Seven truths about the conflict in Syria

With the best of intentions and the utmost innocence, many Brazilians with progressive views have been misled by the distorted information about the situation in Syria that reaches us through pro-imperialist media. Added to this is the delusional stance of certain far-left groups who, in that conflict, take sides with the United States, NATO, and the psychopathic terrorists of the Islamic State, uncritically spreading the versions of the Empire's propagandists on social media. A controversy has arisen in sectors of the Brazilian left based on a false question: to support or not to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

In this regard, it is important, first and foremost, to deconstruct the Manichean fraud conveyed by the media, which reduces an extremely complex conflict to a video game where, on one side, are the "rebels" of good, accompanied by the defenseless civilians who support them, and on the other, the butchers of the Syrian government, with their heartless Russians.

In short, some points need to be clear in order to correctly understand what is happening in Syria.

1. There is no such thing as a "Syrian revolution." If, at the beginning, in 2011, there were political forces genuinely interested in democratizing the country, they have long since disappeared from the scene, swallowed up by what is in reality an ethno-religious, conservative rebellion of a fundamentalist Islamic character.

2. The US and its Arab allies (primarily Qatar and Saudi Arabia) are largely to blame for arming, financing, and training the fundamentalist fighters, who were used as cannon fodder in Washington's plan (formulated some years earlier) to get rid of Assad, the last remnant of the old wave of nationalist Arab rulers, such as Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

3. The Assad regime is indeed a dictatorship (in a region where one has to search with a magnifying glass to find, here and there, some shred of democracy), but it is a secular regime, tolerant of the country's ethnic and religious diversity, a defender of women's rights, and independent from a geopolitical standpoint. Its survival, in the current context, is the only guarantee of maintaining Syria's political and territorial integrity in the face of the imperialist strategy of imploding and fragmenting, whenever possible, nation-states with the potential to oppose US hegemony, in any region of the world. This is what they have already done in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya.

4. A large portion of the Syrian population (perhaps the majority) is on Assad's side, certainly not because they love this ruler, but because the defeat of the Islamic fanatics is the only way to end the carnage and chaos, restoring a minimum of peace.

5. Russia has played and continues to play a positive role in the conflict, preventing – at least this time – the United States from directly using military force to impose its will in the Middle East. The US defeat in Syria favors the prospect of a multipolar world, with more room for projects of human emancipation than for a US empire.

6. The vast majority of anti-Assad fighters are linked to terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State – groups incompatible with universally accepted values ​​of civilization, which include not only democracy and human rights, but also the preservation of historical and cultural heritage. Those who support the "Syrian rebels" (many of whom are not even Syrian) also endorse the destruction of, among other things, the architectural monuments of Palmyra, a treasure of humanity.

7. The claims that the Syrian army is massacring civilians in "rebel"-controlled areas, committing genocide and mass rape, are demonstrably false and are part of a pro-imperialist media campaign to delegitimize any agreement that includes Assad's continued rule (even if general elections are held) and to support a military intervention by NATO and the most reactionary Arab regimes. This would further aggravate the conflict and destroy Syria once and for all, making the humanitarian tragedy infinitely more serious.