Vol. 80/No. 11 March 21, 2016
(front page)
Washington’s Syria deal with Moscow aims at securing interests of US rulers
The modern history of the Middle East is one of regimes and borders imposed by deals among the stronger capitalist powers — like the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement between the rulers of France and the United Kingdom that carved out today’s Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey. From weakness, U.S. imperialism today feels incapable of using its full military might and is driven to seek help from Moscow in an effort to achieve some stability in the region to protect its economic and political interests.
As part of the deal, Washington seeks to prevent the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — which opposes Assad and feels threatened by the changing situation in Syria as well as by the growing strength of Kurdish forces in both Syria and Iraq — from provoking new confrontations with Moscow.
Reuters reported March 6 that Washington has nearly completed construction of an airfield in Rmeilan in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria, and that another near Kobani on the Turkish border was being built. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis wouldn’t confirm the claim, saying, “That we have people there and that we have made deliveries there, and that they have to get there by some means should be no secret, but we are not going to comment on the means.”
The truce brokered by Moscow and Washington permits bombing of Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of al-Qaeda. Al-Nusra forces are spread throughout areas where more secular opposition forces, many aligned with the U.S., Saudi or Turkish government, are located. Assad and Moscow use this to target these forces, which grew out of widespread popular mobilizations against the regime in 2011.
One result of the reduction in bombings in a number of cities, especially where Assad’s troops have been driven out, was residents took advantage of the political space provided by the temporary lull to organize street demonstrations demanding his ouster.
The pause also allowed Washington to step up bombing and plans for wider attacks against Islamic State-allied forces elsewhere. Reuters reported March 8 that U.S. aircraft and unmanned drones carried out an airstrike in Somalia that killed more than 150 people who Washington said were with al-Shabaab, an Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda.
The same day the Pentagon proposed a campaign of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Libya, the New York Times reported. As its positions in Syria and Iraq have weakened, IS has shifted some forces to Libya, where there is no national government.
Social crisis for refugees
The truce hasn’t staunched the flow of refugees from the five-year war, which has displaced more than half the country’s 22 million people and killed nearly half a million. More than 135,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in the first two months of this year, following more than 1 million last year, 80 percent of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many sought to enter EU countries from Turkey, where there are still more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees.
The exodus has created a social crisis for the refugees. Tens of thousands are trapped in Greece, attempting to move on to Germany and other more prosperous countries.
It has also created a political crisis among Europe’s capitalist governments and within their European Union. Regimes that claim to yearn for an “ever closer union” find themselves building fences on their borders, railing against neighboring rulers who they accuse of letting refugees cross over, and threatening nationalist reprisals.
Capitalist leaders in Europe are trying to bribe and bully Ankara into a deal in which EU countries will return migrants to Turkey, even though such “pushbacks” — sending asylum seekers to the country they came from without processing their application — are banned by the EU.
Ankara demands the deal include a provision that for every Syrian returned to Turkey the EU will accept a different Syrian refugee. Ankara also demands steps toward its long-denied entry into the EU and expedited visas for Turks seeking to work in Europe.
Erdogan seeks to take advantage of the European crisis to tell the rulers there to back off from criticism of his brutal attacks on democratic rights on Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
On March 4 Turkish authorities seized Zaman, the most widely circulated paper in the country, whose owner is an opponent of Erdogan. When employees and supporters locked themselves inside the paper’s Istanbul office building that day, police used tear gas and water cannons to force their way in.
Similarly, capitalist rulers in Europe are blackmailing Athens to warehouse migrants, offering to slightly ease the draconian cuts in social spending they demand the Greek government make in order to qualify for “debt relief” from its yearslong economic crisis.
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