Can Syria’s revolution bloom after Assad?

Editor’s note: This episode was recorded on March 4, 2025.

In Syria, Assad is gone, but the country’s challenges remain. Over a decade of civil war and foreign intervention has devastated the country’s economy and politics, but a fragile optimism still exists. Joseph Daher and Ramah Kudaimi join this second episode of Solidarity Without Exception for a discussion on Syria’s long journey from the 2011 revolution to today, and what solidarity with the Syrian people should have looked like then, and could look like now.

Pre-Production: Ashley Smith
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Music Credits: 
Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |
https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Ashley Smith:

Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception. I’m Ashley Smith, who along with Blanca Missé are co-hosts of this ongoing podcast series. Today we’re joined by Joseph Daher and Ramah Kudaimi to discuss the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Joseph is a Swiss Syrian socialist, professor and author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God, Syria After the Uprising, and Palestine and Marxism. He recently returned from a visit to Syria only to find out that he has been fired from his university post for organizing in solidarity with Palestine. Ramah is a Syrian American activist and the campaign director for the Crescendo Project at the Action Center on Race and the Economy Institute. Ramah was previously the deputy director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, where she led and supported BDS campaigns in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.

In this episode, we’ll discuss Syria’s revolutionary process, which began in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, when people revolted against the autocratic governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In Syria, people rose up against Assad’s regime in a mass revolutionary struggle for democracy and equality. In response, Assad launched a counter-revolutionary war on his people to defend his rule. There is no doubt that he would have fallen without the military support of Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Together, they jailed, killed, bombed, and terrorized the country’s people driving millions into exile and internal displacement. Nevertheless, Assad lost control over whole sections of the country. Rebels led by the Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham that dominated the military resistance, seized control over some sections of Syria, while Kurdish-led forces in the Syrian defense forces declared a liberated zone in Rojava.

The US intervened in Syria against ISIS. When the group took over whole swaths of the country, Washington did back some Syrian rebels, including the Kurds, but restricted them to fighting ISIS, not the regime. In fact, the US wanted to preserve the regime as a bulwark of stability in the region. At best, hoping for a more pliant ruler to replace Assad. With that not in the cards, states throughout the region and world began to normalize relationships with Assad. But the regime’s days were numbered. It had little to no domestic support, and its foreign backers became weakened and preoccupied. Israel bombed Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as part of their expansion of its genocidal war on Palestine. Meanwhile, Russia got bogged down in its own imperialist war on Ukraine.

Without support from these regional and imperialist powers, the regime began to teeter and was finally toppled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and local popular militias. This has opened a new day in Syria, one that offers hope to rekindle the dreams of the original popular uprising, but also dangers posed by the Islamic fundamentalist forces now in power and the schemes of regional powers like Turkey and Israel. These two possible trajectories have been on display after this episode was recorded.

On the one hand, the country’s new Islamic fundamentalist regime deployed its security forces in Latakia against holdout supporters of Assad in the mainly Alawite community. That encouraged sectarian attacks against the Alawite community that killed hundreds of people and drove many more from their homes in the worst sectarian violence since the fall of the regime. On the other hand, the new regime reached an accord with the Kurdish-led Syrian defense forces, which controls about 30% of the country. They agreed to unite their forces, declare a ceasefire, recognize Kurds as an Indigenous community entitled to citizenship and constitutional rights, and oppose attempts to sow sectarian strife between Syria’s different ethnic and religious communities.

This accord is an enormous step forward for the Syrian people and a devastating setback to both Turkey and Israel’s attempt to divide the country. Thus, the future of Syria hangs in the balance between hope and horror, between an inclusive, democratic and egalitarian future and another of sectarian division, violence and social decomposition. What the masses of the country’s people do will determine whether the original hope of the revolution encapsulated in its slogan, the Syrian People Are One, will be fulfilled. Now on to the discussion with Joseph and Ramah, who provide crucial context for understanding the country’s ongoing struggle for liberation, democracy and equality.

So obviously the biggest news out of Syria is the toppling of Assad’s regime. And I think everybody around the world, and obviously the overwhelming majority of Syrians were overjoyed about the overthrow and end of his horrific rule in power. So just to give us some background on the nature of his regime and also about the impact of the regime on the country’s people and how people responded to the fall of his regime. Maybe we could start with Joseph, because I know you were just in Syria, so you can give us an on-the-ground sense of that.

Joseph Daher:

To tell you honestly, since the 8th of December, it’s been kind of a dream following the fall of the Assad dynasty, a family that ruled Syria for 54 years. And obviously, there are a lot of challenges for the future of Syria. But as I’ve been saying, ability only to speak about these challenges is a big way forward. For the vast majority of the Syrian population, the ability to organize, the ability to organize conferences. For example, when I was in Syria, I was able to visit Damascus, Suwayda, Aleppo, and just the ability to go back to Syria. For a lot of people, it was not a total of possibility. I never thought I would be able to go back. I was saying there was this Syrian women political movement doing their first press conference. There have been a lot of local popular organizations will come back to this, so there’s a lot of dynamism.

But this is not to deny as well the huge challenges for a country that suffered 13 years of war, massive destructions, 90% of the population live under the poverty line. Still the influence of foreign forces. And obviously the new actor in power that is far from being democratic, and I know we’ll come back to this, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Now coming back to the nature of the, and it’s very nice to be able to say this, to the former regime, the Assad regime, it was, again, Hafez al-Assad built a new patrimonial state which was authoritarian, liberalizing the economy slowly, and there was an acceleration after Bashar al-Assad, but he put the basis, if we want, or the pillars of authoritarianism, despotism. And for the first time in decades, Syrians were able, for example, to celebrate or to commemorate the massacre of Hama that killed tens of thousands of people openly in ’82. So there was a complete oppression and criminalization of all forms of opposition.

Bashar al-Assad completed, if you want, the patrimonialism of this regime, the centers of power concentrated within a small group, and this was only deepened with the war. And this is one of the reasons why actually the Assad regime fell as a house of cards, that no one wanted to defend a regime in which oppression was the rule, exploitation was the rule, and 90% lived under the poverty line. And soldiers did not fight. There was no major confrontations in the fall of the Assad regime. And this regime was completely dependent on foreign powers, Russia and Iran, that when they were weakened, therefore the regime vanished.

Ramah Kudaimi:

Yeah, it’s wonderful to be in convo with both of you and really happy, Joseph, you got to go to Syria. I’m still trying to figure out when to go myself. But yeah, that beautiful joy that people had, that continues to be had is something just so awe-inspiring. And just the shift of even how I’m able to have conversations with my family there. Immediately, the shift happened. And it was very shocking that people are immediately like, “Yeah, let’s openly talk about everything now,” after decades of really being afraid to say much about anything over WhatsApp or other way we have been staying in contact. So that stuff really was deep in so many people across the country, and we saw that fear break. We saw that fear break early on in the revolution. And then what we’ve been seeing I think these last two months is just that continuous joy and bringing us back to those early days of the revolution when people were just happy to be out in the street making demands.

And I think some of what Joseph talked about in terms of like, oh yeah, people are just having political conversations, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is really a big deal in Syria. And I think that’s something I would want to remind people. When we’re talking about authoritarianism, we’re really talking about a brutal, violent dictatorship that there was no opposition whatsoever, not like in other countries in the region where there was a controlled opposition. Here that wasn’t even accepted that there was a controlled opposition. It was just complete fealty to the regime, and specifically to the Assad family themselves.

I think that’s another thing we need to remind ourselves, of what the regime was like. It was just really out for themselves for decades. The disappearances and the torture that we saw during the last almost 15 years of revolution were happening decades beforehand. All those pictures and videos of people being released from the prisons, it wasn’t only people who were released just from the start of the revolution, we’re talking about people who spent decades of their lives there. So that context is also important to understand why there is so much optimism and joy in this moment, even though we don’t know what’s going to necessarily happen next.

Ashley Smith:

Right. I think one thing we’ve got to do is start with the most recent wave of revolt, because you both have just talked about that this has been a decades-long struggle for the liberation of the Syrian people from this regime. But the most recent wave of revolt really began back in 2011 as part of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings. What precipitated the uprising in 2011 in Syria? Who participated in it? How was it organized? What were people demanding?

Ramah Kudaimi:

So much has happened since the end of 2010, 2011 that people kind of forget what sparked all of this. And we get bogged down into like, well, the US versus Russia, Saudi versus Iran, all the geopolitics. And what happened was this moment in time where people across the region were inspired to make a simple demand, that people want the fall of the regime. And that demand we saw go from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Bahrain to Yemen to Syria and beyond, to Iraq, there were protests early on, et cetera. And so I think that’s such an important context that we need to really delve into. And how important that moment was, particularly because it came almost a decade after the start of the global war on terror and the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. And kind of really a moment in time that was very dark for the region.

We were having the Palestinian Second Intifada at the time as well. And so this was a moment where people were like, “No, actually we can make our own demands of these regions. We aren’t just being played by this geopolitical power versus this other one and whatever regime is wanting to do.” And so particularly in Syria, it started the famous protests of youth in Daraa, who saw what was happening across the region and decided to paint these freedom slogans on the walls of their city. And they were immediately arrested and tortured. The army person who was in charge of their torture actually just recently got captured, thankfully. So we can talk more about the need for accountability. But their torture then sparked more protests by folks in Daraa and were eventually met with even tanks and further violence, which then brought out protests against cities across the country. And there’s how this revolution sparked.

So there’s just that sparking of it. And obviously there’s things like the economic situation was not that good at the time. There was a drought happening, there was high unemployment. The Bashar al-Assad had really opened up the country in terms of neoliberal policies, which meant slashing of subsidies and rising expenses. And none of that was necessarily new. But that with the moment of protests happening across the region with, again, if we think by February, March, 2011 when things started picking up in Syria, by that time Ben Ali had already fled in Tunisia, Mubarak had stepped down in Egypt. So that was two huge processes that brought down regimes that had been in power for decades. Of course people are going to then be like, “Why can’t this happen to us too?”

Joseph Daher:

I think what Ramah explained is key. And the images also of seeing people protest in Tunis and especially in Tahrir Square. I think the fall of Mubarak was a key turning point. Without forgetting obviously what happened in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. And I think the roots, while every country has its own specificities, has to be found in obviously the absence of democracy, but also the particular, if you want, capitalist dynamics in the region where you have for the past decades, a form of blocked economic development focused on sectors of economy with short-term profits, such as luxurious real estate, financial services, trade. While productive sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and manufacturing industry, were very much diminished or undermined through the neoliberal policies. And obviously this increased also as well the level of corruption.

So contrary to what a lot of academics and the US kind of discourse, more neoliberalism or economic liberalism did not bring democracy out [inaudible 00:15:20]. It brought quite the opposite, a form of upgrading authoritarianism, what we witnessed throughout the uprising. So yes, there were specificities in each country, but again, I think they all had similar kind of characteristics when it came to absence of democracy, absence of social justice, blocked economic development, and a willingness of the popular classes to basically participate in the future of the country, to decide their own future.

Now, when it came to the Syrian uprising, what was interesting was the form of organization. Very rapidly, we had local coordination committees at the level of neighborhoods, cities, region, starting to organize protests, forms of civilian resistance. But the local coordination committees had democratic aspirations, I would even say some socioeconomic aspirations as well, talking about the issue of social justice inequalities. Because if you look at the geography of the uprising in Syria, it’s very much the poor neighborhoods of the big cities, rural areas, midtowns that suffered mostly from the neoliberal policies, the austerity measures that Ramah mentioned.

And afterwards, as the uprising continued, also the regime withdrew from certain areas. And this is important to say that we had forms of double power, meaning that you had a key challenge to the center of power and people self-organizing through local councils. And obviously we shouldn’t romanticize all experiences. Some of them were not completely democratic, the role of armed opposition forces was also problematic. But there were attempts in large areas of Syria to self-organize, to manage their own life. And afterwards, unfortunately, we had militarization that was imposed on the Syrian population. There were harsh debates among Syrian protest movement on the issue of militarization. We forget now, but there were harsh debates was not easy solutions. And very often at the beginning it was civilians taking up arms to defend their own neighborhoods. And this is how the Free Syrian Army developed afterwards. Unfortunately, the level of violence was so heavy, so high on the protesters. Also the level of foreign intervention increased massively.

So we had a popular uprising that turned into with foreign interventions from all sides. First of all, on the side of the regime, Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iran, very early on, even mid-end of 2011, and afterwards, Russia, 2015. On the other side, the so-called Friends of Syria, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar played also a very reactionary role by supporting the most, I think, reactionary sectors of the Syrian opposition. While most of these actors in the first six months of the uprising were trying to reach a deal with the Syrian regime at the time, we forget this, and they were quite big economic investors in Syria prior to 2011, for all of them were close allies. We forget that Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad used to spend their vacations together prior to 2011.

So all this made that until recently, the roots, if you want, of the organization of the Syrian popular uprising suffered massively. First of all, because of the repression, the deadly repression of Syrian regime, its attempts to sectarianize from the beginning, eliminate every kind of democratic opposition and the rise of reactionary Islamic fundamentalist forces, the rise of foreign interventions, and militarization. And there were only few pockets I would see a continuous, I would say, roots of the popular uprising. But the key dominating aspect, unfortunately, since 2015 was the military aspect, in which it’s very hard to democratic and progressive to express and organize.

Ashley Smith:

So let’s talk now about how Assad was able to withstand this revolutionary uprising. What enabled the regime to survive one of the most mass popular uprisings of any of them that happened in the Middle East back in 2011 with the most democratic self-organization? What kind of regional and international powers intervened to help save the regime? And what was the impact of the counterrevolution on the country? Maybe we can start with you, Ramah on this.

Ramah Kudaimi:

Yeah, it’s interesting because I think for people who are into conspiracy theories, a lot of times it’s like, “Well, this was a conspiracy against the Assad regime.” And the reality is I think many people will tell you no, actually the global conspiracy was against the revolution itself. So we have the obvious actors that came in to support the Assad regime, which Joseph talked about in terms of Iran, Hezbollah, Russia. And we have to understand too, it wasn’t just the official armies of these folks, but Iran, for example, backed a lot of militias, whether it’s militias from Iraq or militias of people that they sent from refugee camps like Afghan, Pakistanis, refugees in Iran that they would just send to fight on their behalf in Syria, which is absolutely ridiculous that they would be able to get away with this.

And the fact that they did it with such ruthlessness. We’re talking the bombing of hospitals was just a normal thing. Something we obviously spent the last year watching Israel do in Gaza, Assad normalized it to such an extent across Syria. The use of chemical weapons, the torture, the imprisonment, the siege, all tactics to destroy the uprising and all, again, supported by various international powers. And even, frankly, by the so-called Friends of Syria at one point and another where it was just like there could have been more potentially ways to hold Assad back that different regimes refused to do, did not want to do.Because at the end it became, I think, very clear, especially by 2013, 2014, that the preservation of the regime was much more important than the people actually succeeding in their revolution.

And then we saw that, as Joseph was talking about, as folks took up more arms and it became more of an armed resistance against the regime, I mean sometimes that’s just going to be the reality of what’s going to happen when you have activists who were imprisoned, killed, or forced to flee, when you had geopolitics becoming the dominant discourse. So that was what became the issue in Syria versus, again, what do the everyday people want? And that’s such an important part of the conversation we need to have in terms of how we move forward and the future of Syria is to always remember who actually had the Syrian people’s future and their goals in mind. It was no one other than the Syrian people. It was obviously not those who came in support of the Assad regime. It was not the United States who was supposedly against the regime. It was not any of the various Friends of Syria that came together. It was not the United Nations and other international bodies. Let’s be very clear. So I think that’s a very important part of the conversation as we talk now and then in the future.

Joseph Daher:

Well, I totally agree with Ramah. I just add very few things. As I mentioned before, in the summer of 2012, half of Syria was outside the control of the regime. This is where you had extension increase in the assistance given by Iran, Hezbollah and the militia supported by Iran. In 2015, Russia intervened. And it was from this period they were able to reconquer territories. First of all, Eastern Aleppo in 2016, after Damascus countryside, Daraa. But even with this, it wasn’t enough. And militarily, the regime needed Iran and Russia, but also politically and economically. And this is how they accumulated a huge debt, especially to Iran, the 30, 50 billions. I think this is something that should be taken more by, especially the authorities, but the Syrian Democrats, is that we have an odious debt, so we don’t need to pay it to the Iranians.

And the fact that this debt was made consciously against the interest of the Syrian people and Iran was participating in the massacres and keeping this regime in place. Plus, and it’s important also, as Ramah was saying, that everyone was against the fall of this regime, basically. There was a normalization that was started from 2018. The US and Russia were kind of having deal, how do they share Syria? It was clear that Israel from the beginning and for the past decades saw as a threat the fall of this regime. And the day after the fall of this regime, the best proof of this is that they bombed massively Syrian state capacities, armed capacities and extended the occupation of Syria the day after the fall of the guardian of the border with Israel.

So we had a normalization period, et cetera. And the fall of the regime came from an initiative from an armed group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. But even there was a green light given by Turkey. Turkey also entered the normalization process with the Syrian regime. So none of them wanting it. But because this regime was so weak and dependent on foreign actors, Iran and Russia most especially, and when they were weakened, again as I said, because it had no popular support, it vanished. So here we see really the key issues of foreign actors within the Syrian revolution process. And throughout the past five years, I would say, whether the kind of so-called Friends of Syria or Russia and Iran on the side really wanted to impose a form of authoritarian stability in the region, which included Assad.

Ashley Smith:

So let’s talk a little bit about how the US got involved, because both of you just touched on this. And it seems to me that the real turning point for significant intervention was after the rise of ISIS, which took over whole sections of Syria and Iraq. And the US then started intervening quite intensively. So what were its aims in doing so? What was the US really up to in Syria?

Joseph Daher:

Well, and again, I think it’s important, especially now that it’s been more than a decade, and also speaking with this in Syria with people that are a generation of 20 years old and asking them how they joined the revolution, et cetera. And I think we have to have the kind of similar kind of discussion outside, how the Arab uprisings or the uprisings in the region started and it wasn’t a conspiracy or et cetera. And in the case of Syria, again looking at the role of the US, I will always remember Hillary Clinton from I think the first few weeks of the uprising saying, “You know, Bashar Assad is a reformist, he’s not like his father.” It was two or three years before Obama reopened the embassy in Damascus. There was willingness to cooperate. And the Syrian regime of Assad, father and son, had a long history of cooperation with US imperialism. I think it’s important to remind everyone.

And it was clear from the beginning, they said, “We will not have any Libyan scenario in Syria.” They were not interested in any kind of destruction of the Syrian regime. Rather they were seeking maybe to replace the head with another head that would be more submissive to their own political interests. But because of the nature of the Syrian regime, this was very difficult to do, the patrimonial nature, concentration of centers of power. But they definitely didn’t want the uprising to see a full complete of the acien regime, they were more in a controlled transition. This was the main aim of the US. And with the rise of ISIS, this challenged also the interests in the region and especially in Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan, with the leadership of Barazan is a key ally. And they saw ISIS as creating, when it established its so-called Islamic Emirate from Mosul to Raqqa as a threat to the regional order.

And this is when they intervened. They did not intervene in a manner to serve the interest of the Syrian population, but to serve their own political interests. And therefore there was never any kind of real intervention against the Syrian regime. There was one offensive made by Trump in the first presidency following the massacre, the chemical massacre of Khan Shaykhun, the city up north. But even then, the attack they did was really symbolic and they had actually told the Syrian and Russian that they would attack this particular military basements areas. So it was very clear for the US they always wanted a very clear control transition that does not create more chaos to the region, especially to Israel, Jordan, which is a key ally of the US as well. So here, I believe the main role of the US, it was never to challenge actually the Syrian regime.

Ramah Kudaimi:

The only other thing I’d add is just the context of, again, this continuing global war on terror and the excuse that that has given various presidents since 2001 to go in and go after, quote, unquote, “the terrorists.” So I think obviously, you know, Obama declared that the war on terror was over in 2013. That obviously was not true because a year later he’s going into Iraq and Syria against ISIS. Biden claimed, you know, “I withdrew the troops from Afghanistan in 2021.” That hasn’t stopped necessarily various drone strikes, especially in parts of Africa particularly. And then, obviously, what we’ve seen again with Israel and Gaza since October 7th, 2023.

And I think that’s just part of the conversation as well in terms of like when the US and their allies truly intervened, it was to, again, fight who they were considering as terrorists. And it was to ensure these… We agree these are reactionary forces were destroyed. But it also happened around a time where the Assad regime was being very weakened. And what did that mean in terms of, in this moment of time where you chose to intervene was not against Assad but against ISIS.

Ashley Smith:

Right. So let’s turn a little bit to the questions about the later stages in the run-up to the toppling of the regime because one of the key powers in the region that started to intervene, that we really haven’t talked that much about, is Turkey. And Turkey played an increasing role, largely in opposition to the rise of a Kurdish revolutionary process within Syria, including establishing a regional autonomous area, Rojava. So why did Turkey increasingly intervene and become a player in Syria despite the deals, that Joseph talked about, the Erdogan regime making with Assad?

Joseph Daher:

Again, it’s important to remind everyone that Erdogan and Bashar Assad were great foes, there was commercial free trade agreement between both countries that now they want to also revive that would be catastrophic in economic terms for Syrian national production, especially manufacturing industry and agriculture. So in the first six months of the uprising, Turkey pushed for a deal between the Syrian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood that was refused, and they cut relations completely. And this is where Turkish state started supporting sectors of the opposition, especially in the beginning, Muslim Brotherhood welcoming a lot of Syrians. And throughout the years, as the Syrian regime with the help of its foreign allies, Turkey saw it was unable, basically, at this period, to overthrow the regime, turned more and more to concentrate on trying to put an end to what it perceives as a continuation of its national threat or national security threat, the Kurdish issue. And especially the fallout of the peace negotiation.

So therefore, from there on, this concentrated more and more on the northeast, which is controlled by the autonomous administration of the Northeast, which is dominated by the PYD, a sister organization of PKK. So Turkey saw it as a continuation of its basically national security threat around the Kurdish issue. And this is how we understand the increasing intervention of Turkey in Syria. Also, it was to preserve its influence through the support of what is called its proxy, Syrian National Army, which is composed of tens of thousands of soldiers paid by Turkey, that serve their interests. And also lastly, there was the issue of the Syrian refugees that became an internal factor of instability for the AKP and rising racism against Syrian refugees. So they wanted to also to push them back to Syria. So I think these are the key, until recently, until the fall of the regime.

Ramah Kudaimi:

Turkey, like every other regional player, has its interests and those interests changed throughout the last 10, 12 years. And I think that’s an important, again, part of the conversation of what it means for those of us outside of the region, what solidarity looks like to be thinking about these things. It’s not just always a clearly like, “Here’s the formula of what it means to be a leftist.” Because I think that’s what a lot of times we’re looking for, instead of being like, “Things are going to shift very dramatically,” we have seen, and we need to be always on top of these shifts and understand when there are moments that like, yeah, there came a time when Turkey was very supportive of the revolution and was providing a lot to refugees, what does that mean? And then they flip obviously because they have their own concerns in relationship to their power and the Kurdish question, as Joseph was talking about. And now this flip-flop back of just like, “Oh, can we… Now the people we like are in power.”

Ashley Smith:

So if you think about where we stand over the last year, before the last year, before the Israeli genocidal war, Assad is in power, he’s normalizing relations with all these regional powers, but the country is not entirely controlled by Assad. There’s the Kurdish region, autonomous region, there’s sections of the country controlled by HTS, and the regime only has a narrow base. So what changed in the region and who are the forces that toppled the regime?

Joseph Daher:

First of all, it’s important to remember that the Assad regime had couple of changes to seek or to be able to guarantee in a way the survival of its regime by entering a form of transitional phase that was very symbolic because before its fall, the resolution 2254, UN resolution was seen by the regime in Russia, basically the demands were being constantly undermined since 2012 as the regime was normalizing. But the regime never sought, first of all, to restructure its own institutions, to seek even to guarantee some of the interests of actors they were normalizing with. This is one thing also, this is, and despite the fact that Russia and Iran were saying to some extent, not harshly, to the Syrian regime, try to give a bit to guarantee a bit.

But more importantly, first of all you have the weakening of Russia following its imperialist war against Ukraine. It was not able to be able again to intervene as it was before. Iran and Hezbollah were definitely weakened by the sequence of events that followed the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. Israel was more and more, and with the total support of the US, because this genocide has been ongoing mainly because of US support and obviously European, but mainly US, especially military economically. So it weakened Hezbollah massively in the war of Lebanon and Iran in Syria. And you had even other areas outside the control of the region such as Suwayda and partially Daraa in the south. And these two actors actually, military actors from these regions when HTS, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, and again no one was seeing that they were top of the regime.

First of all, I think even them, their main objective was to have better position in future negotiation by taking the countryside of Aleppo, possibly Aleppo, but not the whole. But when they were continuing the attack, it was actually armed groups from the south that entered first Damascus. And you had also part of a popular dynamics protest that is important to remember. First, and after let Ramah, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, we have to acknowledge that it went through major ideological political evolution from starting as a branch of Daesh in 2012, Jabhat al-Nusra, then falling out with Daesh, joining Al-Qaeda, falling out with Al-Qaeda. And basically because of the material reality they’re living in, they had to, in the northwest, basically rule an area.

So they’re not anymore a transnational jihadist organization. They’re very pragmatist and they’ve been very pragmatist for a while. It’s not new. Does that mean they’re a democratic organization? No, far from it. They want to consolidate now their power and authoritarian, neoliberal, et cetera. We can come back to this later. The Syrian National Army, as I said, is acting as a main proxy of Turkey really. And this is a key asset for Turkey. And Turkey today is the most important regional actor within Syria.

Ramah Kudaimi:

I think I’ll also say that I think we can’t forget that even though it was under this banner of HTS, this is offensive started, right after, you know, the end of November through December 8th when Assad fled. We have to remember Idlib as a region housed Syrians from across the country. Idlib was where everyone would escape to when, you know, there was a deal made, when Assad would lay siege on an area, and then the UN would intervene. And in order to end the siege, the deal would be that these folks would hop on what became known, these green buses that everyone saw these images of, and then take the fighters and their families to Idlib.

And I think that’s an important part of the conversation of just like a lot of these fighters that were part of this offensive were fighters who were returning to their homes, reuniting with their families. And so when they went to Halab, when they went to Hama, when they went to Homs, it was people returning to their homes. And I say that because I think that is a very different narrative than like, “Oh these HTS reactionaries brought down this, quote, unquote, ‘secular regime,'” which I think is something that certain parts of the internet is trying to push, this narrative, which is just not true. And I think it’s important to have these facts in place as we talk about what the future of Syria is and also to like really inspire us when we talk about… So many struggles across the globe are about returning to the homeland. And we’re witnessing an opening now of people returning to their homelands.

Ashley Smith:

Yeah, I think that really captures the dual dynamic of the toppling of the regime, that it had this very mass popular element to it of people within the country feeling liberated and HTS trying to consolidate its rule. So I want to ask about now the post-revolutionary situation and the kind of trajectory of things in Syria. So what is HTS trying to do in consolidating its transitional government? And how are the popular forces, the popular classes responding to that? And how does this connect to the original goals of the revolution in 2011?

Ramah Kudaimi:

Yeah, it seems like every day something new comes up, which is exciting, it is really exciting and it’s like, “Oh wow, things are just not set in stone?” I think people continue to be optimistic. I know I actually surprise myself when I’m like, “Oh this is interesting.” That pragmatism that Joseph was talking about is really coming through a lot in ways that at times I found unexpected. And my hopes of hopes that that continues. Even though we know, again, it’s not like some leftist socialist project is being born in Syria at this moment in time. Let’s be real. That is not what is being born at this moment. But that does not also mean that the opening isn’t there for the future of that.

And I think that’s the biggest thing to me to keep in mind is like these openings are so important because, again, under these decades long under the Assad regime, those openings were not absolutely there. So even if the folks who are in power now, these folks who you know are former HTS fighters who are reactionary in many of their politics, et cetera, that is not necessarily the ideal where actor that the majority of Syrians would be like, “Yes, this is who we want to take over.” And yet under what we’ve been seeing these last two months is there continues to be openings for these conversations and these discussions and people being out and having these things very publicly, again, back to the early days of the revolution, these demands being made.

I do think there’s like three things that I think really are important for us to continue to push on for those original goals of the revolution. One, how do we get accountability for all the war crimes? So obviously first and foremost, Assad and his cronies. And we’re seeing some people have been getting arrested. I think there was an official demand made of Russia to hand over Assad recently. So what does that mean? But the reality is when you have 10, 12 years of war, all kinds of actors have committed war crimes, whether it is HTS, whether it is SDF, like so many of these rebel groups. And what does accountability mean? Not accountability like everyone needs to be punished, but what is the process in order to get us to a point when we can actually rebuild this country, recognizing all the different pain and suffering all sectors of society went to.

I think the other one, I think there’s been a lot of demands and protests by the families of the disappeared. And I think that’s one thing that actually has disappointed a lot of people is that, well, Sharaa now officially being the president of Syria has yet, to my understanding, to meet any of the families of the disappeared. And that’s been something that I think across the board has been a disappointment by many folks. And then I think there is this question of there’s a terrible economic situation in place and also the political situation. And I think there’s like this question of like what do you tackle first? Do you go all in to try to fix the economy because that’s what people need to survive? But does that then mean that the political situation of like the basics of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech and how we can get subsumed into this like economic solution? And I think those are the kind of discussions that need to continue. And hopefully that there continues to be space for that as we see various people take their positions in power now.

Joseph Daher:

Yeah, I think I will start where Ramah finished. The issue of the space to organize. And again, I think this is a principle for leftists. We see what the country, society, what is the space to organize for workers for popular classes? And it’s undeniable that since the fall of the regime, this space has increased massively. And this is, again, a victory for anyone thinking in gaining interest for the popular classes, working classes. Moreover, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is still unable, because of the lack of human capacities and military capacities, to completely and fully dominate the country, which is a chance again for the Syrian popular classes.

Does that mean it transformed automatically in the future democratic social society? No, it’s a race now. It’s basically a race between the ability of the Syrian popular classes, working classes to organize democratically, socially, et cetera. And on the other side, a clear, I think, willingness that has been proven for me since day one nearly or the day after the fall of the regime, that HTS is seeking to consolidate its power. The first government, transitional government they established was from one color, all the same ministers from Idlib establishment of a new army only with their members. Now they want to integrate people from the Syrian National Army. And some of them are true criminals, Abu Amsha, and others that are known assassins, establishment of new security services by the right hand of Julani, Ahmad al-Sharaa, designation in various professional associations and trade unions of new leadership. For example, the Lawyers Association and the members opposed it and demanded free elections.

So there’s a clear attempt, and also on other levels they have no legitimacy for the moment to decide on the future of the economic trajectory of the country. They already made various statements regarding this. And a clear neoliberal path, privatization of state assets, ports, airports, transport networks, et cetera. And wanting to put an end to various forms of subsidies, bread obviously, electricity, et cetera. Now I think what Ramah was saying is one of the key issues I will just add regarding transitional justice, it would be key also to struggle against sectarian tensions, I believe so, without transitional justice it will be very hard, as well as ethnic divisions within the country. And we’ve seen in the past few days and weeks militia campaigns by HTS in rural areas of Homs that have killed dozens of people. We’re seeing rising tension. Full transitional justice I think can be also tackled, but I think democratic and social rights will have to go together.

I’m very afraid that if there’s no economic improvement, because again, 90% of the population live under the poverty line, massive destructions. For a large section of the Syrians, obviously they’re happy because the regime is stopped, but their socioeconomic situation has not changed. So they still have to deal on a daily basis how they’re going to be able to live. And if we’re not able to improve their condition, they will not. It’s not because they’re unwilling, but they will not be able to participate to democratic debates or issues of citizenship, et cetera. And there’s a fear that we transform this issue in elitist discussions, issues of [inaudible 00:46:28] if we’re not able to bring them with socioeconomic issues. And here, I believe the role of trade unions, professional associations should be key, asking for free elections within it, starting to be active on its workplace, et cetera. So again, there are a lot of challenges, but as I started, I think, the discussion, the ability to think about these challenges, to live them is already a victory.

Ashley Smith:

So I want to end with one final question, which is really the theme of the entire podcast that we’re doing, which is called Solidarity Without Exception, with all democratic uprisings throughout the world. And one of the things that’s striking in a discussion about Syria is how much of the progressive left didn’t extend solidarity to the Syrian revolution, but did extend solidarity to the Palestinian liberation struggle. And really the question is why did that happen? And how should we think about solidarity globally, with the Ukrainian struggle for self-determination, with the Syrian struggle for the transformation of their society, with the struggle for Palestinian liberation and their relationship between one and another?

Ramah Kudaimi:

Yeah, I think I’ll start with saying that it also wasn’t necessarily a given that the left would be so in support of Palestinian liberation. I think that took decades of struggle as well. I think we all have been part of that struggle, and I think that’s just, unfortunately, being a leftist doesn’t mean that automatically you have the right politics. This is struggle that we’re having and organizing and needing to do. The importance of political education and organizing is important. And yes, of course it makes sense why particularly in the West leftists would be very clear about their solidarity with the Palestinian people since it is the Western countries, particularly the United States, arming the genocide for decades now.

But I think what continues to be so infuriating is why that somehow is seen as requiring then Western leftists to, say, shill for Putin or shill for the Assad regime when they were still in power. And also having to realize that imperialism, Islamophobia, the war on terror, these are not just Western projects at this point. These are projects of China, these are projects of Russia, these are projects of the regional powers across the globe. And it’s so important that we, again, as I was saying earlier, it’s not just like, “Here are the three leftist positions,” no, we have principles as leftists and then we understand how we look at a situation based on our principles and our values and then decide this is what it means to be in solidarity with the oppressed people.

And I think we’ve seen, similar to how liberals spent 2024 telling us we have to throw Palestinians under the bus in order to ensure that the greater fight against the right wing prevails, i.e. we have to support the Democrats in order for Trump to be defeated, I think leftists have had that positions towards Syrians for years now in terms of the greater fight is anti-imperialist fight. Assad somehow falls in that and so that is why the Syrian people need to just be sacrificed. And what we’ve learned is allowing genocide and massive war crimes to continue actually just leads to fascism and right-wing politics, whether it’s in Syria or US support for Israel.

And I think we have to really push ourselves as leftists this idea that just whataboutism is not a politic. Calling out liberal hypocrisy is not politics. We are losing as leftists, to be very real. And seeing, like it hasn’t even been two weeks of Trump, and I’m like, “We are in trouble.” And one of the reasons we are in trouble is because a large part, again, of the left has just failed at understanding what our project should be and putting out a vision of what our project is meant that is not just like in of itself a hypocritical vision, just like what liberals have done with conservatives and the right wing. I think in this moment I think there’s a lot that we can, again, be inspired by the Syrian people. And for us it’s like, “What can we do at this moment?” We still have an opportunity to change the way we interact with the Syrian revolution. And so things like demanding the lifting of sanctions is going to be very important.

So how are we pushing that the sanctions gets lifted? And how are we doing more grassroots support and donating as the grassroots left across the globe so that these institutions in Syria who are trying to rebuild are not only dependent on the neoliberal capitalist world system that we are, obviously. And then the misinformation and the disinformation, the propaganda we need to continue to watch for it and continue to trust the people of Syria. We’ve seen Syrians over and over again uprise when they need it, whether it’s from the regime. Syrians who were living under HTS in Idlib had no problem going out and making demands of HTS.

So I think that’s a reality we can’t just succumb to of just like, “Well, now this reactionary force is in power, then that’s it, it’s all over.” No. Trust the people. And again, because for those of us in the US, the arms embargo demand around Israel continues to be top, not only obviously for Palestinian liberation, but we saw what Israel did immediately after the fall of the regime, go in, take more land, destroy all the planes and all these things that they somehow did not do while Assad was in power. And now all of a sudden take out all the military assets of the state. So I think that continues to be another important demand, and why we cannot separate our solidarity with Palestine from the solidarity of everyone else in the region.

Joseph Daher:

Yeah, it’s great, Ramah, because I always want to start where she finishes. It’s amazing. No, regarding the direct demand based Ramah in the US, you in the US, me in Europe is we can see direct links between the solidarity campaigns with Palestine and Syria. First of all, oppose Western imperialism and especially regarding sanctions. I was opposed against the general sectoral sanctions on Syria prior to the fall of the regime, based on the fact that these sanctions were hitting massively the same population and impoverishing them partially. And I’m opposed also today because it’s definitely a political card used by Western imperialists, especially the US, to pressure any kind of government. Today it’s HTS, hopefully tomorrow it’s not anymore. Maybe a bit afterwards. But it’s a card of pressure. And this is unacceptable. Goes against the interest of Syrian population.

Just as the genocide was allowed and permitted and supported by Western imperialism, just as the war in Lebanon and expansion, occupation and destruction of Syrian statement and military capacities by Israel. So all of this, we can see the common demands, I mean, regarding Israel as genocide, continuous occupation, et cetera. And I think more broadly, our work is also because the significance of campism is also the inability to project a political alternative built on socialism from below. The ability of the people to change radically a political situation, a political framework from mass participation from below.

This idea came back at the beginning of the uprisings in the MENA region after Tunis, Egypt. It was lost partially because of the counter revolutions. And I think it’s also something that throughout the world, this ability to change from below a political framework has been lost partially. And we have to rebuild this issue of socialism from below, internationalism that runs against a view by campism, that because change from below is not possible, we will basically put our politics in geopolitical dynamics, and we hope that the enemy of my enemy is partially kind of my friend. So basically the Russia, China as opposed to the US, therefore maybe we could find an opportunity to improve our own situation, regardless of the fact that these regimes are authoritarian, neoliberal, patriarchal, et cetera.

And it’s putting also false hopes in these kinds of… It’s wrong hopes, wrong strategy, completely, to believe that these regimes that have very good relation, by the way, with Israel, that they not challenge the capitalist system, they just want a bigger part in it. And similarly with the so-called axis of resistance, how can we trust regimes or political parties that oppose their own popular classes, that repress them, that participate in a system of oppression? So again, I think the key issue is bringing back this issue of socialism from below, internationalism and that basically our destinies are connected. The liberation of Palestine is connected to the liberation of the popular classes of the Middle East and North Africa, and of the support, the international support, internationalist support of leftist popular classes against the complicity of their own state in a genocide and an apartheid state. And this is what we have to work with, to believe once again that our destinies are linked regardless of the borders and knowing the different situation. But really, it’s through internationalism, socialism from below that we believe that we can liberate Palestine and the further region internationally.

Ashley Smith:

Thanks to both Joseph and Ramah for that eye-opening discussion of Syria’s revolutionary process. Clearly a new day has dawned in Syria, one that offers hope for a truly democratic transition, but also challenges posed by Islamic fundamentalists in power as well as regional and imperialist powers. Stay tuned for our next episode on Solidarity Without Exception, hosted by Blanca Missé, where she will discuss Puerto Rico’s ongoing struggle for national self-determination and its class struggle against the island’s elite, with state senator and activist, Rafael Bernabe. To hear about upcoming episodes, sign up on the Real News Network newsletter.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Ashley Smith and Blanca Missé.