A sort of faceoff on this issue between Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada, on his Substack, and Joseph Daher, billed as a Swiss Syrian socialist, at The Tempest (seen by me on Counterpunch).
The Tempest did an interview with Daher that starts with this intro:
Some on the Left have claimed without foundation that their rebellion was orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel. Others have uncritically romanticized these rebel forces as rekindling the original popular revolution that nearly overthrew Assad’s regime in 2011. Neither captures the complex dynamics unfolding in Syria today.
And, this is why I see the "faceoff." Winstanley is the type of person being called out, but is it more by The Tempest or more by Daher personally?
That said, the differences start with something else. Daher, while saying that the main rebel force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, while not a walk in the park, has evolved since repudiating ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and focusing on Syrian nationalist issues. He notes it has promised to protect Druze and Ismailis. (That said, NPR yesterday talked about how many of the latter are already fleeing Syria.) He also said that since that 2016 separation, it has repressed people of al-Qaida and ISIS backgrounds.
Winstanley looks at such claims with a more gimlet eye, noting their current name is a "rebranding" since separating from al-Qaida, talking about pre-2016 atrocities in a post-2016 Syria:
Nor did such abuses stop with the rebranding to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Human Rights Watch says it has documented severe abuses by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the Idlib enclave it has controlled in recent years.
Sounds a bit different than Daher.
Winstanley adds that HTS leader al-Julani "has never been held to account."
Now, to the header. It's true that neither the US nor Israel has explicitly backed Turkey's actions in northern Syria. But, everybody who knows Turkish President Reççip Tayyip Erdogan knows he plays under-the-table footsie with Bibi Netanyahu. The US knows the basics of this and has chosen not to intervene. Otherwise, Daher appears to take statements by both Israeli and US political leaders at face value.
Winstanley does not. Here's the background he provides:
That's the US reality.
Over the last 13 years, the various armed groups working together to overthrow the Syrian government have been backed by the US, Gulf states, Turkey and Israel itself.
In a rare moment of honesty – one he later had to apologize for – then US Vice President Joe Biden admitted in 2014 that the surge of funding had aided groups the US considers extremists.
Biden said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others “were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars, tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.”
This is the Israeli reality from years past, per Winstanley.
The last time al-Qaida and other insurgent groups were present in the Golan Heights, Israel established warm relations with them, treating their fighters in a specially constructed field hospital and even arming them.
Netanyahu on Sunday signaled the revival of that policy. He said that Israel would pursue “the same approach we maintained when we set up a field hospital here that treated thousands of Syrians injured during the civil war. Hundreds of Syrian children were born here in Israel.”
There's more on both at his piece, with links. That includes Bibi trying to take credit for the downfall of Damascus.
Daher has a number of good things to say about the Palestinian issue, and as a socialist, trying to delink it from nation-state issues and to boost Palestinian class issues. That still doesn't mean that me isn't wrong on the nation-state issues in Syria. That's especially as Winstanley noted that some Syrian insurgents appear to have already been in contact with Israelis.
This is even as, at Jacobin, on these other issues, Daher said that it's Israel, not Hezbullah or Iran, that wants a wider war. Agreed. So, what gives with his take on Syria? Turkish control of northern Syria severs its direct connection with Iran, which, in turn, affects Hezbullah.
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Update: Mitchell Plitnick weighs in at Mondoweiss. He notes the Israeli invasion was "opportunistic," but that, it still seems to have been scenario-planned, or so I read him.
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Update, March 9, 2025: Daher seems ever more like an idealistic dreamer on Syria, given the current state of affairs.
