The New Worker
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st July 2015
TERRORISM recognises no borders and the spread of terrorism cannot be eliminated by warplanes alone. This is a fact known by everyone apart from those in the West who encourage terrorists when they serve the interests of imperialism and then try to constrain them with air power when they bite the hand that feeds them.
Sectarian militias that the imperialists had armed and funded to bring down the Syrian government are now fighting each other while rival militias battle for control of Libya’s devastated cities and towns. Meanwhile the Islamic State (ISIS), a sectarian force largely of imperialist creation, which has taken over swathes of territory in Iraq including some of the oil fields, can now pursue its own sectarian agenda without the need for American money. And that agenda includes spreading its “Caliphate” into Turkey with guns and bombs.
American jets are bombing ISIS positions to drive them out of the Iraqi oil-fields they seized last year and to create “safe-havens” in Syria for their more venal Arab puppets fighting to bring down the Assad government in Damascus. Now Turkey, once a willing tool of Nato in feeding the flames of civil war in Syria, has sent its own jets into the fray against ISIS while using the opportunity to take out Kurdish militia positions in Syria.
When the reactionary, sectarian Muslim movements launched their terror campaign in Syria they were covertly armed and financed by Nato and the feudal Arab oil princes who want to bring down the popular front government in Damascus. Then ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida gunmen were all “freedom fighters” and part of the “Arab Spring” that we were told was heralding a new dawn throughout the Arab world.
Now ISIS is branded as “terrorist” — not because they’ve changed their brutal tactics but simply because their ambitions now threaten the very imperialists interests they were originally set up to protect.
Imperialist intervention began in Libya, once one of the most prosperous countries in Africa and the Arab world. Posing as friends of the Libyan people the imperialists provided Nato air-cover for Libyan reactionaries in their pay to overthrow the Gaddafi government.
The Anglo-French assault on Libya in 2011, supported by US imperialism, was egged on by the “human rights” gang who claimed that Nato bombing would lead to a new, “free” Libya. In fact it has plunged the country into anarchy and destitution.
Syria’s turn came next. The Americans hoped to build a reactionary Sunni Muslim front to bring down the Assad government and confront Iran and anyone else who challenged the interests of the big oil corporations. But their plans have come unstuck as the House of Saud wages a proxy war with the upstart Qatari royal family for control of the Sunni community across the Arab world.
American pundits these days compare the turmoil in the Arab world to the Thirty Years’ War that devastated Europe in the 17th century. That war certainly began as a sectarian slaughter between the petty Catholic and Protestant states of Germany. But the reason it went on for so long is because it rapidly developed into a struggle between the great powers of Europe for control of the continent.
If US-led imperialism really wanted a genuine “Arab Spring” they could have started by recognising the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs to return to their own homes and establish an independent Palestinian state. If the Americans really believed in “human rights” they would have ceased to prop up the barbarous Saudi kingdom and the thrones of the other oil princes they protect. And if the imperialists really want peace in the Arab world they would end their armed interventions, close down their bases and let the Arabs choose their own leaders and their own social systems without outside intervention.
They don’t and they won’t. In fact all the sectarian bloodshed is down to US imperialism that seeks to maintain its control of the Arabs’ vast oil fields through feudal Arab princes and America’s regional allies, Israel and Turkey.
That’s why we must stand by Syria, the Palestinians and all the progressive Arab forces fighting for genuine independence and freedom.