Assad regime with pro- intervention ‘rebels’ or defecting Assad loyalists

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In early August, the battle for Aleppo still raged be­ tween government and opposition forces, with each side taking, losing, and retaking neighborhoods. The heavily outgunned rebels—and the city’s civilian pop­ ulation—faced murderous attacks by regime helicop­ ters, tanks, and artillery.

Aleppo is Syria’s biggest city and its most important economically. As such it is home of the largest segment of the country’s predominantly Sunni bourgeoisie— President Bashar al-Assad’s main social base of sup­ port—as well as of the country’s working class.

Many observers on all sides of the conflict predicted that the battle for Aleppo, coming right after unprec­ edented fighting in the country’s capital, Damascus, could represent a turning point heralding Assad’s downfall. Or it could instead be the opening salvo in a new, much more bloody phase of the fighting, one perhaps that would eventually rival in scale the 1982 massacre in Hama of tens of thousands by Assad’s fa­ ther.

In either case, antiwar and solidarity activists in the U.S. and other imperialist countries must be keenly aware of the heightened danger of intervention, as Washington and its allies try to take advantage of these events, and we must step up organizing efforts against such moves: U.S./NATO, hands off Syria!

The battle of Aleppo followed hard on the heels of a shorter but tremendously symbolic fight over neigh­ borhoods in the country’s capital, Damascus. Follow­ ing the assassination of several key regime figures in a bombing attack, opposition forces launched their first major attacks in the capital. When it became clear that Assad would obliterate the people and buildings of any rebel-held neighborhoods, opposition forces beat a tactical retreat. Still, the combination of the bomb­ ing and the street battles had an impact roughly akin to the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Vietnamese forces suffered massive casualties but won a huge psycho­ logical victory by proving they could strike anywhere against U.S. forces, even in Saigon.

The psychological blow suffered by the Assad regime in Damascus likely explains the apparent willingness of the rebels to stand their ground in Aleppo, a stance made easier by the difficulty the regime has had find­ ing forces to fight there without seriously depleting its troops in the rest of the country.

One area lost to the regime and of particular concern to it is that along the border with Turkey. The regime’s defeat there has imperialists licking their chops at the prospect of setting up a “no-go” zone for regime forc­ es and facilitating transfer of arms and personnel to those parts of the opposition that have been working 12 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2012 with imperialist and Gulf states.

The New York Times reported: “The sec­ retary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking as though the Syrian insurgen­ cy’s momentum was now unstoppable, said its territorial gains might be lever­ aged into safe havens. ‘We have to work closely with the opposition, because more and more territory is being taken and it will, eventually, result in a safe haven inside Syria, which will then provide a base for further actions by the op­ position.”’

The U.S. has expressed reluctance to intervene di­ rectly with either air power or ground troops, or even to supply much in the way of arms to the rebels. So it’s possible the rebels will oust Assad before such a “safe haven” becomes a reality. The more likely and dan­ gerous possibility is the anointing by Washington of a post-Assad regime in meetings outside the country with pro-intervention leaders of the Syrian National Council, or perhaps also from its newly-created rival, the Council for the Syrian Revolution.

Those eager to ride to power on the strength of Wash­ ington’s blessings (if not from any actual participation in battle) will also have to contend with the possibility of a Yemen-style solution, i.e., the removal of the re­ gime’s top figure but the maintenance in power of the bulk of his regime. As the Battle of Aleppo advanced, U.S. officials made increasingly clear their desire for that type of solution. Claiming to have learned from their “mistakes” in Iraq in ousting the entire Baath from power rather than just Saddam Hussein, they ar­ gued that “stability” in a post-Assad Syria will require a strong state, including its military, which can only be provided by current regime figures.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leo Panetta told the media that “I think it’s important when Assad leaves, and he will leave, to try to preserve stability in that coun­ try. The best way to preserve that kind of stability is to maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government.”

In a similar vein, Foreign Policy magazine, reporting on months of talks between U.S. officials and SNC fig­ ures under the auspices of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP), noted that the project also “tried to identify re­ gime personnel who might be able to play an effective role in the immediate phase after Assad falls. “There’s a very clear understanding of the Syrians in this proj­ ect that a transition is not sweeping away of the entire political and judicial framework of Syria,” said USIP’s Steven Heydemann.

Meanwhile, perhaps in an effort to prepare public opinion for the maintenance in power of such thugs, Washington and its media allies have stepped up pro­ paganda about an alleged takeover of the opposition by “Islamists.”

A typical article was that in The New York Times on July 29 (“As Syrian War Drags On, Jihadists Take Big­ ger Role”). Yet the further one gets into the article the more one finds the authors, Neil MacFarquhar and