The Ideological, Political and Moral Struggle of this Time: An Analysis

It is easier to find a solution if one finds a connection between the developments of historical social systems not with necessary laws, but with the different forms of ideological, political and moral struggle of the time. Reber Apo

To find a solution to the social problem that is exploding in the Middle East at this very moment and to understand the complex scenario that has unfolded in Syria in recent weeks, it is necessary to understand the different forms of ideological, political and moral struggle that the actors involved in this war are inspired by and are fighting for. Taking as a reference the moral conduct and the system of values that are shaping the current situation is crucial in understanding the reality of this moment and the significance of the historical moment we are living through.

For the past three decades, the driving and hegemonic force of contemporary capitalism, the U.S., has been fueling wars around the world in order to force the downsizing of states and turn them into functioning provincial “vassal states” of the U.S. empire.¹ This is the core of the U.S. political approach in the Middle East, which began during the Gulf Wars with the development of the “grand project of reforming the Middle East” as the basis for building a new global order. Today this project takes more concretely the name “Greater Middle East Project” which aims to spread political rights by exporting democracy through international pressure to support liberal reforms among Arab states. However, these globalist policies clash with the cultural and social difference of the peoples of the Middle East, so “democratization” processes are replaced by modernization plans.² In fact, it is the strengthening of capitalist modernity and its pillars, the nation-state and capital, the ultimate goal of the transnational politics of Western states, which exploit values such as democracy and human rights as propaganda tools to gain the support and adherence of their societies to these neo-colonial policies. These values of Western society, rooted in its Greek, humanist and Christian history, are values in which communities recognize themselves and therefore defend – it is in the name of these same values that Western societies are exploited against themselves by the states that dominate them in an effort to strengthen their own power and enlarge their capital.

During the last century, the United States succeeded in colonizing and appropriating the values for which entire populations fought in the struggle against fascism, whereby words such as freedom, democracy, humanity, and justice, after World War II, were incorporated into state institutions, such as the republics born after the Liberation, and international institutions, such as the United Nations Organization, which were supposed to function as guarantors of peace, security and international cooperation at the global level. The reality of this process was the construction of the Atlanticist bloc founded on a consumer society, on liberal democracy and human rights, which are the pillars of the twentieth-century feeling of belonging to “Western civilization.” On this basis, in the West the strengthening and increase of capital could best be ensured, as opposed to the Soviet system that attempted the path of state socialism. This dichotomous opposition, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, has shattered generating a plurality of forces attempting to undermine the U.S. supremacy, including Islamist groups that today again appear to be the greatest threat attacking Western society and values.

Only a historical, ideological and moral perspective reveals that these forces, the Western-liberal and the Islamist-fascist, which seem essentially antithetical, actually represent different expressions of the same mentality and logic, which is that of patriarchal power and domination. In fact, if we turn to the Syrian scenario, the greatest difficulty today is to understand how all the different actors are actually playing the same game and to realize that the rise of Islamist, murderous and terrorist groups is not contradictory to, but rather fully consistent with, the U.S. liberal hegemony. To truly understand this, especially in the West where the U.S. globalist hegemony has become so deeply implanted in the mindset of society that it is no longer even perceived as ideological, one must keep in mind the true nature of the state and remember that for states there is no radicalism in moral values and social principles, but there is only an opportunism of strategies and alliances in accordance with their own interests.

In particular, U.S. imperialist policies in the Middle East have always followed tactics and strategies that allowed the U.S. to expand its global hegemony without any moral reservation. From the beginning of the war in the early 1980s between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, a strategically important junction representing a land bridge for oil and gas pipelines connecting the Caspian Sea to the Arabian Sea, the U.S. intelligence apparatus supported the emergence of the “Islamic Brigades of Afghanistan,” from which Al Qaeda originated.³ Between 1982 and 1992, thousands of Muslim extremists from different countries participated in the war in Afghanistan, actively supported by the CIA, with the common goal of expanding the Afghan jihad into a world war against the Soviet Union. The “Islamic jihad” as a holy war against socialist principles, statist secularism, and expansionist and hegemonic politics – due to the failure of real socialism of not identifying the nation-state as one of the pillars of capitalist modernity – became a complementary part of the U.S. strategy to overthrow the USSR and its influence in the Middle East over energy resources and logistical and trade corridors. The establishment of energy infrstructure across the Middle Eastern provinces, on one hand, fueled the expansion of the American empire, strengthening its hegemonic power and deepening the ecological and economic exploitation of the peripheral countries of the world-system, and, at the same time, it set up a global system of dependency relations of the “centers” on the “periphery”. This system of dependency cannot be understood only as material dependency on foreign energy resources, but it embodies and expresses a much more complex and multi-layered relation between the Middle East and the West – meaning that what happens in the Middle East influence politically, economically and ideologically what happens in the West. This is the case, in particular, in regards to the political orientation that western governments and state institutions decide to adopt according to the opportunities that open up in the Middle East. The democratization or fascistization process taking place in Western states follows and reflects the social, political and economic developments of the Middle East based on what is more convenient and instrumental for the maintenance of the status quo and of the western powers’ global hegemony. The rise of a fascist or a “democratic” government, the kind of diplomatic engagement western states decide to adopt towards Middle Eastern actors, the focus of mass media coverage, for example, are all determined by the same opportunistic approach that enables state and capitalist forces to seize any form of opportunity and exploit any form of crisis in the region to solidify and expand western monopoly on capital and power. This, in turn, determines the kind of migration policies promoted by one government or another, the real possibility to defend women’s rights, the recognition of the demand for autonomy expressed by ethnic and religious minorities, the religious radicalisation of Christian culture and the rise of Islamophobia, and the development of economic plans oriented either towards war or towards international solidarity.

So, in this way, the U.S. came together to manipulate, on one hand, Western society, which began to mobilize against the Soviet regime in the name of individual freedom and democracy, and, on the other, Muslim society who was pushed to radicalize their intolerance against their communist-oriented governments and act in favor of U.S. interests. However, communist statehood was able to develop in these regions as a result of Europe’s effort, particularly of the UK and France, to fragment the Middle East and place it under their control after World War I. This meant replacing the Ottoman Empire and its form of power with the modern nation-state, which was more functional to Europe’s economic interests and more consistent with the spirit of capitalist modernity. So, Islamist opposition to Middle Eastern governments is rooted in the reactionary movement of religious radicalization contraposed to Western liberal hegemony, which destroys local culture and traditional social fabric. Hence, in the 1990s, a section of jihadist groups, led by al-Qaeda, decided for a change of strategy, believing it necessary to attack the United States and allied countries first, on which the survival of Middle Eastern governments and regimes depended. ⁴

The reality of World War III is one where there are no defined and stable alliances, but where the sides and relationships of support and dependence among actors struggling for power can be completely overturned at any moment: whereby fundamentalist groups can see the imperialist country that had financed them for years as the new target of their a,ttacks. This meant, for example, that some US tactical allies started to turn against them, opening up that phase in history known as the “war on terror,” which began officially with the attacks on September 11, 2001 – a war carried out in the name of freedom, democracy and the defense of women’s rights, but used in reality as a propaganda war, during the horrible conflicts of the 2000s.

In a context where massive counter-terrorism operations limited al-Qaeda’s operational capabilities and where Muslim people were not responding to its call for violence, it had become complex for al-Qaeda to systematically carry out a jihadist campaign with terrorist attacks abroad and, simultaneously, be present in various local areas to work on the radicalization of Muslim society. Al-Qaeda then decided to adopt the strategy of regional expansion (branching out) that would allow it to maintain an hegemony in regards to jihadist militancy, acquire new resources and, at the same time, attack the U.S. or European targets in the region. Among the best-known cases of al-Qaeda’s co-option of pre-existing groups during this expansionist process, there is its Iraqi branch, the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), which emerged after the U.S. intervention in Iraq and later morphed into the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which focused its attacks against not only the government, but also against the Shiite, Yazidi and Kurdish population, and in general anyone perceived as deviant from Sharia or as “unbelievers”: all victims of the brutal and inhumane approach that terrorized the entire world.

Despite the dynamics of competition and rivalry between the Islamic State and al-Qeada to gain the exclusive leadership of the global jihad, it is important to analyze how the opposition between jihadist organizations and the United States is not really an opposition of principles, but a divarication that makes explicit the different forms in which the same kind of mentality can materialize. In fact, on an ideological level, what makes the U.S. empire and the Islamic State, like any other jihadist project, two sides of the same coin is the imperialist or hegemonic perspective. On one hand, we have the empire of multinational corporations, conservative Christian values, and individualism, and on the other we have the ambition to build a supranational caliphate that would carry out the Islamist revolution worldwide. Despite the difference in the cultural foundations of these two perspectives, one based on a Christian-humanist context, the other on a tribal-Muslim one, there is no real difference between them: they are both in alignment with the needs of capital accumulation, the pillar of modernity. At the heart of this perspective lies patriarchal hegemony, power and violence, which are expressed in the culture of rape and feminicide in the West as much as in the Middle East, where the fate of women – either forced into the Christian-woman-mother model or the Muslim-woman-mother one – is terribly similar. The specific cultural, religious, ethnic values that these two states appeal to in order to carry out this project are only a contingent aspect through which society’s values are used against society itself in favor of the interests of those in power who can preserve and expand increasingly their authority. And because of this, since the perspective is the same, it is possible for these two forces to dialogue if not even cooperate, as long as they can expand without having to confront each other. Instead where their expansionist aims collide, under the banner of religious and cultural differences, under the mantra of “clash of civilizations,” the only possible outcome is war and destruction.

What has happened in the Middle East over the past decade is a clear example of this reality. For example, from the moment the Islamic State’s expansion was becoming too destabilizing for international equilibrium because of its brutal violence, devastation on conquered territories, and its control over important oil areas, the U.S. did not hesitate to intervene, supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ), the only entity capable of repelling the Islamic State on the ground, with the aim of securing itself an active role in the development of the Syrian scenario until they could find an actor willing to enter fruitfully into dialogue with them. Perhaps today Trump thinks that this actor could be Jawlani’s new “government.”

Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani had been sent to Syria during al-Qeada’s regional expansion by the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) with the aim of organizing the ISI’s Syrian offshoot.⁵ There, al-Jawlani managed to set up the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra militia, which, during the Syrian civil war, developed a different tactical line than ISI’s, which included organizing the public administration of rebel areas and establishing relations with other insurgent groups, including those not ideologically aligned with them. In April 2013, the Islamic State in Iraq to appropriate the expansion of al-Nusra, announced its transformation from ISI to ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), expecting al-Nusra to be incorporated within it. Instead, al-Jawlani seized the opportunity for a different tactical move and decided to return to an alliance with the original al-Qeada group to disengage from the devastating violence that ISIS was carrying out. However, his explicit affiliation with such a terrorist group prevented him from uniting with his allies on the ground, so Jawlani embarked on a phase of restructuring and alliance building that led him to move away from al-Qeada and join other local Islamist groups to later form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. In 2017, less than a year after its formation, the self-proclaimed Syrian Salvation Government was established in Idlib – till today Jawlani has administered the region through this form of government thanks to his tactics of “localization” or nationalization of the jihad, while maintaining all the violent aspects of Islamist policies against society, such as the imposition of Islamic laws on women, considered as property of their husbands, and all sorts of attacks on the freedom of organization, assembly, free speech and press. Economically, opportunist pragmatism has been the main political method by which deals have been made with numerous state actors, which is unacceptable to “traditional” imperialist anti-laicist jihadism. HTS’s first and most important trading partner is Turkey. This trade generates a stable turnover of millions of dollars per month through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, which connects HTS-controlled Syria with Turkey. In addition, another significant source of income comes from international humanitarian aid, mainly funded by institutions such as the UNHCR, with one-tenth of all aid disappearing into the Salvation Government’s pockets.

HTS’s behavior could be referred to as “state jihadism,” similar to the Taliban’s policy in Afghanistan, and this new form of jihadism, no longer aiming to become empire but nation-state, then becomes a form of government interested in creating political institutions consistent with liberal systems; by no longer challenging the pillars of capitalist modernity, the new Syrian “government” can become a legitimate interlocutor in the eyes of international forces. In fact, today we see that Jawlani’s jihadist offspring does not make any problem for the diplomats of the NATO bloc, who, with the removal of HTS from the list of terrorist organizations and the design of new economic agreements with the U.S. and the European Union, once the sanctions that had been imposed on Assad are removed, are initiating a real process of normalizing a character and an organization that is sowing terror, violence and oppression throughout the country. When it comes to the interests of states, moral values are not on anyone’s agenda, especially when it comes to the Middle East. In particular, Jawlani’s “transitional government” is installing in ministries figures who have long careers in the ranks of al Qeada or who were trained by Turkish intelligence and is imposing throughout Syria the Sharia law that was in effect in Idlib: in spite of proclamations in favor of ethnic minorities and women’s rights, real pogroms against the Druze and Alevi communities are taking place throughout the country, along with unprecedented violence against women and forced deportations of the Kurdish population of Shahba, Mambij and villages in the direction of Kobane, which took place in the very days of HTS’s seizure of power at the hands of SNA mercenaries, who were able to take advantage of the regime change and the support of the new leadership.

But if, for now, this new Islamist nationalism can dialogue with the US globalist imperialism, what are the real goals of Western hegemonic forces? For more than a year now, it has been clear that the goal of the hegemonic forces is to reconfigure the borders of the Middle East to ensure security for Israel as a U.S. outpost capable of securing the construction of energy routes, military control and financial development.⁶ But it still needs to be clarified why Syria plays a central role in this scenario.

The abrupt change in the arrangements in Syria must be attributed to the direct intervention of Turkey, which is economically and militarily supporting jihadist groups such as the SNA and HTS to advance its neo-imperial hegemonic project, to carry out the genocide of the Kurds and to establish itself as a decisive player in the area.⁷ The U.S. also played a decisive role:⁸ during the U.S. election, Trump’s promise to resolve open wars did not refer to Syria, but to Ukraine. Syria would be redrawn according to U.S. preferences – with Israel’s security playing a decisive role in regional balances – and, in return, Putin would keep the territories won in Ukraine, ending the Ukraine-Russia war.⁹ The future scenarios depend now on how far these jihadist groups that have risen to government with the fall of the Assad regime will be able to assert their power without coming into conflict with expanding Israeli hegemony and territory. It is possible that HTS will be accepted as a new ruling power long as it continues to ensure Syria’s integration into the global market. However, the balance in the region will be thrown into crisis again when HTS, together with new Islamist gangs, will try to establish itself as a hegemonic power in the area by gaining control of the local energy and capital. If this will happen, the West, in the name of “Catholic” and humanitarian values, may begin another crusade in the Middle East against the Islamists. But it is the history of power repeating itself.

So, why is Syria so central in this World War? Because today HTS and the other Islamist groups such as SNA and ISIS, which are now having full “room for maneuver” in Syria, must guarantee Turkey, the United States, the European Union countries, and Israel the fulfillment of a key move in this chessboard: the destruction of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Syria’s centrality in this Middle East chaos depends on the existence of the Autonomous Administration, which is the only political entity that is an exception in this web of power interests. The goal of DAANES is to protect and strengthen society, self-determination and pluralism and not to expand its own hegemony, nor to defend the institution itself. In fact, the Democratic Autonomous Administration is a form of organization that coincides with society itself: the Autonomous Administration is the people, it is the people who organize themselves. The Autonomous Administration it is not synonymous of bureaucratic administration, it is not a political institution that can be filled by one government or another, which exists beyond the will of society just as the state exists beyond the will of the society it governs. The Democratic Autonomous Administration, on the other hand, is society making decisions for itself; without society expressing a will the Autonomous Administration does not exist, and that is why Turkey and its mercenaries are carrying out a policy of extermination and genocide, because only by exterminating society can the Autonomous Administration be destroyed. As long as the people in Syria, of any ethnicity and religion, continue to want and decide to organize themselves according to the principles of radical democracy, ecology and women’s liberation to build a democratic nation that unites and protects all differences on the basis of the principle of self-defense of women, life and society, self-government cannot be destroyed. It will rather spread across all territories where people decide to organize their lives according to these principles – this is because these principles truly embody a life of equality, freedom, friendship, and justice that can unite all cultures and all religions of the world in opposition to the monopoly of power and capital on which all states are based. For this reason, too, the hegemonic powers have every interest in destroying the Autonomous Administration, because it is an example of a society that collectively resists and struggles to defend its own alternative system to capitalist modernity. It is an example that can lead other societies to realize that they have been betrayed by their governments and that therefore they too must begin to struggle; that resistance is possible against any form of power, even the one that seems most unbreakable; and that the alternative is possible, it is real, and depends only on our cohesion with our moral principles, our will and our action.

So, the hegemonic powers, net of their ever-changing tactical alliances, are all joining forces against the Autonomous Administration because it is the only real obstacle that can get in the way of their plans to reconfigure the Middle East according to state and capital interests. This means that the only real principled conflict connected to different forms of ideological, political and moral struggle, is the one between capitalist modernity and the principles of democratic modernity defended by the Autonomous Administration. One of the pivotal principles for the reconstruction of democratic modernity is the realization of the Democratic Nation, which opposes the ideology of the nation-state, assimilation, ethnic and religious cleansing, genocide and occupation. We see today that in Syria, as throughout the Middle East, nationalism is once again a plague that confuses and limits the revolutionary perspective of democratic forces, which end up supporting dictators and hegemonic groups that present themselves as protectors of their people, when in fact they are only protecting their own interests. One example of this can be found in the policies of the KDP, the political party in power in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which in the name of Kurdish nationalism, used to legitimize its government, betrays its own people struggling in Rojava and Bakur (northern Kurdistan) by allying with Turkey and the United States to destroy the Autonomous Administration and the resistance in the mountains.¹⁰ Accusing Rojava of separatism is also a product of the nation-state mentality: if one analyzes the Syrian situation through the question of national integrity, one will not be able to understand the reality of such a rich and diverse society. It is necessary, instead, to protect the autonomy of peoples, which does not mean separating ethnic and religious groups according to a principle of “territorial homogeneity”, since the reconfiguration of borders means only violence, deportation, breaking of social bonds, factionalism and hegemony of superpowers. Autonomy means freedom to self-organize through direct democracy, to express one’s own political institutions, and to have a co-presidency system that guarantees women’s equality and autonomy at every political and social level.

The only way to solve the Syrian crisis is to start a process of rebuilding a democratic Syria on the model of the Democratic Autonomous Administration, which represents a real solution not only for the Syrian people, but for all the people in the Middle East – this is the only way to stop the destruction and genocide of World War III. In this scenario, the actors in the field are divided between the nation-states front that defends power and capital and all democratic forces that belong to the river of democratic modernity. Real alliances are not the ones based on diplomatic declarations, since there are no benevolent powers to rely on, but they are the ones emerging from the solidarity among democratic forces around the world. That is why, in reality, the frontline along which this war is being fought is not only in Syria, but in every part of the world where democratic forces are organizing and fighting capitalist modernity.

Today, however, it is necessary to unite in defense of the Rojava Revolution because not only the fate of the Kurdish people depends on this war: what is happening now in Rojava will mark the trajectory of the history of this century. What is happening in Rojava will determine whether the horrors of the last 30 years, from the Gulf War to the genocide in Palestine, will eventually merge into a single graveyard of humanity that will spread across the entire Middle East. There will be no continuity between one genocide and the next one, only death, violence and fascism, and at that point the redefinition of nation-state borders will have no meaning at all. Only with the international recognition of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria it is possible to support a democratic reconstruction of Syria, because it is the only institution that can guarantee security for the population, stability, a democratic life for society and the defense of human and women’s rights, as it is clear from the organization’s resilience of these days of chaos. It is therefore necessary to stop immediately the attacks of the Turkish state and its attempt to take advantage of the fall of the Assad regime to implement its neo-imperial plan: all NATO and EU states are primarily responsible for this. If this is not stopped any chance of protecting democracy and human rights in the Middle East will be crushed by fascism, and if this happens we won’t be safe, not in Europe, nor anywhere else in the world, even if only because allowing this to happen means abandoning every trace of humanity in us.

In these weeks we are more than ever bound together by a social bond on which the fate of each of us depends: each of us can choose to be a drop that expands this same democratic river.

The time to act is now.