A bloody road to Damascus

A huge propaganda campaign is demonising the Syrian government at the behest of Western interests, writes James Petras*

There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria is in fact a violent power-grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and the Gulf states and in the mass media about the "killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting against injustice" is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizures of neighbourhoods, villages and towns by armed bands brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. However, due to a lack of domestic support to be successful direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason, a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonise the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime in Syria and strengthen Western imperialist control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US, and in the long run it will eliminate another independent, secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

SERIAL AGGRESSION: The current Western campaign against the independent Al-Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperialist-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta's seizure of power and its campaign to jail over 10,000 pro- democracy protesters.

Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf dictators crushed the uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya, where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries, thereby destroying Libya's economy and civil society. The unleashing of these armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside.

The NATO powers eliminated the secular regime of former Libyan leader colonel Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. NATO oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gaddafi supporters and government workers. It backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry, as well as sub-Saharan African immigrant workers -- groups that had benefited from Muammar Gaddafi's generous social programmes.

This imperialist policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as the model for Syria: creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf mercenaries.

FROM DAMASCUS TO TEHRAN: According to the US state department, "the road to Tehran passes through Damascus". Thus, the strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran's principal ally in the Middle East. For the Gulf absolutist monarchies, the goal is to replace a secular republic with a theocratic dictatorship. For the Turkish government, the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara's version of Islamist capitalism. For Al-Qaeda and Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists, a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world. For Israel, a blood-drenched and divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony.

It was not without foresight that the Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the attacks of 11 September, 2001, that "first we must go after Iran, Iraq and Syria" before considering the actual authors of the deeds.

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A bloody road to Damascus