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To begin with, the model Syrian uprising → Islamist militias → ISIS is false. It is true that after five years of unconscionable slaughter and abandonment, Syrian opposition politics has come to be dominated by a form of Sunni Islamo-nationalism. The softer form of this trend is found in parts of the (still extant) Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades, its hard sectarian Jihadi variant in Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the former Al-Qa’ida affiliate known previously as Jabhat Al-Nusra) with Ahrar al-Sham, the main militia in Northern Syria, occupying a continuum in between. This trend is, to say the least, deeply worrying for the future of any revival of the hopes of the Syrian revolution[*]. Besieged and bombed by not one but two imperial powers; assassinated by militias largely recruited from the non-Sunni minorities; abandoned and slandered by the external Left for their inconvenient uprising against a self-proclaimed ‘resistance’ regime – in this context the turn towards Sunni identity politics amongst the Syrian populace is a tragedy. It is not a surprise.
ISIS is not, however, the inevitable outcome of that politics. The organisation’s exterminationist Sunni chauvinism against religious minorities, such as the Alawites from whom the core of the Syrian Ba’athist security apparatus are drawn, is undeniable. But in word, thought and deed ISIS has always considered its foremost enemy ‘apostasy’ (the revolution, the FSA and the anti-Assad opposition more generally) rather than ‘unbelief’ (the Assad regime).
full: http://salvage.zone/in-print/disaster-islamism/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
