Syria:
Massacres and Embargo

Mar 17, 2025

This article is translated from the March 14 issue #2954 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.

Nearly 1,000 civilians and 500 armed militants were killed on March 6 and 7 in the predominantly Alawite area in western Syria. This comes three months after the overthrow of Syria’s president and dictator Bashar al-Assad by a coalition of militias led by former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa, known as al-Golani. These massacres were perpetrated by the most brutal Islamist militias allied with al-Sharaa. They carried out manhunts on ethnic and religious grounds. Al-Sharaa’s militias came to crush a military rebellion organized by officers of al-Assad’s ousted regime, al-Assad being an Alawite.

Al-Sharaa traded his jihadist uniform for a suit and tie when he took power. He has repeatedly called for the inclusion of all Syrian communities and for respect of all minorities in order to end the civil war. But the troops with whom he seized power are no less than before brutes who massacred people and sowed terror for years.

Faced with the outcry over the massacre, al-Sharaa denounced “abuses against civilians” and appointed a national commission of inquiry that is allegedly supposed to “bring the culprits to justice.” This won’t reassure the threatened Alawite population. Nor will it reassure women and other people who fear the new regime will become a fundamentalist religious dictatorship. Al-Sharaa might be a warlord who imposed himself on others. But his power and his room for maneuver are limited. Syria is bled dry, starved, and destroyed by 13 years of civil war. Syria also remains the arena of rivalries between regional powers and imperialist countries.

In the south, Druze militias refuse to disarm or merge into the new Syrian army. Israel is manipulating them as well as repeatedly bombing and sending ground forces under the pretext of protecting them. In the northwest, Syrian National Army militias which are armed by Turkey continue to wage war against the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), attempting to regain control of a number of towns. The SDF “independently” administers northeast Syria but has been supported and armed until now by the U.S. On March 10, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement with al-Sharaa agreeing to merge the civilian and military institutions of Syrian Kurdistan with al-Sharaa’s regime by the end of the year. This agreement was signed under intense pressure mostly from the U.S. on the Kurds.

U.S. imperialist leaders like everyone else would like the new regime to demonstrate the ability to reunify and stabilize Syria. But imperialism has been fueling chaos and instability for decades. Recently, Trump’s decision to cut funding to USAID shut down all mine clearing operations in Syria and all health programs and water and food distribution, especially in Syrian refugee camps. This abrupt halt comes on top of the U.S. embargo which has continued despite al-Assad’s fall. This makes everyday life hell for the population. Lines in front of bakeries and clinics are growing longer throughout Syria. The shortage of vital goods feeds inflation and corruption. Millions of Syrians cannot leave the refugee camps because their homes are destroyed or they remain under threat.

Under al-Sharaa’s new power, which guarantees nothing, the population risks paying dearly for the years of maneuvers and war imposed by the great powers.