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I don't necessarily agree with all of Joseph Daher's formulations - in
particular, he tends to push too many different kinds of groups together
as "reactionary Islamists", barely distinguishing Daesh from Nusra, and
even worse, barely distinguishing Nusra from mainstream Islamists. That
said, however, he has assembled the real evidence here for the fact that
the Syrian refugee crisis has been overwhelmingly created by Assad, not
by Daesh as the entirety of the imperialist media and imperialist
politicians (and their leftist echo) are telling us.
MK
The Islamic State, or the main reason for the millions of refugees from
Syria?
Posted on September 9, 2015
https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/the-islamic-state-or-the-main-reason-for-the-millions-of-refugees-from-syria/
The vast majority of television programs, articles and so called experts
talking about millions of refugees from Syria have the same discourse:
the problem is the Islamic State (IS). Some even say that we should
coordinate with the Assad regime and its allies Russia and the Islamic
Republic of Iran to resolve and end the problem of the IS and therefore
refugees. Without being surprised by these statements, I’m still a
little disillusioned.
To be clear, the IS is an ultra reactionary and barbaric organization,
killing and terrorizing whole populations of all religions and
ethnicities. This ultra reactionary organization forced into exile
hundreds of thousands of people, and probably even more than one
million, between Iraq and Syria [1]. This movement must be fought
relentlessly, like other religious fundamentalist organizations of the
region such as Al Qaeda and other jihadist and Salafist forces backed by
Gulf monarchies or private networks of these countries, but before
reaching the solution against such organizations, I would like to simply
remind some facts about the reasons for the exile of millions of people
from Syria.
Firstly, the establishment of the IS in Syria was in Autumn 2013 and
already before that millions of Syrians were displaced outside and
inside the country.
On September 3, 2013, the UNHCR declared that the number of Syrians
forced to flee as refugees in foreign countries since the beginning of
the popular uprising in Syria in March 2011 had exceeded the threshold
of two millions. This meant an average of about 5000 Syrians fleeing on
daily basis to neighboring countries. Over 97% of Syrian refugees were
hosted in countries located in the surrounding area. In addition, some
4.25 million people were displaced within Syria, according to statistics
dating from August 27, 2013 published by the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Taken together, these figures
totaled more than six million displaced people.
The reasons that prompted millions of people to flee their homes were
the Assad regime that killed, bombarded and repressed large parts of the
Syrian population who had risen against its tyranny and barbarism. Here
are some examples.
In October 2012, the entire Al Masaa Arbaeen’s neighborhood in the city
of Hama, whose inhabitants were seen as favorable to the opposition of
the Damascus regime, was destroyed. 3256 buildings in total were
completely destroyed.
In May 2013, the historic pedestrian bridge over the Euphrates in the
city of Deir Zor was bombed by the Syrian regime. It allowed to access
the city of Hasakeh. Its destruction deprived of access tens of
thousands of people.
In July 2013, in the city of Homs, called the capital of the revolution
at the beginning of the uprising, in which some 900,000 people were
living at the beginning of 2011, 60-70% of Khaldiyé district was
destroyed, most the houses were uninhabitable, the neighborhoods of Old
Homs were in ruin and destruction of the besieged neighborhoods of Homs
was done in a systematic way, according to the Syrian Observatory of
Human Rights. The city was under siege and bombardment of the regime’s
forces since February 2012.
From the end of summer 2012, the regime began to bomb certain
neighborhoods of Aleppo.
The Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus has suffered a hard
and strict siege imposed from summer 2013, with the prohibition of
movement of persons and foodstuffs, to the neighborhoods that joined the
uprising South of Damascus, by the Assad regime and Palestinians
organizations linked to the latter, in particular the Popular Front of
the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), controlled by
Ahmad Jibril. There is currently between 15 000 and 20 000 people in the
camp, before 2011, Yarmouk had a total population of 250,000 people.
This is not to mention the massive use of rape by the security forces
and militias of the regime against the female opponents and civilians
and others or the chemical attacks of the regime against some regions
such as in the countryside of Damascus region, Ghouta, in August 2013.
But what about after the establishment of the IS in October 2013 in
Syria? Was this still the case? Yes absolutely, let’s look at the facts
for the first six months of 2015. The helicopters of the Assad regime
dropped 10.423 barrels bombs on various regions of the country, while
the regime forces killed almost 90% of the total civilians dead over the
same period, seven times more than the IS.
In March 2015, human rights defense NGOs investigated the terrible
atrocities of the regime: almost 13,000 Syrians have died under torture
in its jails since the beginning of the uprising. Tens of thousands more
are still languishing in the regime’s prisons, and many are missing.
In May 2015, around hundred people, mostly civilians, were killed in a
raid of the Syrian military aviation on a market in the city of Douma.
Barbarism has many faces in Syria and that of the Assad regime is the
worst. The Assad regime and its allies (Iran, Russia and Hezbollah) are
responsible in its vast majority of the more than 200 000 people killed
in Syria and of the around 10 million of external and internal refugees
since the uprising began in March 2011.
Conclusion
So what is the solution? The solution does not lie in the collaboration
with authoritarian regimes like the Assad regime. The solution is of
course to oppose the IS and other reactionary and jihadists forces,
which as a reminder the Assad regime has encouraged their developments
at the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria while killing and
repressing democratic and progressive forces, but also and especially
the barbaric, criminal and authoritarian regime of Assad. The Assad
regime is the main responsible of the disaster in Syria and of the exile
of millions of Syrians. Both actors are barbaric and they feed
themselves and are therefore to be overthrown to hope to build a
democratic, secular and social society in Syria and elsewhere.
This requires the support of democratic and popular movements that
oppose these two counter revolutionary forces and different forms of
imperialism (United States and Russia) and sub-regional imperialisms
(Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey) that are all fighting against
the interests of the people in struggle in the region. These activists
still exist in Syria struggling every day, despite all the difficulties,
against the Assad regime and the Islamic fundamentalist forces (2). For
example, let’s also consider the case of Iraq, the country in which the
IS originated. In recent weeks a popular movement developed and
expanded, which challenged the regime in Baghdad, backed by Iran. These
massive demonstrations called for a secular state in opposition to a
sectarian state, against the division between Sunni and Shi’a
populations, for women’s rights and equality, and clear condemnations of
sectarian political parties. The demonstrators also accused the
sectarian Iraqi regime to be partly responsible by its policies for the
development of the IS as we could read on some placards saying “the
parliament and the Islamic State are two sides of the same coin” and
“Daech was born out of your corruption”.
Beyond the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, we do not
forget the negative role of the imperialist Western states in this
situation. The racist and security policies of the European Union (EU)
on migration are also responsible for the daily dramas of refugees on
the roads, land and sea, to Europe. The policies of the border closure
pushed hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and misery to use
illegal and dangerous means to try to reach European countries. Just as
we need to condemn the imperialist policies of the EU and the war caused
by this latter responsible of political and economic problems that are
also the sources of displacement of populations and therefore of
creating more refugees.
It is with this understanding that we can get out of the nightmare of
dictatorships and fundamentalisms of all kinds and especially enable
millions of people to have a dignified and free life.
Joseph Daher
[1] See articles on this blog that has always condemned the Islamic
State or other religious fundamentalist organizations in the region.
2) See many articles and posts on this blog that show this popular
resistance.
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