helped to alleviate the class conflicts and maintain a relatively high level of aggregate demand” bu that “inherent contradictions of capitalism” continued to develop, as institutions within such capitalism created new “conditions that increasingly undermined worldwide accumulation” while the balance of power “between capital and labor, and between the core and the periphery” led to a “worldwide decline of profitability.” Li adds that establishment of “social democratic capitalism could not take place without at least a partial political victory of the working classes” while noting that “in a capitalist world economy with nation states, the competition between different capitalist states will prevent them from taking full account of environmental costs” meaning that social democratic capitalism will become “an “alternative” way towards global ecological catastrophe.” That isn’t good for anyone! Add to this that the so-called “Nordic system” which is lauded by supporters for “free and effective healthcare, education, transportation, and cleanliness” they are actually “rife with problems, and do not feature an ideal socio-economic system.” They additionally cannot “completely rid itself of socially conservative beliefs” until there is a ” full socio-economic transformation that involves the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, the central characteristic of capitalism.” That has not happened in Scandinavia and likely will not in the years to go. Even a Stalin-hating individual said that social democracy has “no ability to move in any direction” and wrote that “so-called state capitalism, all terminological quibbles aside, presented mankind with a glimpse of its potential, but could not escape the logic inherent in the accumulation of value.” Beyond this, super-profits taken from “the export of capital” allows for a “greater measure of social democracy at the centres of global capitalism”while capitalists “do not care as a class for social democratic reforms because these reforms get in the way of profit” with such reforms existing “because of working-class struggle and not because capitalists wanted to play nice.” Furthermore, social democracy is permitted because it was “forced into existence by concrete struggle and thus needed to be recognized” and the loss of “surplus [which] could be circumvented through the export of capital and super-exploitation elsewhere.
While the summation of social democracy and other aspects help define it in rough terms, what Stalin wrote in 1926 is helpful in defining it more fully. He wrote that (bolding is my emphasis), talking about ideological principles within the communist party and social-democratic parties:
Some might think that the Russians are excessively pugnacious, that they love debating and multiply differences, and that it is because of this that the development of their Party proceeds through the overcoming of inner Party contradictions. That is not true, comrades. It is not a matter of pugnacity, but of the existence of disagreements based on principle, which arise in the course of the Party’s development, in the course of the class struggle of the proletariat. The fact of the matter is that contradictions can be overcome only by means of a struggle for definite principles, for definite aims of the struggle, for definite methods of waging the struggle leading to the desired aim. One can, and should, agree to any compromise with dissenters in the Party on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical nature. But if these questions are connected with disagreements based on principle, no compromise, no “middle” line can save the situation. There can be no “middle” line in questions of principle. Either one set of principles or another must be made the basis of the Party’s work. A “middle” line in matters of principle is the “line” of stuffing people’s heads with rubbish, of glossing over disagreements, a “line” leading to the ideological degeneration of the Party, to the ideological death of the Party. How do the Social-Democratic parties of the West exist and develop nowadays? Have they inner-party contradictions, disagreements based on principle? Of course, they have. Do they disclose these contradictions and try to over come them honestly and openly in sight of the mass of the party membership? No, of course not. It is the practice of the Social-Democrats to cover up and conceal these contradictions and disagreements. It is the practice of the Social-Democrats to turn their conferences and congresses into an empty parade of ostensible well-being, assiduously covering up and slurring over internal disagreements. But nothing can come of this except stuffing people’s heads with rubbish and the ideological impoverishment of the party. This is one of the reasons for the decline of West-European Social-Democracy, which was once revolutionary, and is now reformist. We, however, cannot live and develop in that way, comrades. The policy of a “middle” line in matters of principle is not our policy. The policy of a “middle” line in matters of principle is the policy of decaying and degenerating parties. Such a policy cannot but lead to the conversion of the party into an empty bureaucratic apparatus, running idle and divorced from the masses of the workers. That path is not our path.
With all of this, one can define social democracy as a phenomenon primarily concentrated in the West which aims to reform capitalist society peacefully, using nationalization and social welfare programs as part of a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism with markets firmly in place, and being thoroughly anti-revolutionary by not engaging in a necessary socio-economic transformation in society, with any reforms at all only possible through struggles of the proletariat. Furthermore, using the words of Stalin quoted above, one could add that social democracy does not have unification on matters of principle which leads to party to become an “empty bureaucratic apparatus” which is “divorced from the masses of workers.” Additionally, you could add, social democracy isn’t one bit about class struggle against the bourgeoisie!
With this, we can proceed to the next section of this article.
Further analysis: examining Syria’s economy and its supposed “socialist” nature
A map on page 134 of a Library of Congress report on Syria, discussed later in this section, showing that much of the country is arid.
Before moving onto the two sources which underpinned Gowans analysis that Syria is “socialist,” I looked at some other sources. Everyone seems to acknowledge the government has a strong hand in the economy which some call “state-capitalist” and others call “socialist,” possibly in their intentions, with some saying that the government engaged in neoliberal reforms in the 1990s and suppressed ” independent working-class organisation” while those more supportive say that the government of Syria is actively anti-imperialist, pro-Palestinian, and should not be demonized. [1] Other sources seem to also agree that the state has a strong role in the economy. Some said that “Syria’s economy is essentially state-run, although it has remained partly private, as for example the retail trade businesses” with certain privatizations starting in 2000,private banking legalized in 2001, and “centralised and restrictive government control” leading to low “productivity” in the minds of capitalists, with others saying that the economy was diverse before the imperialist assault on Syria began, with the country, in 2013, “home to 11 private banks, three Islamic banks, and seven foreign banks.” [2] With such an assault, the country has become “lower middle income” and devastated by the state of war as forces tried to tear the country apart, as millions are displaced. A war economy was put in place after 2012, using the “hard currency reserves” of the Central Bank of Syria and allowing traders to run their own affairs and protect their own facilities, along with other arrangements, the government revived “state supermarkets” (started in the 1960s) and rolled back the “modest economic liberalization [which] began in 2005,” in attempt to “ease economic hardship for the poor and contain social unrest” along with not removing government petroleum and electricity subsidies, which Reuters called “socialist economic policies.” Such moves by the government echoed the “nationalization measures of the 1960s” [3] under the Amin al-Hafiz (Syria’s first Ba’ath Party ruler) in Syria, which were followed by “a major industrial development program stressing heavy industry” in the 1970s. There is no doubt that before the assault, starting in 2011, “Syria’s economy was based on oil production, agriculture, industry and tourism,” where “many industries” were subsidized (even as of 2006), the former which was seemingly strengthened as the government attempts to restore order in the country. As Al Bawaba remarked in 2000, the Syrian “government still keeps intact many policies that protect home-grown industries at the expense of attracting foreign investment” such as “high tariffs and numerous import restrictions and limited access to capital for those in the private sector.”
The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), part of the UN, wrote, within a 2003 publication titled “Syrian agriculture at the crossroads,” that the Syrian government in the 1970s re-defined “socialism” to mean increased industrial employment, role of the public sector, and “activation of the private sector, ” which was changed by the 1980s and 1990s to “state-led export promotion,” even putting forward some “structural adjustment” attempts at the time, aligning with those who said that the economy is “predominantly state-controlled” at the present. They added that
The economy of the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR) is currently under transition from one that has been largely centrally planned to one that is more liberal. The general objectives of policy have been and will remain the achievement of a sustainable level of economic abundance, social welfare, and equity…The economy is still characterized by a large but stagnant public sector, and a resilient but constrained private sector, a cumbersome regulatory regime, continuation of many state controls, and a complicated trade and exchange rate system…The financial system is dominated by public enterprises and serves primarily the public sector. Hence, one of the key requirements for private sector growth, namely the existence of financial services for the private sector, is largely missing in Syria. The current government strategy is favourable to the private sector, and to export promotion, but with the continued presence of a strong public sector.
Beyond this, the Heritage Foundation said in their page on Syria that “civil war has left Syria’s economy in ruins” with economic policy used to maintain the capacity of the Syrian military, adding with anger that Bashar Al-Assad “failed to deliver on promises to open the socialist economy,” that “functioning labor markets are…subject to heavy state interference and control” and that “despite the war, a number of foreign banks are in operation” with the Islamic banking group called Al Baraka becoming “the largest privately owned bank in the country” in 2016. [4] Similar comments to FAO’s assessment were made on the current page for Syria on the CIA World Factbook, declaring that before the current conflict, “Damascus had begun liberalizing economic policies” but that “the economy remains highly regulated” with “foreign trade barriers” for example. Anger at sch regulation has manifested in Syria being “on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism since the list’s inception in 1979” while the murderous empire has called for the removal of Assad despite the fact that Syria is a member of the IMF and World Bank along with being an observer to the World Trade Organization (WTO)!
Unlike Zimbabwe (which the IMF is giddy over as the counter-revolution continues), the last IMF “Article IV Executive Board Consultation” for Syria was back in January 2009, but it is worth excerpting from their reports in previous years:
“The Syrian authorities have been implementing gradual, but wide-ranging reforms. These reforms are motivated by the challenges posed by the decline in oil production and the strategy initiated in the early 2000s to transition toward a social market economy. The exchange rate has been effectively unified and restrictions on access to foreign exchange for current transactions appear to have been mostly eliminated. Private banks are now leading financial sector growth, and the Damascus stock exchange recently re-opened after being closed for 40 years…Some progress has been made in advancing structural reforms, including simplifying investment procedures, modernizing accounting standards, and streamlining the tax system…the authorities fully liberalized bank lending rates and rates on foreign currency deposits and loans. The share of private banks has grown considerably since they were first established in 2004…Directors recommended that the authorities reverse the recent introduction of customs duties that vary by country of origin, and address suspected unfair trade practices by other measures such as enhancing customs’ capacity to examine invoices through computerization and cross border cooperation.”- March 2010
“Relations with the EU have improved recently following the establishment of diplomatic relations with Lebanon. Subsequently, France, which currently chairs the EU, issued positive signals regarding the ratification of the association agreement with Syria…Private banks are well capitalized…The financial system is still dominated by state banks, which hold 80 percent of bank assets…advances have been made in trade liberalization by substantially reducing the tariff schedule. The export of strategic agricultural products, however, remains subject to government approval…The Syrian economy has enjoyed buoyant growth since it embarked on a liberalization program aimed at unleashing the economy’s growth potential and integrating into the world economy.”- February 2009
“Private investment has strengthened, reflecting an improved business climate, and exports have made strong gains, particularly in some Arab markets, reflecting higher demand and improved access under the Great[er] Arab Free Trade Area…Following the opening of the first three private banks in 2004, four more banks entered the market in the last two years, and several more banks are expected to start operations in 2007, including some Islamic financial institutions…Progress toward exchange rate unification and current account convertibility, investment facilitation under a more liberal investment regime, tax reform, trade and financial liberalization, and the on-going development of appropriate regulatory frameworks in key sectors have all contributed to improving the investment climate…The authorities did not exclude the possibility of raising civil servants wages, particularly in light of the start of the PPS reform…The development of a competitive banking sector is constrained by the slow progress in state banks’ restructuring…Further efforts on trade liberalization and improving the business climate are key elements of the authorities’ reform agenda…further financial liberalization are necessary to close the reform-gap with other countries in the region and position Syria to take advantage of regional and global integration…Directors commended the authorities for the sustained, timely and significant fiscal adjustment and welcomed the lowering of corporate income taxes.”- August 2007
“The authorities were encouraged to see that the implementation of their broad-based reforms elicited a positive supply response. In their view, Syrian and other Arab investors felt that a point of no return in reform has been reached. Furthermore, they welcomed strong interest from domestic and foreign investors toward the newly opened banking and insurance sectors…The authorities’ strategy to develop the financial sector by opening it to private initiative was successful in attracting and expanding private banking activities…Trade liberalization, market deregulation, and improving the business climate are key elements of the authorities’ reform agenda…The exchange system in Syria is characterized by multiple exchange rates and a foreign exchange market segmented into public and private sector pools. The private sector has almost no access to the official pool…[the directors say that] A bulge in labor market entrants will strain an already precarious unemployment situation and increase pressure to protect redundant labor in an overstaffed public sector…More broadly, Directors encouraged the authorities to press ahead with reforms aimed at scaling down the state’s involvement in the economy, improving governance, and fostering private-sector growth.”- August 2006
“The growth acceleration in the early 1990s had reflected rising oil production and an upsurge in private sector investment prompted by fiscal incentives and reforms to start the transition to a market economy…Fund policy recommendations were supportive of the authorities’ reform agenda aimed at furthering the transition to a market economy…prices have been largely liberalized, the trade and foreign exchange regimes have been simplified and liberalized, the tax system has been streamlined, and the private sector’s field of activity has been broadened…In particular, opening the insurance sector for private initiative is an important sign of the
commitment of the authorities to promoting the role of the private sector in the economy…Directors encouraged the authorities to envisage the privatization of selected enterprises.”- October 2005
This seems to say, obviously, that Syria has engaged in socially democratic measures as it earnestly went forward with “liberalization” of their economy while government control and nationalist measures were maintained to the annoyance of the IMF. The Syrian government was moving toward a “market economy” until the direct imperial assault began in 2011, the so-called “civil war,” with some government control returning. Still, some measures of “liberalization” remained such as private banks some of which are concentrated on the Damascus Securities Exchange (DSE) along with other capitalist ventures. The companies on this exchange include:
There are many others whose sites were only in Arabic, and not English. Basically, these companies on the stock exchange are capitalists, and hence part of what you could call, accurately, an Arab bourgeoisie, some consisting bourgeoisie specific to the Arab Republic of Syria itself. If “nothing symbolizes capitalism like the New York Stock Exchange,” as one Forbes writer noted, then why can’t the same be said about the Damascus Securities Exchange? As Frederich Engels wrote in 1895, reviewing Marx’s work in Capital, “the position of the stock exchange in capitalist production” since the stock exchange “as it develops, tends to concentrate all production, industrial as well as agricultural, and all commerce…so that the stock exchange becomes the most prominent representative of capitalist production itself.” Of course, the DSE can’t completely represent this as it was launched in 2009, nine years ago, and only 23 companies are currently on the exchange which is minuscule compared to “more than 12,000 traded products” of the Intercontinental Exchange, commonly called the New York Stock Exchange, or the 1,124 companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Then there’s the Library of Congress country study which Gowans uses to say that Syria is socialist which was published in 1988. This goes beyond the claim that the economy of Syria is socialist, but it is worth summarizing within this section of the article. The study explains the history of Syria from its earliest days to 1987, when most of the research was done. In September 1961, there was a coup where Syria seceded from the United Arab Republic (UAR) which was meant to unite Egypt (then under Nasser) and Syria, with nationalization which had been implemented under the previous government removed, with another military coup by September of 1962, and by September 1963, Amid al Hafiz, a Ba’athist, became the leader, with power contested between the “centrist and leftist” elements within the Ba’athist Party, as factionalism continued. Under Hafiz, there was a move to restore nationalization and land reform measures removed after the September 1961 coup, radicalization of rhetoric along with support for Palestinian liberation, and continuing power struggles until 1970, as Hafiz Al-Assad became a more important figure. Then in November 1970, the latter Assad came to power in a coup which has often been called the “corrective movement,” while he was elected for a seven-year term in March 1971 by the populace. In the presidency of Hafiz, relations with the Soviet improved, a Progressive National Front was formed, and the government held off those who wanted to make Islam the state religion. An independent foreign policy course was plotted, there was a controversial Syrian intervention in Lebanon, the Ba’ath Party seemed to partially mass-based, and the “merits of socialism” were explored for Syria’s economy. With public unhappiness with the government at the time, an anti-corruption campaign was begun, and in February 1978, Hafiz was re-elected, facing opposition from Muslim groups (like the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Liberation Party), specifically those who detested the secular and nationalist nature of the state itself. The latter groups demanded bourgeois “freedoms” while engaging in violent, terrorist attacks against the government, with the government, by the early 1980s, basically declaring war on the Muslim Brotherhood, looking to uproot it from the country all together. As time went on, the Syrians relied heavily on the Soviets for re-supply of weapons, based in 1980 treaty, even as the latter refused to support the rightful Syrian effort to regain the Golan Heights from Zionists, and aligned itself with Iran as the Iran-Iraq War raged through the 1980s. By the later 1980s, there was “uncertainty” about the future of Syria.
It seems a bit problematic that Gowans cites this source to buttress his claim that Syria is socialist because this study was written in 1987! There is no doubt that Syria’s study is still diverse, as it was in 1987, but the so-called “Baathist policies of secularism and socialism” are not evident. Sure, the country is secular, but the policies were never really socialist despite what the study claims, even through it was anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. There is also certainly still a youthful population. After all, as the study itself points out, in 1970, Hafiz “reversed or relaxed the more strident socialist economic measures” which had been instituted in 1963, leading to a new class of “entrepreneurs and businessmen who made their fortunes in real estate, importing, and construction” (a bourgeoisie). That doesn’t sound very socialist, but rather constitutes the re-creation/reinforcement of the Syrian bourgeoisie, since the country, by the time the study was written, lacked a “true proletariat of wage-earning workers”! Still, education was, by the later 1980s, under close government supervision, starting from 1967 onward and free medical care even as private hospitals outnumbered state-run hospitals in the country.
We then get to the economy. In the mid-1960s, the “new socialist direction,” as the report called it, of the economic policy of Syria was clear considering nationalization of major industries and government-led land reform (land expropriated from large landowners) along with state-led large-scale projects. However, by the 1970s, the economy became more dependent on foreign aid from Arab countries and military aid from the Soviet social-imperialists, with the climate switching from “prosperity to austerity” in the 1980s, with slashing of public investments. This seems to question if the economy was even socialist at all as the study claims there was “socialist transformation” of the economy in the 1960s, with more state commitment to the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, before austerity kicked in. However, this isn’t the whole reality. Not even half of the workforce was employed by the state by 1983, with all college graduates not guaranteed a job, with many taking second jobs in the “private sector” and possible high unemployment as the 1980s went on. Even with a so-called “socialist economy” erected in the 1960s, this was liberalized by Hafiz in 1986, with the state moving away from the agricultural, retail trade, and light industry, leading to be controlled by capitalists, with income gaps beginning to widen. In order to defend the country, huge sums were spent on the military, with administration as a the second biggest area of government expenditures, with the rest relating to the economy (with varying “five-year-plans” over the years), with a very small amount for “social welfare” and “education and culture.” Add to this that by 1984, private farmers cultivated 74% of the country’s lands, and state farms, essentially, only cultivated 1%, again asking extensive the state’s involvement was in the economy, with farmer cooperatives existing, but not broadly successful with a faltering agricultural policy, while the West cried about “inefficiency” of public enterprises and there was effectively a central bank in Syria. Additionally, liberalization of the economy started in 1970 and again in 1986. At the same time, the Soviet social-imperialist and Romanians were active in developing the infrastructure of Syria in the 1970s and 1980s. There are other aspects noted in the study, of course, but there are not worth discussing here.
The study seems to imply that Syria is not only not “socialist” but has a working bourgeoisie, although they don’t call it this since the study is one assembled by bourgeois analysts, as one would expect. From this, it is worth turning to two documents: the 1973 constitution of Syria (with concessions made to placate the Islamic oppositional forces at the time), and the 2012 revision in order to placate the Syrian opposition. The first constitution, in 1973, declared that
The comprehensive Arab revolution is an existing and continuing necessity to achieve the Arab nation’s aspirations for unity, freedom, and socialism. The revolution in the Syrian Arab region is part of the comprehensive Arab revolution…any danger to which any Arab country may be exposed on the part of imperialism and Zionism is at the same time a danger threatening the whole Arab nation…The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic, popular, socialist, and sovereign state. No part of its territory can be ceded. Syria is a member of the Union of the Arab Republics…Sovereignty is vested in the people, who exercise it in accordance with this Constitution…The religion of the President of the Republic has to be Islam…The leading party in the society and the state is the Socialist Arab Baath Party…People’s councils are establishments elected in a democratic way at which the citizens exercise their rights in administering the state and leading the society…The state is at the people’s service…The state economy is a planned socialist economy which seeks to end all forms of exploitation…Public ownership includes natural resources, public utilities, and nationalized installations and establishments, as well as installations and establishments set up by the state… Collective ownership includes the property belonging to popular and professional organizations and to production units, cooperatives, and other social establishments…individual ownership includes property belonging to individuals…The right of inheritance is guaranteed in accordance with the law…The educational and cultural system aims at creating a socialist nationalist Arab generation which is scientifically minded and attached to its history…Work is a right and duty of every citizen. The state undertakes to provide work for all citizens…All citizens have the sacred duty to defend the homeland’s security, to respect its Constitution and socialist unionist system.
While some may be cheering, this does not put workers at the central mission of the state like Cuba. A translation from a Cuban government webpage (also here) gives a better translation than other versions. In the first article it calls Cuba is a “socialist State of workers, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all, as a unitary and democratic republic” even though I would more accurately call it a progressive state due to revisionism and capitalist concessions. This is exactly the same as a translation made by the United Nations or summary of gender rights in Cuba by UN Women. In case the UN translation is moved to another link, the UN translation has been uploaded to this blog in order to promote more learning about Cuba. As one can clearly see, Syria was not, even in 1973, a truly and accurately socialist state. Rather it was a nationalist and socially democratic one (or you could say a progressive one) which had a developed bourgeoisie which guarantees a right to inheritance, something which Marx and Engels were strongly opposed to, with Marx saying, in August 1869, that “the laws of inheritance are not the cause, but the effect, the juridical consequence of the existing economical organization of society, based upon private property in the means of production.”
We then get to the 2012 revision. All mentions of socialism have been completely omitted, as the state instead is portraying itself as progressive and secular (although the word secular is never mentioned in the whole constitution):
The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic state with full sovereignty, indivisible, and may not waive any part of its territory, and is part of the Arab homeland…The religion of the President of the Republic is Islam; Islamic jurisprudence shall be a major source of legislation…The political system of the state shall be based on the principle of political pluralism, and exercising power democratically through the ballot box…Democratically elected councils at the national or local level shall be institutions through which citizens exercise their role in sovereignty, state-building and leading society…The national economy shall be based on the principle of developing public and private economic activity through economic and social plans aiming at increasing the national income, developing production, raising the individual’s living standards and creating jobs… Natural resources, facilities, institutions and public utilities shall be publicly owned, and the state shall invest and oversee their management for the benefit of all people…The law shall determine the maximum level of agricultural ownership and agricultural investment to ensure the protection of the farmer and the agricultural laborer from exploitation and to ensure increased production…Society in the Syrian Arab Republic shall be based on the basis of solidarity, symbiosis and respect for the principles of social justice, freedom, equality and maintenance of human dignity of every individual…The state shall guarantee every citizen and his family in cases of emergency, sickness, disability, orphan-hood and old age… The rule of law shall be the basis of governance in the state.
Perhaps some of the text from the 1973 version was kept, but only some aspects of nationalization were kept in place as the state having a broad role in society, but not necessarily to benefit the proletariat but rather every class in society, which goes against established Marxist ideals. Instead, this constitution easily allows for capitalism to creep more into Syria through its tentacles of destruction and deception, showing it is perhaps socially democratic or as you could put it, progressive. [5]
The final indication is using reports in state media outlet, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) itself. Just like using the Zimbabwean party newspaper, The Herald, to recognize the counter-revolution going on there, one can use SANA in the same way to determine how “socialist” Syria is, if at all. One recent article talks about how the government will continue “providing the basic needs for citizens and improving their living conditions according to the available resources” with pushes by certain MPs to deal with “the issue of high prices,” reduce rationing of electricity, and reform the tax system, along with controlling expenditures of the government, along with other aspects like rehabilitation and reconstruction of the country. With some of the latter measures clearly benefiting the bourgeoisie, the same can be said in a push to support “small, medium, and micro enterprises” which describe, without doubt, institutions of the bourgeoisie, specifically the petty bourgeoisie. In another recent article, it was noted that a social welfare center was opened in the countryside but it ended up being something done with the cooperation of the Greek Orthodox Church there, and mainly aimed at serving “displaced people and families affected by the crisis” of war in the country.
There were other indications of the true nature of the economy. In the realm of tourism, the Higher Council for Tourism said that it would provide “special advantages and incentives to the investors willing to set up tourist projects,” with the Prime Minister of the country adding that investors should “establish tourist projects for low-income people to boost popular tourism and give an image to the world about stability returned to the Syrian provinces due to the victories achieved by the Syrian Arab army.” The tone was expressed when the government participated in the 38th FITUR International Tourism Fair 2018 in Madrid, Spain, calling for “Spanish tourism companies to visit Syria, take a closer look at the situation in it,” worked to build a railway that would serve “passengers and businessmen” and looking to make the country attractive by encouraging “Arab and foreign businessmen to make more investments in Syria to contribute to the reconstruction stage.” You could say this is justified, considering that the government brought in “45 local, Arab and foreign companies” to talk about energy, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning of the reconstruction of Syria. After all, the country wants to rebuild after years of war with an economy which is reportedly in good condition, and has put forward a “national development program” for Syria, during the reconstruction period, which builds institutions, fights against corruption, modernizes infrastructure, engages n “sustainable growth and development, social, educational and cultural development and the national dialogue.” Basically, the Syrian government is trying to draw in international capital to lead to its reconstruction. [6] However, this process shows that it is not “socialist” as Gowans claims. Rather it is socially democratic (or progressive), as previously explained, secular, and it is nationalist. Even though the government seems to loosely base itself on Islam and the constitution doesn’t mention the word “secular,” it is worth calling Syria secular because for one, the country has no state religion. With secularism limited as Marx noted in “On the Jewish Question,” seeming to mean “non-religious,” the fourth edition of the Webster’s New World College Dictionary (a bourgeois dictionary) concurs with this, defining the word “secular” as “not sacred or religious,” temporal or worldly, distinguished from “church and religion.”
With all this, we can say with certainty that Syria has a developed bourgeoisie. That doesn’t mean that the state cannot do good for the people of Syria, or even the proletariat, but rather that it is not socialist or on the road to socialism in any way, shape or form. With this, we can still defend the country from imperial lies and slander from the bourgeois media and comprador progressive media, like Omidyar’s plaything, The Intercept. The official publication of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma, said the same in an article, reprinted from the official Cuban outlet, Prensa Latina, in March of last year:
…Just six years after the beginning of a war that was imposed from abroad, and which has exacerbated the differences between those espousing diverse religious beliefs to an inhumane level, this nation presents a scene of enormous destruction amidst the quest to survive…Never before in the Arab and Muslim world had the destruction of a country been promoted in such a combined way, organized from the centers of the former colonial powers and the United States…The reality is neither civil war nor faith-based conflict, because the “card” at play in Syria is actually a dirty game which originated from a basic element: in 2009 when the government of Bashar al Assad vetoed a vast project promoted by Qatar…From that moment on, and planned in advance, petrodollars from the capitals of the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Israel, played their part…Syria questioned the economic motives of Western powers, which was enough to serve as one of the objective bases for launching the overwhelming media attacks and war against this nation…In an explosion of generalized war, thousands of terrorists arrived in Syria, who, allied with national extremists, established points of attack that in the first years covered more than a dozen combat fronts throughout the Syrian territory…More than half a million dead and maimed, economic losses of $200 billion dollars and the obvious destruction of Syria’s entire infrastructure, make up a bleak but not insurmountable panorama. The media siege on this nation, a fierce commercial blockade and widespread terror over six years of an overwhelming imposed war, have not yet been able to annihilate the Syrian people.
There are further aspects. For one, the Syrian bourgeoisie, represented by the state, are willing to engage in ICT cooperation with Russian bourgeoisie, and have other agreements with the Russians (as noted here and here). One such agreement is about “cooperation in domain of public constructions and the implementation of housing projects.” I mention this because, as I’ve written on this blog before, you can say that Russia’s foreign policy is, to an extent, progressive and anti-imperialist, but Russia is without a doubt a capitalist state, with a bourgeoisie which has festered since 1991, at least, if not earlier when it developed more and more through the revisionist years of the Soviet Union (1954-1991), when it was a social-imperialist state. Syria’s government is smart enough to have strong relations with Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq, even working on creating an electricity network which connects Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Undoubtedly this will lead to further regional unity, which is good in an effort to resist imperialism. However, it also strengthens the bourgeoisie in Iran (which I recently wrote about) and Iraq. The same can be said about bringing in investors from Brazil, having economic cooperation with South Africa and revisionist China, oil production by Oman (noted here, here, and here), cooperation with Cuba, Belarus, India (see here and here), Sudan, People’s Korea, along with cooperation with other “friendly countries.” This goes back to my earlier point, that Syria is trying to bring in international capital as it looks to rebuild its country from the scourge of war which has ravaged the country since 2011. This is a noble goal, but some of those countries, like India (led by a fascist) and South Africa, at least, have established bourgeoisie, meaning that no holds are barred in dealing with other countries. This is further the case considering Syria’s dealings with Armenian businesspeople as noted in varying articles. Finally, there is the epitome of nationalism, which Frantz Fanon wrote about in The Wretched of the Earth: domestic production pushed by the bourgeoisie. In the case of Syria, this takes the form of “made in Syria” fairs/exhibitions, noted again, again, again, and again in SANA. It reminds me of the whole push for “made in the USA” products while corporations were actually moving their factories to places with cheap labor, although this is a bit different.
Syria, the “good” Kurds, Syrian Communists, and elections
Originally posted on https://anti-imperialism.org/. This calls out the hypocrisy of the murderous empire calling for “human rights” in Syria.
Syria’s location and its ties with Iran, and other countries which could be said to be part of an anti-imperialist front, are well-established. Of course, some on the Left have considered Assad, along with Gaddafi, horrid “dictators” with endorsements of the bourgeois Arab “revolution,” and saying that there is a “dictatorship” in Syria. If this wasn’t enough in that it easily meshes with propaganda emanating from the center of world imperialism, consider the PLP (Progressive Labor Party), the same organization calling the DPRK a “fascist”/”puppet” monarchy of China which “easily meshes its Orientalist propaganda of the bourgeois media.” For Syria, they describe it as a “Russian-backed government” with benefits to Russian bosses who want to divide up Syria, accepting that Assad used chemical weapons (he didn’t), and elsewhere calling the government an “Iran-backed regime.” Apart from not being able to decide if the government is “backed” by Iran or Russia (which they think is “imperialist“), they claim that the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) (they do not specify what sect of the party) are “phony communists” and that the state doesn’t really care about the working class. They can’t seem to comprehend a Syria which is socially democratic (or progressive) while it has a developed bourgeoisie. There have been elections in Syria, which all show the National Progressive Front (NPF) winning by a huge margin:
In 2016, the “National Unity alliance, supporting President al-Assad and his Baath Party, won 200 seats in the 250-member People’s Assembly. Many candidates reportedly focused on security issues. On 2 May, the President issued a decree naming winners of parliamentary elections. Elections did not take place in Raqa and Idlib provinces, which are controlled by the so-called Islamic State and the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front. Amid the violence, fewer Syrians registered to vote in 2016…[but] according to the Higher Judicial Committee for Elections, turnout in 2016 was 57.56%, up from 51.26 % in 2012.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
In 2012, “parliamentary elections took place in the context of open rebellion against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. Major opposition parties boycotted the elections. The National Unity alliance, supporting the President and his Baath Party, took 183 of the 250 seats at stake. Most of the remaining seats went to independent pro-government candidates. The May 2012 elections followed a revision to the Constitution, adopted by referendum in February…Only 5.2 million of the 10.1 million eligible citizens registered to vote. 51.26 per cent of the registered voters actually took part, meaning that in total around a quarter of eligible citizens voted in the elections…Official results gave a large majority to the National Unity alliance.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
“The 22 April 2007 elections were the second to be held since President Bashar Assad assumed power in July 2000 following his father’s death a month earlier. President Assad pledged to modernize the country’s economy. ..Of the 250 seats just over two-thirds (170 seats) are reserved for the ruling National Progressive Front (NPF) coalition. Voters select one list from among a series of lists of parliamentary candidates. Two-thirds of the candidates on each list are from the NPF. The coalition comprising ten political parties was led by the Baath Party which itself is guaranteed 131 seats. The other 80 seats are allocated to independent candidates…Many candidates pledged to provide economic prosperity…Several anti-fraud measures were implemented for the first time. They included transparent ballot boxes and indelible ink to prevent multiple voting…approximately 56 per cent of the 7.8 million registered voters turned out at the polls. A total of 11 967 611 citizens were eligible to vote…The final results gave Syria’s ruling NPF 172 seats. The remainder went to independent candidates…On 11 May the People’s Assembly unanimously nominated Mr. Bashar Assad as the president of the country for a new seven-year term starting on 17 July 2007. The public referendum of 27 May approved this nomination by over 97 per cent of the votes.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
“On 2 and 3 March 2003 Syrians voted to elect the first People’s Assembly since President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his late father President Hafez al-Assad in 2000. According to official records, some 5,000 candidates competed for the 250 seats in Parliament…Announcing the results, Interior Minister Ali Hamoud declared that candidates of the National Progressive Front had won 167 seats (the Front consists of the ruling Baath party and six smaller allies). The remaining 83 seats went to independents. Out of the 250 members, 178 were newcomers and 30 women.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
“In the 1998 elections, 7364 candidates initially contested the 250 parliamentary seats. A total of 167 of these belonged to the National Progressive Front (NPF) – the seven-party governing coalition led by the Baath Party of President of the Republic Hafez al-Assad, which itself nominated 135 candidates; the NPF has been in power since being formed in 1972…On polling day, the electorate overwhelmingly backed the NPF candidates with over 66% of the popular vote, the remaining 83 seats (one-third of the overall membership) being won by independents, as before.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
“The election date was set by presidential decree on 24 July 1994, with candidatures to be submitted until 2 August. A total of 7,818 candidates contested the 250 People’s Council seats. A maximum of one-third of the Council seats were set aside for independent candidates as distinct from those of the ruling National Progressive Front (NFP). The NFP, headed by President of the Republic Hafiz Al-Assad, was formed in 1972…On polling day, the ruling Baath…once again emerged as the largest single party, with 135 seats, while independents captured 83. Of the total Council membership, 93 were incumbent Deputies. On 10 September 1994, President Al-Assad opened the newly elected Parliament’s first session. Mr. Abdel Qader Qaddoura was then re-elected as Council President.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
“In the 1990 general elections, a record 2,657 candidates (including 116 women) vied for the 250 seats of the enlarged People’s Council. A maximum of one-third of the Council seats were set aside for independent candidates as distinct from those of the National Progressive Front (NPF)…On polling day, the ruling Baath…once again emerged as the largest single party, with 134 seats, while the independents’ total rose from 35 to 84. Of the total Council membership, 77 were incumbent Deputies. On 11 June, President Al-Assad opened the newly elected Parliament’s first session. Mr. Abdel Qader Qaddoura was then re-elected as Council President.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
“The Syrian Communist Party made a comeback and women more than doubled their number of seats as a result of the 1986 elections to the People’s Council. The ruling Baath party was the biggest winner, with a total of 129 seats in the 195-member Parliament. The Communists, who had no members in the previous legislature, won nine seats. There were a total of 88 newcomers to the Council.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
In 1981, “the elections resulted in a victory for the National Progressive Front, which captured all 195 People’s Council seats. The Baath Arab Socialist Party of President of the Republic Hafez al-Assad won 60% of all seats. As opposed to the previous legislature, no independent candidates were successful”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
In 1977, “party lists were presented by ruling Arab Socialist Renaissance (Booth) Party and those of four other leftist groups that together formed the National Progressive Front governing coalition of President Hafez al-Assad, in power since 1971…The voting results, as announced, showed that the Baath— which supports militant Arab unity — once again emerged as the single largest party and that the Front altogether won all but 36 seats, these being captured by Independents. The new Parliament held its first session on August 18.”- INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
In 1973, “the elections, in which 1656 candidates — 659 representing workers and farmers and 997 other social groups — contested the seats of the People’s Council, were the first since the Baath Party seized power in 1963…The Baath Party, which fielded roughly half of the candidates, and its allies — the Communist Party, the pro-Cairo Arab Socialist Union (ASU), the Arab Socialists and the Socialist Unionists — who ran on a unified ” national progressive ” ticket, succeeded in winning 10 of the country’s 15 governorates and about two-thirds of the parliamentary seats.”-INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION database
The SCP seems to recognize what the PLP cannot. The Syrian Communist Party (Unified), is one of the two communist parties in the country, and is also a member of the NPF, a coalition of “political parties in Syria that support the [so-called] socialist and Arab nationalist orientation of the current government and accept the leading role of the Arab Socialist Baath Party.” These 11 parties (Wikipedia claims there are 10 but is actually 11) are as follows: the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party, Arab Socialist Union Party, Communist Party of Syria (Bakdash), National Vow Movement/National Covenant Party, Communist Party (Unified), Arab Democratic Union Party, Unionist Social Democratic Party, Socialist Unionist Party,Syrian National Social Party – Center, General Union of Trade Unions, and General Union of Peasants. As such, the Syrian Communist Party (Unified), which favored the perestroika in the Soviet Union, a horrid act by the revisionist Soviet leadership, sees itself as part of a progressive front.
In 1986, when the Syrian Communist Party split, there was another faction: Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) which opposed perestroika, different from other supposed communist groupings, like the National Committee for the Unity of Syrian Communists (NCUSC) which is also known as the Party of the Popular Will, and the Communist Labor Party. To give some background, some members of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party met with members of the original Syrian Communist Party, founded in 1924, from 1966 to 1970, wanting to form a “vanguard party” with some taken in with “socialist ideas” they wanted to emulate Soviet and Chinese “policies in agriculture and defense.” However, also during this period, there was a “revisionist current within the Syrian Communist Party led by Riad al-Turk” which called for the “end to Soviet influence on party policy and a shift towards objectives and programmes better suited to the Syrian and Arab context,” and with this group holding a huge sway, Secretary-General of the party, Khalid Bakdash, became a “minority in the leadership ranks.” Bakdash had shown his dedication to fighting French imperialism with unity of the masses, telling the Comintern in 1935 that
the situation in Syria imposes heavy tasks and a great responsibility on our party. Syria, because of its location between Europe and Asia and on the Mediterranean, is a strategic center of fundamental importance for the entire system of French imperialism…French imperialism, understanding the importance of Syria, has unleashed a savage terror to destroy the revolutionary movement in the country and has directed its most cruel blows against the working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party, which was reduced to a deep state of illegality. After the armed insurrection of 1925 to 1927 in which for two years the Arab peasants, workers, and labourers showed how they are capable of fighting French imperialism…we are ready to unite our efforts with all those who want a free and independent Syria.
This leads to 1986, when over perestroika, these two trends in the Communist Party broke apart, forming Syrian Communist Party (Unified) and Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash), the latter opposing perestroika, if Wikipedia has merit and the former approving of it.
On the website of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties there are forty statements of this Communist Party, from November of last year to November 2008, only some of which were translated into English. The most recent of those is from July of last year at the meeting of the central committee of the party in Damascus, saying that the situation internationally is becoming more dangerous with “contradictions between imperialist powers,” adding that as U$ imperialism is “considered the most aggressive power” with dangerous escalation toward the DPRK, and strong “Zionist influence” within the current U$ administration, that Russia is being targeted by Western imperialism, rejecting Turkish aggression towards Syria, with “international colonialist and Zionist powers…conspiring to divide Syria.” They closed by saying that the situation in the country requires “a radical transformation in the socio-economic policy that strengthens the country’s immunity and meets the basic interests of the Syrian people,” saying this requires “a complete break with socio-economic trends of a liberal nature” such as laws undermining “public sector status…encouraging foreign investment in all areas” which will “weaken the working class,” and by, ultimately, “encouraging production and creating important resources in the hands of the state” along with a “favorable pricing policy in the purchase of crops should be adopted” as part of a “policy of state capitalism of a social nature.” This would mean, in their view, “support for industrial and crafts production,” supporting agricultural production, increasing the role of the state in ” internal trade,” reviving state establishments in “the field of foreign trade,” raising “salaries and wages to be compatible with rising prices,” and expanding “social support for the population systematically.” Beyond this, take an interview with Adel Omar, of the party’s foreign bureau. He told Socialist Unity that the party believes that
…the course of events in Syria is neither a revolution nor a civil war. It is very clear that what has been taking place in Syria has been in accordance with the imperialist plans…our people are resisting the imperialist forces together. It is true that the people of Syria have demands and needs that need to be met, but the way to achieve this is not through destroying everything that belongs to the state of Syria. At the moment, our country is under attack, and achieving unity among the people to defend our homeland is what needs to be done first. At this point, we think it is especially crucial for the government to respond to the demands and the needs of the people…When we evaluate the 10-year period before the aggression toward Syria, we see that the Syrian government made grave mistakes in the economic area. By choosing neoliberal economic policies, it opened the Syrian market to foreign imports, especially Turkish and Qatari products. As a result, hundreds of factories and workshops shut down and millions of workers lost their jobs. In fact, there was not a substantial change in these neoliberal policies when the imperialist intervention started. As the Syrian CP, we think that the adoption of these neoliberal economic policies was a fatal mistake. We believe that the solution needs to start by putting an end to these policies…It is important to realize that it is not only the Syrian army that is resisting against the imperialist-backed foreign forces. Ordinary Syrians are also fighting…it is critical that the government support the people through economic policies in order for the popular resistance to be able to survive. But, unfortunately, it is difficult to say that the government realizes this fact even now. They more or less continue with the neoliberal policies. As the Syrian CP, we believe the biggest risk factor for the Syrian resistance is the economy…We are going through a war that though difficult and serious at times cannot be taken lightly. But we are determined to continue with our struggle…As Syrian communists, the duty to struggle for our homeland lies first and foremost on our shoulders…When our situation in Syria is taken into account, I can say that we need an attitude of solidarity that is more than a “message of goodwill” by this or that party…in the struggle we are waging in Syria, we have been left alone. There are 22 Arab countries, and no events in solidarity with the Syrian people have been organized in the capitals of these countries…History shows us that struggles against imperialism and fascism increase the value and respectability of the communist parties in the eyes of the people. This was the case for the Soviets in their defense of the motherland, and the same in Greece or France. Communists were at the forefront, organizing the resistance of the people for the defense of their motherland. This is the case for us as well…the Syrian Communist Party is a strong organization with more than a quarter of a million members.
This shows that this party, which defines itself as the “conscious organized vanguard of the working class in Syria,” adopting the “teachings of Marxism-Leninism,” looking to unite and mobilize “all progressive forces for the final salvation of poverty and retardation and exploitation” is much more radical than Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash). Consistently this party has stood “with the Syrian people…against the Imperialist and Zionist plans and conspiracies that the Arabic reactionary regimes and imperialist allied countries in our region is participating in,” stood in solidarity with the South African Communist Party (SACP), and had a well-thought-out statement in 2011 on “unrest in some cities in Syria,” saying that there were reactionary forces at work but understanding the tensions. They added that the party’s central committee said that the “the trend toward economic liberalization, which has negatively impacted national production and the state of the toiling masses” should be reversed, restoring and strengthening “our food security, and industry under all forms of national ownership, with emphasis on maintaining and developing the public sector.” By 2014, the party called “on all patriots in Syria to defend the homeland, to protect national sovereignty, and to be on their guard against imperialist conspiracies and tricks” and closing by saying that “our defence of our homeland is first and above any consideration.”
Some, like Caleb T. Maupin in Mint Press News, argued that it is a positive that “Syria openly tolerates the existence of two strong Marxist-Leninist parties,” saying that Syrian Communist Party (Unified) and the Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) openly “operate as part of the anti-imperialist coalition supporting the Baath Arab Socialist Party.” while communists “lead trade unions and community organizations in Damascus and other parts of the country.” That is a positive for sure, but it doesn’t make Syria socialist and it doesn’t invalidate the existence of a bourgeoisie as Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) clearly acknowledges. If there was a communist party in Syria comrades should ally with, I’d say Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) has a much more coherent analysis without a doubt and should be supported with solidarity, as should the Syrian proletariat. Furthermore, I agree with Joma Sison of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines that in the context of fighting against the murderous empire and Zionism, “the Assad government and the Syrian Arab Army have a sovereign, progressive and revolutionary cause against the US as No. 1 imperialist aggressor and its criminal accomplice Zionist Israel.” I also agree with his statement that whatever “is the social character of Russia now (even if monopoly capitalist), it is good strategy and tactics for Syria to use its alliance with Russia to counter and defeat the more aggressive imperialist power, US imperialism and its terrible sidekick Israel.” [7]
Resistance to imperialism and concluding words
Resistance to imperialism by Syria has roots in its history. By 1516, Syrian had been taken over by the Turks with a feudal system kept in place, and claims to region by England and France in 18th century, while the Turks fought off Mamuluks in 1770s to preserve their colony. Before the Turks, Syria was considered part of the Persian empire! In the 1790s, Syria was one of the countries drawn into European conflicts with French bourgeoisie wanting control, leading to anger from the populace, constant Wahhabi raids in first decade of 19th century which ceased in 1811, anger at reforms by Turks in 1820s, and major disturbances until 1831, when Egyptian troops invaded. The following year the invading Egyptians took control, and even defeated the Turkish army at Tartus in 1833. By the 1870s, with Syria as a deeply important province of Ottoman Empire (root of the justified anger toward Erdogan), Arab nationalism began to develop there and in Lebanon. By World War I, Syria was taken over again, this time by the French, who used imperialism to push the Turks out of country. In the 1920s there was a war for liberation against French imperialism, which based “all its calculations on the suppression of proletarian revolutionary struggle in France and Europe by using its colonial workers as a reserve army of counter-revolution,” as the Fourth Congress of the Communist International said in 1922 and the Communists had a role in such liberation. In December 1925, when addressing the Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B), comrade Josef Stalin remarked that there was a “growth of the national-revolutionary movement in the colonies and the crisis in the world domination of imperialism in general” specifically mentioning the “war for liberation waged by Syria and Morocco against French imperialism” along with the “struggle for liberation waged by India and Egypt against British imperialism” and China’s “struggle for liberation against Anglo-Japanese-American imperialism,” along with the “growth of the working-class movement in India and China.” He concluded that this means that “the Great Powers are faced with the danger of losing their…colonies” with capitalism destabilized, with a “form of open war against imperialism” in places like “Morocco, Syria, [and] China.” This was further proven by a revolt in Syria, in 1926, some saying that “the revolt in Syria has reached alarming proportions” while the Comintern that year considered the revolt as one of the “series of revolutions and revolutionary actions on the Continent of Europe as well as in the colonial and semi-colonial countries.” The following year, comrade Stalin told the Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B) that the intention of the British bourgeoisie, represented by Neville Chamberlain, was to “oust the French bourgeoisie from Syria” because from Syria it is “possible to do harm to Britain both in the area of the Suez Canal and in the area of Mesopotamia.”
Fast forward to World War II. In 1942, Churchill wrote to Stalin, saying he hoped to “assemble a considerable army in Syria drawn from our Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Armies, so as to go to help Turkey if either she were threatened or were willing to join us.” With the country controlled by nationalist but easily pliant governments of the Western bourgeoisie, for most of the time from 1945 to 1958, it is no surprise that the country signed The General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade or GATT in 1948, becoming a foundation of the postwar world capitalism. However, the country became more independent during its years as the Syrian Republic, with the U$ engaging in provocations in Syria in 1957 and Mao Zedong saying the same year that there should be solidarity with Syrian nation. In 1960, 8o Communist and Workers Parties made a statement in Moscow praising the “resolute stand of the Soviet Union, of the other socialist states and of all the peaceful forces put an end to the Anglo -Franco-Israeli intervention in Egypt, and averted a military invasion of Syria, Iraq and some other countries by the imperialists.” Six years later, there was a military coup in Syria, as previously mentioned in this article, which hurt Ba’ath Party in Iraq but conditions changed in 1968 with another military coup, which was not U$ backed like the one in 1963. By the 1970s, a full tank brigade from Cuba stood “guard between 1973 and 1975 alongside the Golan Heights, when this territory was unjustly seized from that country.” Cuba has, in the past two years, stood by Syria, shipping vaccines, is willing to have “bilateral relations based on mutual respect, non-interference in the internal affairs of states, economic exchange and the defense of the sovereign principles of each nation,” said at the UN that “peace in Syria can only be achieved if the people’s right to self-determination is respected” while Fidel himself “strategically directed hundreds of thousands of Cuban combatants on international missions” in countries such as Syria, (also in Algeria, Angola, and Ethiopia to name a few). Additionally, Syria has stood with Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in June of 2016 expressing “their support for the independence and sovereignty of Puerto Rico,” undoubtedly angering the murderous empire while Syrian students have said that they respect the Cuban revolution, while it has pushed for the end of the blockade against Cuba, while medical students from Syria have come to Cuba. Additionally, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said that Venezuela stood in solidarity with “the Syrian people in the struggle against terrorism and against the most vile and cruel forms of warfare are admirable before the eyes of the world,” and solidarity again after a deadly strike by the murderous empire. Maduro himself warnedagainst intervention by the murderous empire in Syria in 2013, with the government supplying Syria with oil in 2012, calls for the end to a “media war”on Syria in 2011, strengthening of agreements with Syrian businesses in 2010, and Hugo Chavez making a speech in 2009 in the Syrian province of Swaida, calling the Syrian people “architects of resistance” to imperialism, and saying that “we should fight to create consciousness that is free from imperialist doctrine…fight to defeat backwardness, poverty, misery…to convert our countries into true powers through the consciousness of the people.” Other than this, Assad and Chavez “created a $100 million bilateral development fund and discussed how to build more unity between Arab and Latin American peoples” in 2010, humanitarian aid sent to Syrian refugees in 2013, Venezuela taking in 20,000 Syrian refugees in 2015, Chavez laughing at the idea that Venezuelan aircraft are shipping missile parts to Syria in 2008,and Assad and Chavez criticizing U$ involvement in the Middle East in 2006, to name a few instances.
Such solidarity of Venezuela with Libya, Iran, and Syria had Trotskyist Lance Selfa grumbling about Chavez supporting “dictators” or “despots,” and claiming there were “Arab revolutionaries.” Like always, the Trotskyists failed in their analysis. As Stalin noted in December 1927 when he called out the “Trotskyist opposition,” showing how they favored the bourgeoisie:
…I think the opposition does me honour by venting all its hatred against Stalin. That is as it should be. I think it would be strange and offensive if the opposition, which is trying to wreck the Party, were to praise Stalin, who is defending the fundamentals of the Leninist Party principle…The communist workers gave our oppositionists a good drubbing, such a drubbing indeed that the leaders of the opposition were compelled to flee from the battlefield…the opposition, in pursuing a splitting policy, organised an anti-Party, illegal printing press…the opposition, for the purpose of organising this printing press, entered into a bloc with bourgeois intellectuals, part of whom turned out to be in direct contact with counter-revolutionary conspirators…The opposition’s splitting activities lead it to linking up with bourgeois intellectuals, and the link with bourgeois intellectuals makes it easy for all sorts of counter-revolutionary elements to envelop it—that is the bitter truth…Its main sin is that it tried, is trying, and will go on trying to embellish Leninism with Trotskyism and to replace Leninism by Trotskyism…What is the chief aim of the present united bloc headed by Trotsky? It is little by little to switch the Party from the Leninist course to that of Trotskyism. That is the opposition’s main sin. But the Party wants to remain a Leninist party.
Add to this what the French Communist Party said in 1932, that workers are fooled by the Trotskyists who want to splinter the Communist movement, with even Josip Tito of Yugoslavia seeing Trotskyists as those clearing “the road for the fascist-imperialist bandits”! That shows this sentiment against Trotskyists was widespread. Others have said that the Trotskyists served Franco, which the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA) claimed was disproved by its author George Soria but actually is talking about “the story surrounding the disappearance of Andrés Nin, the founder of the P.O.U.M., where he was freed from prison by fascist agents” with his words cited by MIA after Soria “became sympathetic to the Eurocommunism of the PCF.” Furthermore, as Harriet Parsons wrote in the Worker’s Herald in September 1980, “Trotskyists and Trotskyist organizations have a special place in the government’s arsenal for their role in stirring up counter-revolution and their activities as police agents.” As Moissaye J. Olgin wrote in 1935, basing his analysis on what Stalin had written about Trotskyism and in solidarity with the Soviet Union, “Trotskyism no more confines itself to “informing” the bourgeoisie” but has become “center and the rallying point for the enemies of the Soviet Union, of the proletarian revolution in capitalist countries, of the Communist International.”
Hostility by the murderous empire, which has “left a balance sheet of hundreds of thousands of deaths and enormous destruction” in Syria was expressed was as strong in 2003 as it was in 2014 and last year with the cruise missile attack by the orange menace. As Mexican-Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel (who is not a Marxist but has put forward a philosophy of liberation along with other individuals) put it in October 2016 at the Eco-socialist School of Critical Decolonial Thought of Our America, “they [the murderous empire] go to Syria and they destroy it without even knowing where Syria is. They destroyed Aleppo without knowing anything about that place.”
Taking this all into account, one can, and should agree with Ramzi (Khaled Bakdash), who argued that “we must use the Leninist-Stalinist tactic of mobilising all possible forces…and using all our allies, however temporary and uncertain they may be,” arguing at the time against French imperialism and Zionist oppression but also saying that there will be “accommodation of the national reformist bourgeoisie with imperialism” and calling for Arabic unity with an “anti-imperialist popular front on the pan-Arab scale.”This is especially important considering the economic sanctions foisted on Syria with those fighting “against the Syrian government and army are a mixture of Syrian and foreign mercenaries from dozens of countries” with supplies, training, and weapons from “Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Turkey, NATO, and of course the United States,” with the latter winding down it seems, as Syria tries to rebuild from the destruction.
With Turkish aggression against Syria, bombing the YPG and the so-called “revolutionary” Kurds, whom are collaborating with U$ imperialists for what some naively call “liberation,” the country is under assault with destruction of houses and historic sites. Some have said that Russia, Syria, and Turkey are all on the same page, with the Turks trying to change the empire’s “end game” in Syria. Perhaps the Turks and Russians are on the same page, but there is no doubt that the Syrians are furious with the violation of their sovereignty while these certaom Kurds are angry their imperial patrons aren’t protecting them (perhaps because the empire sees more value in an alliance with Turkey?). They detest these certain Kurds becoming a base for the murderous empire within their country. However, they do not want military invasion or covert action brought into their country by outside powers, especially by the Turks, which are strongly against the current Syrian government. Some, like celebrity left David Graeber, are ringing their hands about Turkey’s attack, calling it “pure imperialism” and claiming that the Kurds are still “revolutionary,” a laughable concept. Graeber may have a point about Turkey’s attack, as Erdogan is no friend to the proletariat of Turkey or of the world as a whole, but is a monster without question. Sure, he has ties to Russia, but this is because Turkish and Russian interests are interconnected, as the Turkish bourgeoisie and Russian bourgeoisie don’t mind being friends. Graeber’s hand-wringing is as bad as Marcel Cartier, writing in evidently anti-anti-imperialist site, The Region, reprinted in the so-called progressive “ZNet,” declaring that Rojava is a “beacon of stability in Syria” and is supposedly “progressive.” He goes further to claim laughably that the Kurds are not puppets but are engaged in a “real revolutionary process” and that the Syrians had “exhibited a considerable degree of colonialism as far as the Kurds are concerned”! Not only does he clearly understand what colonialism is, but his answer as a whole is absurd and laughable as these Kurds are helping the imperialists divide up Syria. Without a doubt, Cartier, like Graeber believes the lies that these Kurds are revolutionary, which anyone with sense has recognized by now. Even one subreddit I follow, leftvexillology, has a tag of “Fuck YPG!” due to such propaganda in absurd, laughable writings. Of course, there are some corners of the Left that still think this, like the goofs at Links International Journal of Socialism, Trotskyists, and deluded socialists in the Middle East. However, as I recently pointed out on Reddit,
….the Rojava/YPG/Kurdish Workers Party are pawns of U$ imperialists [as they see it], as evidenced more and more under Trump than ever before, who has given all sorts of aid to them….we know the U$ imperialists want a “safe district” in the region as a base for their imperialism, so they can easily attack Syria (and by that thinking, undermine Iran). Not only does such a state clearly violate the sovereignty of Syria with their so-called “decentralized” government, creating an entity which will lead to regional chaos…The narrative spread by those who advocate for Rojava is utterly false, without question. Not only is the propaganda outlets of the murderous empire willing to listen and talk to them, but it easily fits with “Orientalist bourgeois propaganda” against Syria…Beyond this, is the reality that while “Western and even international “left”…declare that the Rojava Kurds are “revolutionary” or somehow “liberated” such perspectives are “an unfounded and dangerous form of international solidarity”…Rojava is an illegal entity without question…Hence we should pay less attention to Rojava except to counter imperial lies and fight the blood-sucking imperialists who want to divide and conquer Syria without a doubt.
As the murderous empire seems has “drawn Turkey deeper into the Syrian conflict by announcing a policy that threatens Turkey’s national security” by announcing the creation of “a 30,000-man Border Security Force (BSF) to occupy East Syria” on January 18 and the start of so-called “Operation Olive Branch” two days later. In the article, Mike Whitney calls this a “gaffe” and a “provocation” which was uttered by oil man Tillerson who was “blinded by hubris.” He also said that time will tell if “Washington is following Erdogan’s orders or not” and claimed that “Putin gave Erdogan the green light to conduct “Operation Olive Branch” in order to pave the way for an eventual Syrian takeover of the Northwestern portion of the country up to the Turkish border” even though he admits that Erdogan has neo-Ottoman ambitions. Whitney closes by saying that the policy will remain the same as “Washington will persist in its effort to divide the country and remove Assad until an opposing force prevents it from doing so.” This seems to be faulty reasoning as the Turks do not seem to favor the current Syrian government so they wouldn’t just give the land over to the Syrians. Instead, it seems that Putin is serving nationalist interests of the Russian bourgeoisie rather than helping protect Syrian sovereignty which Turkey is clearly violating. Some may say that Syria is acquiescing to this by not “fighting back” against Turkey but it is likely that the current government does not want to be at war with Turkey or devote resources to defending such an area, looking to liberate other parts of the country from terrorist control instead, which is a wise use of resources.
In closing, there is no doubt that Syria is a nationalist, secular and socially democratic (or progressive) state. But, it is not socialist, as Gowans, most prominently of all, has argued. As I’ve noted in this article, Syria clearly has a bourgeoisie. This is the case in Iran and Zimbabwe as well, along with likely the case in Belarus and some other progressive countries, along with perhaps Cuba and the DPRK. Knowing the real nature of these countries by using Marxist analysis is important in order for the populace to have an accurate analysis of the world at the present. As always, I look forward to your comments and further discussion on this subject.
Notes
[1] Ashley Smith, “Explaining the Syrian civil war,” International Socialist Review; Chris Lee, “Is Syria socialist?,” Green Left Weekly, Oct 22, 2003; Serge Jordan, “Syria: Is an end to the war in sight?,” Socialist World (Trotskyist), Feb 3, 2017; Freedom Road Socialist Organization, “The ISO and the war on Syria: Silly and shameful,” FightBack! News, Sept 11, 2013; Budour Hassan, “Telling the stories of Syria’s masses,” Socialist Worker, Oct 3, 2013; Joseph Green, “Solidarity with the Syrian uprising and the Arab Spring!,” Communist Voice, Sept 2012; Alasdair Drysdale, “The Asad Regime and Its Troubles,” Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), November/December 1982.
[2] Suleiman Al-Khalidi, “Syria reverts to socialist economic policies to ease tension,” Reuters, Jul 4, 2012; Jamal Mahamid, “Syria’s frail economy, before and after the revolution,” Al Arabiya, Apr 1, 2013; Aron Lund, “The State of the Syrian Economy: An Expert Survey,” Carnegie Middle East Center, Dec 23, 2013; Hamoud Al-Mahmoud, “The War Economy in the Syrian Conflict: The Government’s Hands-Off Tactics,” Carnegie Middle East Center, Dec 15, 2015; Caroline Alexander and Donna Abu-Nasr, “How War Has Destroyed Syria’s Economy in Four Charts,” Bloomberg News, Jul 29, 2015; Elias al-Araj, “How the war on Syria left its mark on Lebanon’s economy,” Al Monitor, May 13, 2016; Jihad Yazigi, “Syria’s war economy,” European Council on Foreign Relations, Apr 7, 2014; Rim Turkmani, Ali A. K. Ali, Mary Kaldor, and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, “Countering the logic of the war economy in Syria,” OpenDemocracy, Nov 19, 2015; Suleiman Al-Khalidi, “Syria’s economy heads into ruin: U.N. sponsored report,” Reuters, May 18, 2014; AFP, “Economic effect of Syrian war at $35bn: World Bank,” Middle East Eye, Feb 5, 2016; David Butler, “Syria’s Economy: Picking up the Pieces,” Chatham House, June 23, 2015.
[3] On April 18, 1964, the New York Times, in an article titled “Socialist Goals Pressed by Syria,” declared that “the Syrian Government nationalized three textile factories in the northern industrial town of Aleppo today and ordered worker management of all nationalized and state‐run economic establishments” with the latter “viewed as heralds of a Socialist era in Syria under the Baath Socialist party” and seeking to “apply a brand of Socialism different from that of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic.” It also noted that “President Nasser’s Socialism” was denounced by the Baath Socialist party, wanting to have “self-management” by workers, expanding on nationalization of “all local and foreign banks.” Later on, there was a book by Ayman Al-Yassini titled “The socialist transformation of an underdeveloped country: Syria under the Arab Baath Socialist Party, 1963-1970,” Time magazine calling Syria “socialist” in 1967, as did Edward F. Sheehan in a January 1975 New York Times article titled “He Fears Russians More Than Israelis, Works With Kissinger.”
[4] “Syria,” 2017 Index of Economic Freedom, Heritage Foundation, accessed January 21, 2018; “Syria” (economy section), CIA’s The World Factbook, accessed January 21, 2018. There have been those like Martin Peretz of TheNew Republic declaring that “very few people…think of Russia and China as progressive countries,” that many “still think of Cuba as a progressive country,” with Venezuela, “Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua…express[ing] their solidarity for socialist Syria” which he considered a joke. People like this should be ridiculed and laughed at.
[5] One Trotskyist suggested that since “nationalisations received the overwhelming support of the working class in Syria” it is such nationalization and “division of the land,” which gained the government “support of the workers and peasants,” that the Ba’ath-led government was able to “maintain itself.” This argument may have some merit to it, although Trotskyists are often wrongheaded in their analysis without question.
[7] Mike Whitney wrote in January 2016 that “Putin has no intention of getting “bogged down” in Syria for a decade or two. What he plans to do is to defeat the enemy and move on,” adding that “Russia plans to use its Kurdish allies in the YPG to seize a stretch of land along the Syrian side of the Turkish border to reestablish Syria’s territorial sovereignty” while noting that “Turkish President Erdogan has promised that if the YPG pursues that course, Turkey will invade, in which case, Putin will come to the defense of the Kurds.” The latter seems to have come true in the case of Operation Olive Branch as the Turks call it, despite its destruction. The former has also become true as the Russians are pulling back their involvement. Still there is, as another writer also noted in CounterPunch, an “ongoing campaign of demonization against the Russian leader” or Putin, with Avaaz portraying the Syrian government efforts to fight terrorists as “nothing but a joint Russian-Syrian effort to murder civilians, especially children” even though this is an utter lie since, as Whitney noted, in another article, “Russian air-strikes are going to be accompanied by a formidable mop-up operation that will overpower the jihadi groups on the ground” which isn’t recognized by the antiwar movement.
Leftist Critic 