The socalled „Socialist Workers Party“ (SWP) in the UK has a two years history of spreading illusions in the opposition to the Syrian regime including the armed opposition. While the interior workings of the party remind more of a Stalinist outfit than of the non-orthodox Trotzkyist organization it pretends to be its political line has more and more become one of spontaneist hopes in all sorts of non-proletarian and non-Leninist movements. This is particularily true in respect to its position on the socalled „Arab Spring“. Based on the fact that the Syrian Baath-regime is a bourgeois dictatorship which has especially under president Bashar al-Assad more and more turned from statecapitalism to private neoliberalism and has so impoverished large parts of the toiling masses of the country the SWP has militantly supported the oppositional forces from the beginning on. While it has more or less only criticized their tactics of turning towards imperialist powers for military support against the Damascus governement it has not dared to reflect upon the problem what the political and socio-economic alternatives of the myriad of oppositional groups in that country were. In the SWP’s weekly „Socialist Worker“ the main author on Syria was and is one Simon Assaf. In the past he has on several occasions credited the government forces with massacres immediately when they occured even when it was in fact unclear who the authors were. While there is not doubt about it that governmental forces have committed abhorrent crimes and will certainly commit more in several cases even the serious imperialist press had to admit later on that some of those massacres they and Simon Assaf had credited to the regime had most probably been the work of oppositional forces (maybe some who fight under the name of the „Free Syrian Army“, which as a centrally organized guerilla army does not exist in reality but is only a name for getting foreign funds, or maybe the work of Jihadi outfits such als the Jabhat an-Nusra and the likes). Simon Assaf however never admitted any mistakes or at least doubts. However on the whole he might by excused for taking his revolutionary dreams for reality and have therefore much overrated the impact of more or less clean, democratic and non-sectarian forces on the whole of the revolt. However he now has crossed a limit in this respect. In one of his latest articles titled „Western arms threaten Syria’s troubled revolt“ (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art/33482/Western+arms+threaten+Syria’s+troubled+revolt) he writes: “ The West wants to hijack the revolution at the moment of its greatest crisis.
This comes a few days after Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hizbollah resistance movement, declared that his forces are now active in the civil war. Nasrallah announced that the largely Shia group is sending thousands of elite troops to spearhead the Syrian regime’s offensive on al-Qusayr. This is a mainly Sunni rebel city near the border with Lebanon. Using unprecedented sectarian language, Nasrallah described the defenders of al-Qusayr as “takfiris” (apostates) in the “service of Israel and the US”. This marks a fundamental break for the party of “national resistance” against Israel that prided itself on the unity of all Muslims and Arabs. By giving military support to Assad, Nasrallah has broken a vow to only use the weapons of the resistance against Israel. Instead he has now tied its fate to that of the Syrian regime.“ What’s the problem with this paragraph? The problem is that Nasrallah and the Lebanese Hizbullah, whatever else they may be, are not clerical sectarians, or at least the mentioned quote does not imply this. In fact Nasrallah has argued that the religious sectarian character of important parts of the Syrian opposition is threatening the stability of the multi-religious society of Lebanon and therefore serving Zionism. This is so because „takfiris“ are n o t ‚apostates‘ but those Muslims who declare other Muslims to be ‚apostates‘, and this is exactly the position of the Al-Qaida linked outfits such as „Jabhat an-Nusra“, which is an leading force in the fighr for Al-Qsayr. For them Shiites are ‘apostates‘, meaning people who had been Muslims in the past and had chosen to turn away from their religion (in the case of the Shia in the 7th century). While it is doubtful that the Prophet Muhammad had argued in favor of killing apostates muslim tradition has largely held this position (see a.o. „Sheikh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi interviewd by Syrian Comment“,<http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/>). The notion of „takfir“ has been a prominent one for many years now in the context of the identifaction of salafi-jihadi forces in the muslim world. It can not be believed that the ones responsable for „Socialist Worker“ have never heard of it and have thus simply overlooked a mistake made unwillingly by such a „specialist“ in ME-affairs as their Simon Assaf. It must therefore be understood as a deliberate fabrication in order to defend their – ever more undefendable – line on Syria. This political line is an extremist interpretation of the late Chris Harman’s position that revolutionaries must sometines side with religious fundamentalists in countries oppressed by imperialism but never with the regimes in place. When the late SWP-leader Harman said „sometimes“ it now seems to mean „by all means necessary“. Simon Assaf of course criticizes Jabhat an-Nusra and the lot, but this is meaningless when he whitewashes them by claiming that those – in this special case Hizbullah – who defend Syria and by this themseves against the onslought of the „takfiris“ are the „takfiris“.