Palestine, Yemen, and the Middle East At Large
The conflict in Palestine has been on many people’s minds ever since Palestinian armed groups attacked Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza on October 7, 2023. While people are now more open in supporting Palestine, it is mainly because Israel’s aggression has been “too excessive” for these well-meaning liberals; on October 7th and the days after it, these same liberals were “standing with Israel”, as if it took much courage to stand for a settler-colony backed by capitalist-imperialism. We will go over the contradictions that exist in Palestine, and we will also discuss Yemen and the general conditions of West Asia to come to a proletarian position on these extreme conflicts.
Israeli Expansionism and Palestinian National Liberation
The Israeli state has claimed the land of Palestine since its founding in 1948. While claiming to be a state to represent the interests of Jews, it has only represented a select few Jews while exploiting most Jews in their colonial endeavors. The Soviet Union in its socialist period had supported the founding of Israel as a state for Jews and Arabs alike, and many “leftist” parties led the Zionist project, but it quickly became an attack dog for capitalist-imperialism. The US and UK supported Israeli aggression against indigenous Arabs, and the Zionists expelled those Arabs during the Nakba and other events of ethnic cleansing. In response to that, the socialist USSR and the People’s Democracies supported Arab bourgeois-democratic states against this new semi-colony.
Anti-dialectical is the assumption that the USSR would oppose the Anglo-American imperialists thoroughly but that it would also support an Israeli regime which was aligned with the American imperialists and covertly also with the British imperialists. It would be anti-dialectical to assume so, because such an assumption would contradict a major dialectical-historical-material law of history: the alliance of the proletariat. The USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas the anti-imperialist states of the Arab world were the dictatorship of the anti-colonial national bourgeoisie, closely allied with the proletariat of the Arab countries. Such states did have the national bourgeoisie as the main force dominating the state but secondarily also incorporated the proletariat into the state, which was why these Arab states were democratic – Egypt was a constitutional monarchy, Syria was a democratic republic, and Lebanon was a multi-confessional parliamentary democracy. The interests of the Soviet proletariat were the same as the interests of the Egyptian, Lebanese, and Syrian proletariat. It makes little sense to say that the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR would materially contradict the progressive bourgeois-democratic alliance of the proletariat and the anti-colonial national bourgeoisie in the Arab countries because that would mean the contradiction of the class interests of the Soviet proletariat with the class interests of the Arab proletariat. One can therefore calculate that the Soviets would never betray the anti-colonial Arab forces, even if, at face-value, appearing to betray it. And it unsurprisingly turns out that such a calculation is backed up immensely by historical empirical evidence – namely the military and economic support of the USSR and the Peoples’ Democracies for the Arab anti-colonial war effort during the 1948 War.
The Soviet media stated that the anti-imperialist bloc would support the just cause of the Arabs; these were by no means empty promises. Throughout the 1948 War, the USSR and the Peoples’ Democracies of Eastern Europe covertly furnished the Arabs with military assistance. With respect to military aid to the Arabs, however, another excerpt of the previously mentioned Soviet-Syrian and Soviet-Lebanese secret treaties in 1946 was as follows:
The Soviet Union agrees to send a sufficient number of military personnel to Syria, comprising military instructors and high-ranking officers, in order to help Syria to build up as rapidly as possible a national army of some strength. (The Soviet Union and Egypt, 1945-55, Rami Ginat, 1993, p. 70. Citing: From Encroachment to Involvement, a Documentary Study of Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1973. Israel University Press, Yaacov Ro’i, 1974, pp. 29-30)
… The support of the USSR for Syria was not limited to the period before the 1948 War but continued well afterwards onto during the 1948 War. Indeed the USSR – along with the Eastern European Peoples’ Democracies – militarily and economically backed Syria and Lebanon during the 1948 War. As material support for the Arab fighters, the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak People’s Democracy provided weapons whereas Romania supplied the petroleum:
Some of the Arab League countries have purchased arms from Czechoslovakia; the largest shipments to the Arabs from that country have gone to Syria and Lebanon. Small shipments from the USSR or Balkan ports are also reported to have landed on the Syrian and Lebanese coasts; also, petroleum products are now being shipped to Lebanon by Rumania. (POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS FROM THE PALESTINE TRUCE, ORE 38-48, CIA, July 27, 1948, p. 9)
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In the interests of fighting for national liberation and self-determination, the Palestinian masses refused to give up their fights; and because Israel is a very useful arm of US and Western imperialism, the US and its allies have been faithful supporters and suppliers of Israel while Israel has allowed these imperialist invaders to get more powerful in West Asia. In addition to Israel, the US has propped up comprador regimes in the Arabian peninsula, which are semi-feudal monarchies that also profit immensely from capitalist-imperialism as they sell their region’s oil and other resources. The PFLP’s Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine makes clear how the class forces of the world line up in the battle between Zionist expansionism and Palestinian national liberation.
World imperialism has its interests that it fights fiercely to defend and keep. These interests consist in robbing the riches of the underdeveloped countries by purchasing them at the lowest prices and then processing these riches and re-selling them at the highest prices in the markets of these same countries. By this operation, they accumulate immense profits, enabling them to increase their capital at the expense of the people’s poverty, deprivation and wretchedness. The Arab world possesses many resources, mainly petroleum, and constitutes a big consuming market for manufactured goods. Imperialism wants to maintain this situation to allow the process of accumulation of imperialist wealth to continue on the one hand and our poverty to increase on the other. To this end, it is genuinely determined to crush any revolutionary movement that aims at freeing our country and people from this exploitation.
The revolutionary movement of the masses in the Arab World naturally aims at destroying Israel because Israel is a force that has usurped a portion of this world and is a great danger threatening other portions of it. Consequently, Israel cannot but fight to the end, any Palestinian or Arab revolutionary movement. Here imperialism finds itself in the best position in this part of the world, because through Israel it is able to fight the Arab revolutionary movement, which aims at eliminating it from our homeland with Israel becoming the force and the base used by imperialism to protect its presence and defend its interests in our land. Such a situation creates an organic unity between Israel and the Zionist movement on the one hand and word imperialism on the other, because they are both interested in fighting the Palestinian and Arab national liberation movement. Thus the protection, reinforcement and support of Israel and the maintenance of its existence are fundamental matters for the interests of world imperialism. This gives us a coherent picture of the enemy, which clearly embraces Israel, the world Zionist movement and world imperialism. …
Our enemy then is not Israel alone. It is Israel, Zionism, imperialism, and unless we have a clear scientific knowledge of our enemy, we cannot hope to triumph over it. The opinion that attempts to “neutralize” the Palestinian question on the international level by contending; “Why not try to win America to our side in the battle instead of allowing it to remain on Israel’s side?” is an erroneous and dangerous opinion because it is unscientific, unrealistic and far from being accurate. It is dangerous because it camouflages the truth about the enemy facing us and leads to erroneous calculations during the battle. …
Arab capitalism, whose interests are represented and defended by reactionary regimes in the Arab world, does not constitute an independent capitalist unit and is consequently unable to assume independent political positions. In point of fact, this capitalism represents weak branches of world capitalism that are interconnected with, and form an integral part of, the latter. The millionaires of the Arab world, including merchants, bankers, feudal lords, owners of large estates, kings, emirs and sheikhs, have in fact acquired their millions by virtue of their co-operation with world capitalism. They have amassed this wealth because they are commercial agents for goods produced by foreign capital, or secondary shareholders in foreign banking establishments or insurance companies, or they are sheikhs, emirs and kings at the head of regimes that defend and protect colonial interests and strike at any mass movement aiming at freeing our economy from this exploiting influence. Consequently, they cannot keep their millions unless our land remains a market for foreign goods and foreign investments, and unless the colonialists continue to plunder our oil and other resources, because this is the only way that enables them to acquire and keep their millions.
This means that, in a real liberation battle waged by the masses to destroy imperialist influence in our homeland, Arab reaction cannot but be on the side of its own interests, the continuation of which depends on the persistence of imperialism, and consequently cannot side with the masses.
These Arab reactionary forces—particularly the intelligent ones—may outwardly support superficial national movements with the object of using them to settle, to their own advantage, some of their side conflicts with Israel or with world imperialism, but in the end they are inevitably against any national liberation movement that aims at uprooting colonialism from our soil and building an independent economy that will serve the interests of the masses instead of going into the pockets of the few representing these reactionary forces.
The growth of the revolutionary mass movement means, in relation to these forces, the growth of the people’s authority that acts to destroy the authority of these forces. Therefore, whatever degree their conflicts with Israel and imperialism attain, they are at all times conscious of the fact that their main conflict is with the movement of the masses which seeks the complete destruction of their interests and authority. …
In light of all this the main features of the enemy facing us become clear:
Our enemy in the battle is Israel, Zionism, world imperialism and Arab reaction.
This enemy possesses technological superiority and definite superiority in production which naturally develops into military superiority and great fighting power.
In addition to all this, the enemy has long experience in facing the masses’ movement towards economic and political liberation and has the power to defeat such a movement unless the masses possess that high degree of political consciousness that enables them to counteract all methods used by the neo-colonialists in trying to defeat revolutionary movements.
The nature of the battle in relation to this enemy’s principal military base represented by Israel is a life-or-death struggle that the political and military leadership inside Israel will endeavor to put up until the last breath.
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The PFLP is not the only group fighting Israel, obviously. Most people know of HAMAS (the Islamic Resistance Movement), but there are also the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC), and more. HAMAS, which is Islamist, initially started as an Israeli-backed group designed to weaken the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the group which most Palestinian national liberation groups are united under; it did turn on Israel, obviously, and it has joined the Palestinian masses in fighting Zionist expansionism. It has relied on an Islamist ideology to mobilize Palestinians against Israel, and this merits criticism, but we recognize that it serves a relatively progressive role in fighting imperialism and promoting national liberation. As the CPI (Maoist)’s statement on the struggle for liberation says, “Palestinians have been waging struggle with Israelis since then for their liberation under different banners and leadership forces right from the representatives of left to lslamic forces, feudal forces and national bourgeoisie. They suffered setbacks, leadership betrayals, but picked themselves up, then fighting again” [Source].
Capitalist-imperialists have labelled anti-Zionism as “anti-Semitic”, and they’ve used all sorts of lies and myths to make Zionism and Judaism one and the same. Reality, by contrast, shows that Judaism and Zionism are very separate and antagonistic, for both ultra-religious and secular Jews have criticized and condemned Zionism. This refutes both “pro-Jewish” Zionists, who try to condemn Palestine for “anti-Semitism”, and the anti-Semites, who try to usurp the cause of anti-Zionism for their goal of persecuting Jews. The PFLP specifically says in the book quoted above that “The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews.” Rather, the anti-Zionist movement is against settler-colonialism and imperialism; it is an anti-imperialist movement, and it seeks to fight imperialists and their compradors.
Now, this is when ardent Zionists bring up October 7th, 2023, the day in which a coalition of Palestinian groups launched attacks on southern Israel. They claim this was an attack on Jews meant to unnecessarily kill them. This idea is wrong for many reasons. For one, it was a response to settler-colonial aggression and attempts by settlers to take more Palestinian land; as we showed above, that settler-colonialism is an arm of imperialism, and so the nation that seeks to defend its right to self-determination has every right to use force to stop the colonizers. (In fact, international law allows indigenous people to defend their land by any means necessary.) Second, it was actually the “Israeli Defense Force” that killed hundreds of Israelis on October 7th:
“After the pilots realized that inside the army stations and the settlements that were conquered, it was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians, the decision was made that the first objective of the fighter helicopters and the armed Zik [Elbit Hermes 450] drones is to stop the deluge of terrorists and the murderous masses that flowed into Israeli territory through the holes in the fence,” Zitun writes.
Zitun then adds: “Twenty-eight fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm. We are talking about hundreds of 30 millimeter cannon mortars (each mortar is like a hand grenade) and Hellfire missiles,” he adds.
“The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets.” …
Two elements stand out here: By the military’s own admission, Israeli pilots could not distinguish clearly between Palestinian combatants and Israeli civilians but decided to open fire with massive amounts of weaponry anyway.
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Hostages that HAMAS and other groups captured were largely treated well enough by their captors, but Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza meant that many of those hostages also died by Israel’s weapons. Many countries around the world, even those run by compradors of US imperialism, have condemned Israel’s violent treatment of the masses in Gaza, and yet the US has remained in favor of continuing the genocidal onslaught. With such material conditions, it is impossible for the Palestinians to do anything but pick up arms and organize a resistance to the genocide!
The comparison of HAMAS to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) could not be further from the truth. Israeli media calls HAMAS a “new ISIL”, but the groups have fought each other, and ISIL has condemned HAMAS for its alliance with Iran, Hezbollah (a Lebanese party aiding the Palestinian struggle from the north), and Shia-majority paramilitaries in Iraq. Meanwhile, when ISIL attacked Israel in 2017, it apologized to the imperialists for the “mistake”. The same facts go for other Salafi Jihadists and other reactionary forces in West Asia and North Africa; most Arab Peninsula countries (in particular Qatar) that support or have supported Salafi Jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, among other places, conveniently have a capitulationist stance to Israel, for they’re all comprador governments for US imperialism. Turkey and Azerbaijan, who have both been involved in their own genocidal campaigns against Kurds and Armenians, receive Israeli support for their expansionist wars, and they in turn give mere lip service to the Palestinian resistance. Therefore, none of the Salafi Jihadist groups of the region and none of their state sponsors can be linked to HAMAS or the Palestinian struggle, and so the Palestinian national liberation war is one that fights all of America’s compradors, not just Israel.
Now, since the leaders of the Palestinian national liberation struggle are predominantly national-bourgeois, we cannot expect the complete liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea”. We want it to happen, but since the national bourgeoisie is incapable of the type of leadership needed for that goal, we hope for a proletarian party, a genuine communist party in Palestine, to lead the united front of the people. Mao explained the role of the national bourgeoisie and the enlightened gentry in his essay:
The few right-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism and oppose the people’s democratic revolution are also enemies of the revolution, while the left-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to the working people and oppose the reactionaries are also revolutionaries, as are the few enlightened gentry who have broken away from the feudal class. But the former are not the main body of the enemy any more than the latter are the main body among the revolutionaries; neither is a force that determines the character of the revolution. The national bourgeoisie is a class which is politically very weak and vacillating. But the majority of its members may either join the people’s democratic revolution or take a neutral stand, because they too are persecuted and fettered by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism. They are part of the broad masses of the people but not the main body, nor are they a force that determines the character of the revolution. …
The enlightened gentry are individual landlords and rich peasants with democratic leanings. Such people have contradictions with bureaucrat-capitalism and imperialism and to a certain extent also with the feudal landlords and rich peasants. … It is precisely because they have this role that the enlightened gentry also constitute an element in the revolutionary united front against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism; therefore, attention must also be paid to the question of uniting with them.
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Far from what the imperialists say about groups like HAMAS, they are not “evil groups” that seek to “kill all Jews”. They are historically progressive and allies of the proletariat in Palestine. We may criticize their strategy or even some of their goals, but overall they deserve the international masses’ support that they currently get.
Free Palestine, and free the West Asian countries at large! Down with the Israeli genocidal regime and its allies of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and more! Support to all groups fighting imperialism!
Yemen’s Civil War
The Yemeni civil war has been taking place since 2014. We wrote an article on it last year, so we shall summarize the forces active in Yemen and what class role they serve.
Yemen’s civil war has involved two main factions, like Palestine’s liberation war: Ansar Allah (the “Houthis”) and the established state (currently led by the Presidential Leadership Council). The latter has the support of US imperialism and its allies, including the reactionary Saudi Arabian state and more. In addition, there was the Southern Transitional Council that often fought the established state as well as Ansar Allah, but since 2022, it has capitulated to the state. There are also al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and both of these nominally fight US imperialism; in reality, they act as de facto proxies of US imperialism. That leaves Ansar Allah as a bourgeois-nationalist group that attempts to fight imperialism and comprador capitalism in Yemen.
Before explaining why Ansar Allah (or “the Houthis”) are the most progressive group in Yemen, we must expose the crimes the Saudi-led coalition and its American backers have committed in the country:
In a Guardian article, the authors state the obvious—that is, that “the Saudi-led coalition leading the fight against the Houthis in Yemen, which has been supplied with weaponry by the US, the UK and other allies, has been accused of the indiscriminate killing of civilians through its aerial bombing campaign and by its blockade of rebel-controlled areas of the country.” The truth is that the “war” in Yemen is really a one-sided assault by the Saudi Coalition, with the support of the United States and the United Kingdom, against the Yemeni people. The fact is that morality, international law (including Article 51 of the UN Charter), and just plain common sense allow Yemen to defend itself against this incessant attack. …
First of all, the beloved President Obama not only met with, but indeed sold weapons to, the Saudi monarchy to carry out its deadly war upon Yemen―a war that will kill many more than have been killed in Syria. And yet no one questions Obama’s bona fides. In addition, our “elder statesmen” like George W. Bush (apparently good friends with Michelle Obama and Ellen DeGeneres) and Henry Kissinger are not deemed suspect because of their use of chemical weapons (in Iraq and Vietnam, respectively) on a much larger scale than Assad has even been accused of.
The tragic irony of all of this is almost too terrible to comprehend. The US, the self-proclaimed beacon of democracy and freedom, has been using a piece of land it brazenly stole from Cuba―a country it has been blockading for nearly sixty years based on alleged human rights concerns―to hold innocents in indefinite detention in violation of both US Constitutional and international law. And now, nearly all of those being held are from Yemen―a nation the US is helping Saudi Arabia destroy in what will most likely be a genocide dwarfing that of the Holocaust. To add to the irony, the Holocaustal war against Yemen began under the watchful eye of the great Western crusader against genocide, Samantha Power.
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No member of the working people in the world benefits from the imperialist war the US is waging against the people of Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition uses American money and bombs, and it, like Israel, murders the country’s inhabitants and leaves them no choice but to defend their national sovereignty with force. World imperialism supports the puppet state in Yemen, but the masses of the country support the nationalists fighting to liberate their country from imperialism.
Critics of Ansar Allah refer to it as “anti-Semitic” for its slogan “A Curse Upon the Jews”, which is among a list of phrases on its banner. However, this idea faces complications from the reality on the ground of Yemen. The slogan against Jews is not a general attack on Judaism, but it is an anti-colonial slogan, just as anti-Japanese fighters in China and Korea called for violence against the Japanese, or African and Asian subjects of Britain and France called for those colonizers to face the people’s wrath. Ansar Allah is little different. That being said, quite a few supporters of the group harbor anti-Semitic views, and they and the phrase against Jews are inexcusable; in any bourgeois-nationalist program, there are bound to be problems of reactionary elements being in them. This does not mean they are not revolutionary or worthy of our support. Lenin stated this idea pretty clearly and concisely in The Right of Nations to Self-Determination:
Carried away by the struggle against nationalism in Poland, Rosa Luxemburg has forgotten the nationalism of the Great Russians, although it is this nationalism that is the most formidable at the present time. It is a nationalism that is mere feudal than bourgeois, and is the principal obstacle to democracy and to the proletarian struggle. The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support, At the same time we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness; we fight against the tendency of the Polish bourgeois to oppress the Jews, etc., etc.
This is “unpractical” from the standpoint of the bourgeois and the philistine, but it is the only policy in the national question that is practical, based on principles, and really promotes democracy, liberty and proletarian unity.
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Stalin explained the proletarian stance to such anti-imperialists more extensively in Chapter Six of Foundations of Leninism:
“The various demands of democracy,” writes Lenin: “including self-determination, are not an absolute, but a small part of the general democratic (now: general socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole, if so, it must be rejected” [From “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up”]
This is the position in regard to the question of particular national movements, of the possible reactionary character of these movements-if, of course, they are appraised not from the formal point of view, not from the point of view of abstract rights, but concretely, from the point of view of the interests of the revolutionary movement.
The same must be said of the revolutionary character of national movements in general. The unquestionably revolutionary character of the vast majority of national movements is as relative and peculiar as is the possible revolutionary character of certain particular national movements. The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement. The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such “desperate” democrats and “Socialists,” “revolutionaries” and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism. For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British “Labour” Government is waging to preserve Egypt’s dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are “for” socialism. There is no need to mention the national movement in other, larger, colonial and dependent countries, such as India and China, every step of which along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is undoubtedly a revolutionary step.
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Therefore, so long as Ansar Allah fights US imperialism and its allies, and so long as it fights for Yemeni self-determination, it has the critical support of the proletariat and the allies of our class. We criticize its anti-Semitic tendencies, but it remains a revolutionary nationalist group, so it is an ally, not an enemy, of the proletariat.
The group’s attacks on US imperialism have been impressive, and they have grown in importance as the Israeli genocide against Palestinians intensified. No matter its flaws and faults, attacking US imperialism is beneficial to the workers’ movement all over the world, and just as the masses support Palestine’s fight for self-determination, they support Yemen’s right to sovereignty and oppose the US-backed Saudi-led mass murder of Yemenis.
Yankee imperialism suffers blows in multiple places in the Middle East. In total since the 17th of October, Yankees have received more than 170 attacks from various resistance organizations, attacks that have no signs of stopping but rather to continue increasing. The Red Sea is another point where Yankee imperialism suffers attacks and casualties. Recently it had two other casualties when two of its Navy Seals disappeared in the sea during an assault on a boat, being considered dead. Yankee imperialism is also suffering attacks by Ansar Allah (known as ‘Houthies’). Recently, two attacks against Yankee military ships have been reported: the first was on 27th of January against the destroyer USS Carney, against which a missile was launched. Yankee imperialists themselves admitted the magnitude of the challenge that they are facing: “The attack on the destroyer USS Carney marked a further escalation in the biggest confrontation at sea the U.S. Navy has seen in the Middle East in decades.” On Monday the 29th of January it was known that the Yankee Mobile Naval Base, the USS Lewis B. Puller, had received an attack while sailing through the Gulf of Aden. Ansar Allah’s military spokesman, Brigade General Yahya Saree declared: “[The attacks will continue] until the aggression is stopped, and the siege is lifted on the people of Palestine in the Gaza Strip”.
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Ansar Allah is allied with the Palestinian national liberation forces, obviously, but it is also a part of a large “Axis of Resistance” that includes the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Syrian Arab Republic, and groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and more. We shall discuss these other groups in more detail in the next section, but we can say this now: these groups are the main forces materially fighting Israeli expansion and US imperialism, and while their class content is problematic, they are more progressive than any Western-backed group in the region.
In defiance of his people, for Erdogan, territorial expansion towards northern Syria and Cyprus is much more tangible than liberating Al-Quds (Jerusalem) from the Israelis, for Aliyev of Azerbaijan it is better to grab another piece of defenseless Armenia with the support of Israel (which continues to send weapons, even in recent weeks) than to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and for most of the Gulf monarchies, proximity to the US is non-negotiable in order to help them stand up to Iran.
This is why, despite the strong words of Erdogan (aspiring for hegemony in the Middle East), King Abdulah of Jordan (himself a Hashemite, a lineage that claims to descend from Muhammad, the prophet of Islam), Muhammad bin Salman (heir to the throne and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, financier of the Wahabbi movement in Islam and protector of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina) and the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt (name inherited with pan-Arabism from Nasser) El-Sisi, Israel knows that, for the time being, they are more aimed at controlling the anger of their populations than defying it and preserving their legitimacy with it. So Israel is not obliged to grant them anything, not even the passage of their donations in Al Rafah. The case is different with the forces that make up the “Axis of Resistance” aligned with Iran (Syria, Hizbollah, the Iraqi Shiite militias and the Houthi government in northern Yemen)… the firing of these groups, although timid compared to their total firepower (far superior to Hamas), has already done some damage to Israeli and US forces and the movements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Iraq and Syria are palpable.
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At the same time, we recognize that without proletarian leadership, it is unlikely that the Yemeni nationalist struggle will amount to the liberation of the people from imperialism as a whole. Just like the nationalists in West Africa, these nationalists can very easily become compradors for Russian and Chinese capitalist-imperialism; these imperialists may be less militarist than the Western imperialists, but they remain imperialist and exploitative toward their semi-colonies. That is a criticism we as communists cannot forget to have of Ansar Allah. Nonetheless, we wish for the best victories for this group as it combats Israeli expansionism and US imperialism, and we are sure the working people of the world support them as well.
Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon
Iraq’s current government is a comprador state for the US, but it is starting to shift away from that toward the camp of Russian imperialism. This is a consequence of the American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Ba’athist leader of Iraq from 1979-2003. Ba’athism originated in Syria as an Arab nationalist (specifically pan-Arabist, as in wanting to unite all Arab populations into one state), “socialist” ideology; while it was not the proletarian socialism that Marxism really is, it was nonetheless progressive upon its founding, and it served a vital role in anti-imperialism. Hussein, as problematic as he was, exemplified Ba’athism’s anti-imperialism, for kept Iraq from becoming a comprador of either the US or the revisionist USSR. Under him, national capitalism developed, and Iraq became a great ally of the Palestinian national liberation struggle. While the Ba’athists did get American support in their coup to seize power in 1963, and while they got support in their war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, America also covertly sold weapons to Iran and supported some Kurdish rebel groups; all this means that the US sought to weaken Iraq and its neighbors. Iraq tried to invade Kuwait in 1990, but the US, with the USSR’s support, led a coalition of compradors (including Syria) that supported Kuwait and attacked Iraq. After Iraq’s defeat, a series of brutal sanctions were put in place, killing half a million children before the invasion of 2003. The US in 2003 was able to overthrow Saddam and replace him with a puppet state; this is an inevitable problem with national bourgeois leaders. This state remained a comprador for America while the US imperialists robbed the country, tortured and abused its people, and in response faced nationalist anti-imperialist resistance from Ba’athist loyalists and Shia Islamists, as well as the rise of Sunni Islamist groups such as al Qaeda.
While the resistance reduced in 2011 with America’s withdrawal, it rose again following ISIL’s formation. To fight ISIL, the Shia-majority Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) came about, unifying many Shia Islamist groups as well as other organization to defend Iraq from this group; the PMF allied with Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Shia-majority party that has gotten involved in Syria and now with the Palestinian resistance. While the Iraqi government remained a comprador of US imperialism, it was forced to ally with the PMF to preserve its existence and to defeat ISIL; that made the PMF grow more powerful, increasing Iran’s influence in the country even after ISIL was mostly defeated. The PMF’s role against ISIL was progressive, but it turned around and oppressed the masses in their protests against Iraq’s economic conditions; this is why we cannot fully support the PMF, despite its role against US imperialism and ISIL. We see that even if its defeat of US imperialism is good for a revolution in America and allied imperialist states, it would only strengthen Russian and Chinese imperialism; unlike Ansar Allah or Hamas, these groups are not independent from Iran, and so they are tied to those imperialist powers.
We can, however, critically support the group for its recent work. The PMF supports Palestine’s national liberation struggle in recent months, for the PMF is a part of the “Axis of Resistance” allied with Palestine:
Another armed solidarity action was carried out by Iraqi groups bombarding the Embassy of Yankee imperialism in the capital of the country, Baghdad
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According to FOX News “Al Mayadeen TV” reported on Thursday that two U.S. military bases in Syria came under attack. The Al-Tanf base at Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan was attacked with a drone and the Conoco base in the countryside of the northern Deir al-Zor region was targeted by a missile. In Iraq, the U.S. intercepted three drones, targeting two different military bases, the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) confirmed. Two drones targeted the Ain al-Asad air base in Western Iraq. Another drone targeted a base in northern Iraq.
The attacks reportedly left on U.S. civilian military contractor, i.e. a Yankee mercenary, at al-Asad Air Base in Western Iraq dead.
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In Syria, the regime in place is nominally “socialist”. In reality, though, the leaders are comprador capitalists who allow imperialism to exploit the country; the “Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party” and other nominally socialist and communist parties rule a bourgeois state that has oppressed genuine communists (members of the Arab Communist Party, most notably).
That being said, the ruling class in Syria, headed now by Bashar al-Assad, does not represent the national bourgeoisie like Ba’athism once represented. Rather, the Assad family has been a comprador-bourgeois family, acting in favor of Soviet imperialism and now Russian imperialism; at the same time, Bashar’s father Hafez was willing to collaborate with American and French imperialism. [Source] Bashar continued his father’s policies of appeasing imperialists, and thus he failed to represent the Syrian masses’ interests.
In 2011, a series of protests by people, either expressing grievances with the regime or supporting Sunni Islamism and attacks on Shi’ite Muslims and Christians [Source], evolved into an outright armed uprising, leading to the state’s armed response. The latter became more predominant during the rebellion—partly because of Assad’s release of many Islamist prisoners during the protest, but mainly due to their flow from Iraq—, and they were quick to accept American imperialist aid. The US sought to overthrow the Assad regime for being a comprador for Russian imperialism, and in response Russia supported Syria to defend its imperialist control in the region.
Since 2011, the people in Syria are subjected to imperialist predatory war that currently is conducted in the form of a civil war. The armed forces of Assad’s regime (sustained politically, economically, and militarily by Russian imperialism) and the self-proclaimed ‘Free Syrian Army’ (mercenary forces directly controlled by the USA through their intelligence services and regional allies) are the contenders of this inter-imperialist dispute on the Syrian territory. In this war all kinds of horrors against the masses have been practiced, without this having motivated attention or outcry from the well known “international institutions”.
[Source]
Assad is not as good of an ally for Palestine as the PMF, Ansar Allah, etc. Unlike Hussein’s Iraq, Assad’s Syria was complacent with Israel before the civil war; during the war, Israel aided “Free Syrian Army” Jihadist rebels, and it used its occupation of Golan Heights to attack the Syrian government, but even then, Syria’s response has been minimal. That is why we cannot really support the regime in Syria. At the same time, we are even more opposed to the compradors of US imperialism, namely the “Free Syrian Army” allied with Salafi Jihadism [Source], Turkish expansionism, and US imperialism. As we are in the belly of the American imperialist beast, our primary enemy in Syria is the group of puppet groups in the country.
In both Iraq and Syria, there is the national contradiction between the Kurdish nation and the Arab nationalities of the two countries. The Kurdish people have struggled for the right to self-determination since the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement by British and French capitalist-imperialists; these imperialists divided up the old territories of the Ottoman Empire into arbitrary territories, with Lebanon and Syria being French territories, and Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq being British. These divisions ignored the national question of the regions, so the Kurdish nation got divided among Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. Because of this, states occupying Kurdistan have seen nationalism rise, and Marxists have fought for the Kurdish nation to win the right to self-determination; at the same time, imperialists have used the national contradictions to disunite the working peoples of the region, with some imperialists embracing anti-Kurd chauvinism and others backing Kurdish chauvinism. That is why it is important for revolutionaries to be careful about which groups they support among the Kurdish national movement, for not all groups are progressive; many are compradors of US imperialism.
In Iraq, the comprador regime currently in place gives nominal autonomy to its Kurds in the north. The Kurdish government there is dominated by the “Kurdish Democratic Party” (KDP), a group that supported the US’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein and that has worked with the US in suppressing the revolutionary Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); this Kurdish comprador government gets support from Turkey, which seeks to eliminate Kurdish nationhood and to take over Kurd-inhabited areas, and it gets support from Israel, which is well known for supporting genocidal, expansionist wars in addition to its own genocide on Palestine. In Syria, the situation is a little more complicated with the Kurds. While many groups are under the “Syrian Democratic Forces”, a US-backed comprador group that mainly exists to help the US steal Syrian oil (while, ironically, fighting other US-backed rebels that support Turkey rather than the Kurds), there are also many progressive and revolutionary groups in Rojava that refuse to support US imperialism. The Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement (HBDH) and the International Freedom Battalion (IFB) are coalitions of such radical anti-fascist, anti-imperialist groups, and the TKP/ML and MKP have supported these groups, with both of them in the latter and the MKP in the former. We support these progressives, for despite any flaws they may have ideologically, they are undoubtedly the most revolutionary forces in Syria. They are independent actors representing the interests of the working people in that region.
Solidarity with the revolutionary working people of Iraq and Syria! Down with the Salafi Jihadists and the compradors of imperialism! Most of all, down with US imperialism!
Proletarian Position on These Conflicts
A fairly clear pattern exists for revolutionary communists, who uphold Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as we study the ongoing wars of the Middle East. As workers, we have no interest in supporting imperialism and its compradors. We therefore support genuine anti-imperialist struggles, and at most we may critically support groups that may become compradors of rival imperialist powers; for instance, it would be correct to critically support the “Axis of Resistance” as it supports Palestine, but we realize that many of its forces are either already compradors for Russian and Chinese imperialism (often via Iran’s support for them), or they can become such in the future due to the vacillating nature of national-bourgeois groups. Ultimately, it is up to communists and all revolutionaries and progressives in the semi-colonized, semi-feudal states of West Asia to organize the masses and wage revolutionary people’s wars that smash the old systems and establish New Democracy and socialism. In the meantime, communists in imperialist states must organize their masses and hinder, in every way possible, all aid to the states’ semi-colonies; most of all, Americans and other Westerners must work to stop aid to Israel, and we must work to end aid to Turkey’s military and other reactionaries.
When the time comes, the paper tigers of imperialism, feudalism, and comprador capitalism will fall to pieces! For the salvation of the world, socialism must win! Workers of the world, unite!