What Is Happening in Syria?

Syria is a country of some 24 million people located in the heart of the Middle East, between Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel/Palestine. This is where some of the first human civilizations developed thousands of years ago. 

On Wednesday, November 27, the Sunni Islamic fundamentalist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, along with the Syrian National Army (SNA) backed by Turkey, launched an armed uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which has ruled Syria for the last 24 years.

These forces first seized Aleppo in northwest Syria, the country’s second largest city, and then moved rapidly south, first taking the important cities of Hama then Homs. By the weekend of December 7-8, Hay'at and the SNA had stormed Damascus, Syria’s capital and overthrown the Assad regime. Hay'at’s stated goal is the creation of a regime based on “Islamic principles.”

Events continue to move quickly. As news of this uprising has spread, other forces opposed to the Assad regime have also risen up in different parts of the country. Regional and global powers are maneuvering to advance their interests in this turbulent situation and it is far from clear what tomorrow’s Syria will look like.

One thing is clear: the Syrian people continue to suffer terribly, including the 370,000 ordinary Syrians who have been forced from their homes by this latest battle, and none of the forces now determining events in Syria will end that and bring liberation. 

Why Is This Happening? 

The most fundamental cause of this uprising is imperialism’s long domination of Syria and its brutal oppression of the Syrian people. In the early 1900s, following World War I, the colonialist-imperialist powers Britain and France took control of the Middle East and divided it up between themselves, with France ruling Syria. Since then, Syria has been ruled by a series of murderous, oppressive dictatorships—like Assad’s—backed, or bullied, by various imperialist and reactionary powers, including the U.S. and Israel. In recent decades, Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, a suffocating Islamic fundamentalist theocracy, have been major forces in Syria.

These rival imperialist and regional powers have been battling over Syria for decades as part of their struggle to dominate the Middle East, a region with vast petroleum reserves and lucrative trade routes, located at the key military-strategic crossroads between Asia, Europe and Africa. In 2011, the Syrian people righteously rose up against the Assad regime, but this uprising was quickly turned into a proxy war between these rival global and regional powers, a proxy war which has never fully ended.

The Syrian people have suffered horribly as a result of imperialism’s domination, Assad’s rule, and the horror of the Syrian civil war. For instance, as of 2023, more than 5.4 million Syrians were living as refugees abroad, and more than 6.9 million are displaced inside Syria. Over 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line, nearly 17 million need humanitarian assistance, and most are food insecure—they aren’t sure where their next meal will come from.

Who Are the Forces Involved in Syria Today?

The rapid advance of the anti-Assad forces has caught the world by surprise and events in Syria are unfolding at warp speed. All the various forces involved in Syria are quickly calculating and maneuvering to advance their interests in this rapidly shifting situation.

Opposition forces in Syria. There are many Sunni Islamic fundamentalist and jihadist groups operating in Syria, such as Hay'at, as well as the Islamic State (ISIS). These are reactionary and sometimes competing forces which have been backed by different imperialist and regional powers in order to weaken or overthrow the Assad regime. There are also Kurdish nationalist forces aligned with the U.S., as well as secular and democratic forces and individuals in Syria.

Turkey. Turkey’s fascist rulers are backing their own Islamic fundamentalist group in Syria, the Syrian National Army. Turkey aims to increase its leverage in Syria and its power in the region, return Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey during the 2011-2024 civil war back to Syria, and to weaken or destroy Kurdish forces within Syria. Turkey supported the Hay'at-SNA uprising against Assad.

Russia and Iran. They have been supporting the Assad regime, Russia for a foothold in the Middle East, Iran because Syria is a bridge to its close ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. (Hezbollah is an armed militia and political force based among the Shi’a Muslim population of Lebanon, which was formed in the early 1980s with Iran’s assistance. It has been an important military ally for Iran against Israel.)

During the 2011-2024 civil war, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah ruthlessly bombed and battled the regime’s opponents. Their actions contributed greatly to the death toll of between 300,000 and 500,000 Syrians!  

On the eve of Assad’s overthrow, both Russia and Iran signaled that they were not going to mount a major military effort to save his regime. (Both countries withdrew at least some, if not most, of their personnel from Syria over the past week.) It appears that the strains of its proxy war with the U.S. in Ukraine have limited Russia’s ability to play as prominent a role in Syria as they have over the past decade. The same may be true of Iran and Hezbollah, who have both have been seriously weakened by Israel’s U.S.-backed war in Lebanon and its attacks on Iran. 

Israel and the U.S. Israel’s all-out war against Hezbollah and attacks on Iran—as well as attacks on Hezbollah and Iranian forces inside Syria—seriously weakened the Assad regime and its backers. This helped create an opening for the Islamic fundamentalist insurgency. In addition to stationing a small number of U.S. troops inside Syria to back up Kurdish forces and combat ISIS in northeast Syria, the U.S. has been maneuvering behind the scenes to get Assad to abandon Russia and Iran and join forces with it and its allies. Exactly how the U.S. and Israel will react to Assad’s overthrow is unclear. What is certain is that they will be seeking ways to deepen their domination of the Middle East and weaken their imperialist rival Russia and their regional rival Iran. 

Where Do the People’s Interests Lie?

The people’s interests do not lie in supporting any of the dominant forces in Syria—certainly not the U.S. and Israel, or the Assad regime and its Iranian and Russian backers, or the forces who have now overthrown the Assad regime, in particular the Islamic fundamentalist forces. None represent a liberating alternative to the horrors of the Assad regime. 

One of the key dynamics to understanding the situation in the region and internationally is what the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) has characterized as "the dynamic between imperialist powers and the Islamic fundamentalist forces" which he calls "two historically outmodeds":

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these "outmodeds," you end up strengthening both.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these "historically outmodeds" has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the U.S. imperialists."

• Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:28

Right now, this dynamic is interpenetrating with what Bob Avakian has also analyzed about the grave danger of a wider regional war. The maneuvers and driving imperatives of the imperialist and reactionary powers are intensifying the danger of this now—especially with the U.S. and Israel's aggressive moves in the region:

@BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #99: “While denouncing 'terrorists,' the rulers of this country openly support terrorism.”

Now this support for Israel in carrying out wanton slaughter has been extended to involve Lebanon and other countries and people in the Middle East—including Iran. This is heightening the danger of a wider and even more destructive war.

And let there be no doubt or confusion about this: The responsibility for the serious escalation of military conflict in the Middle East, and whatever results from this, lies with Israel—and the U.S. government, which continues to fully back Israel. 

What more do you need to know, to say this whole damn system’s got to go?!

Going Forward, Stay Alert to Developments 

The hated Assad regime has now been overthrown, and Islamic fundamentalist forces seem, for now, to have taken over much of Syria. However, events in Syria continue to be very fluid. Different forces, including regional and global powers, are continuing to maneuver and intervene in one way or another, and the region and world overall are in great turmoil. This brings both grave dangers and real openings for emancipating revolutions. So stay turned to @BobAvakianOfficial on social media, the website revcom.us, and The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube.