Self-determination, free from outside intervention, for the Syrian people!

Scan page 12

the undeniable fact that most of the popular Syrian fighting forces had rejected an imperialist-imposed solution. This component of the opposition was based on disparate units of the former Assad army that had refused his orders to slaughter the opposition’s initial mass protests, and the numerous and still present Lo­ cal Coordinating Committees, which aim to organize community defense organizations and provide vital social services to the country’s massively destroyed infrastructure.

However, recent gains by Assad’s army, bolstered by Hezbollah fighting units from Lebanon, have strength­ ened the impulse among some desperate rebel sectors to call on the Obama administration to provide them with a massive amount of arms to defeat Assad’s tyr­ anny. This is a mistaken tactic on their part. History has repeatedly demonstrated that imperialist arms never come without fatal strings attached. The Iraqi, Afghani, and Libyan people have learned this lesson all too well. Imperialist intervention produced nothing less than compliant U.S. puppet regimes, exploited to the hilt by their new masters.

In the meantime, the ideological character of the armed struggle has significantly changed due to the strengthened role within it of Islamist fundamental­ ist groups, many of whom have the vision of impos­ ing a reactionary clerical regime on Syria and isolat­ ing the country’s non-Sunni population. Concerns have mounted in Washington regarding the fact that the shipments of arms that its Persian Gulf allies are making to the rebels—which have recently included anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons—mainly favor Islamist-oriented units. The disruptive dangers of a heightened radical Sunni-Hezbollah conflict on its border, including possible intervention by Iranian troops, are of particular concern to Israel.

The Islamist presence, along with the gains by the Assad-Hezbollah military alliance, are major factors that have contributed to the recent declaration by the Obama administration that it would more openly and directly supply arms to sectors of the Syrian opposi­ tion. Obama announced the shift in tactics on the eve