Translated "Avante !" article by ALbano Nunes, Member of the Secretariat of the CC
19th September 2013
The correlation of forces at the international level is still unfavourable to the forces of peace and social progress, but even so it is possible to inflict important setbacks and defeats on imperialism. This is what has just taken place in Syria, despite some persisting issues.
But the US has not abandoned the purpose to knock down the resistance of the Syrian regime and people, and the threat of a direct military aggression is not in any way set aside. To tie imperialism’s hands and prevent perverse agreements it is essential that public opinion remain mobilised.
Admittedly, together with public opinion, other very important factors contributed to hinder and destroy Barack Obama’s plans. The coherence of the Bashar al-Assad government and the successes of the Syrian army in the field. Russia’s support to the Syrian people (no confusion here with the USSR’s internationalism) together with that of China, The US isolation even among its own allies, rife with contradictions that the capitalist crisis tends to exacerbate, without forgetting the Vatican’s stand. The lack of credibility and support of the so-called «rebels», a bunch of mercenaries and terrorists organised and armed by the US, EU and feudal monarchies from the Gulf. But the power of public opinion and of mass actions is determining. And since truth is the first to die in war, buried by powerful media campaigns, it is necessary not to forget – whatever the twists and turns of a process aiming to disarm, diabolize and overthrow the Syrian regime – some elementary truths.
1.ª – Imperialism’s goal is to control the region, its wealth in oil and natural gas and their respective routes of transport.
2.ª –For this it is necessary to destabilise and re-colonise the countries that stand up against imperialism. Turkey, which had dominated Syria for centuries, has expansionist designs and is at the forefront of aggression. And the shameless alliance of the Hollande government with the US is not inseparable from the fact that France, which replaced the Ottoman Empire following World War I, had been defeated by the powerful popular uprisings that, in 1946, made Syria the first independent Arab country.
3.ª –Of Israel and its criminous Zionist policy little has been said. It is imperialism’s spearhead in the Middle East. Israel is a country armed to the teeth, the only country in the region that has nuclear weapons and threatens to use them, did not ratify the Convention on chemical weapons, constantly threatens Lebanon, Syria and Iran, illegally occupies the Palestinian land and daily torments the life of the Palestinian people.
4.ª – Who threatens whom? The main threat comes from Israel and imperialism’s lackeys like Saudi Arabia (whose massacres in Bahrain and Yemen remain silenced) and Qatar. Regarding Syria, one should not forget that a part of its territory, the Golan Heights, has been for years under Israeli occupation and that Israeli bombs were launched several times on targets in Syrian territory, like recently on Damascus airport.
5.ª –The «fight against terrorism» is an increasingly discredited smokescreen. In Syria, imperialism openly works with the «jihadists» and gangs linked to Al-Qaeda, which can only come as a surprise to those who may have forgotten that this monster was created by the CIA for US anti-communist operations.
6.ª –The strategy of tension and war is essential to the military-industrial complex and the arms trade, this terrible malignant tumour generated by capitalism’s own development.
Constitutional and historical duty
The US military aggression against Syria seems to be presently dispelled, but the question is to eliminate it. What is needed is not Syria’s unilateral disarmament, as imperialism wants, or ambiguous Security Council resolutions that violate the UN Charter itself, but global measures of disarmament, transforming the region into an area free from nuclear weapons, dismantling the military bases with which the US and NATO have flooded the whole Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia, and above all – because this is the core issue of the liberation movement of the Arab people - recognising in practice the right of the Palestinian people to their own independent and sovereign State on Palestinian territory with Israel’s withdrawal from the territories it illegally occupies since 1967.
Portugal is obliged to clearly demarcate itself from imperialism’s threats and to give a positive contribution to a peaceful solution of the conflict and to disarmament. This is what the Constitution demands. This is the demand of the will of the Portuguese people whose interests and aspirations coincide with those of the Syrian people, to whom we are linked through strong historical bonds.
