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<div class="entry-date">June 04, 2014<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/04/the-syrian-elections/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/04/the-syrian-elections/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>Syrian's Say No to
Intervention</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">The Syrian Elections</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle"><big><big>by AJAMU BARAKA</big></big></div>
<div class="main-text"><big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Defying threats of violence, tens of thousands of ordinary
Syrians went to the polls to cast a vote that was more about Syrian
dignity and self-determination than any of the candidates on the
ballot. After three years of unimaginable atrocities fomented by a
demented and dying U.S. empire, with the assistance of the royalist
monarchies of the Middle East and the gangster states of NATO, the
Syrian people demonstrated, by their participation, that they had not
surrendered their national sovereignty to the geo-strategic interests
of the U.S. and its colonial allies in Europe and Israel.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The dominant narrative on Syria, carefully cultivated by
Western state propagandists and dutifully disseminated by their
auxiliaries in the corporate media, is that the conflict in Syria is a
courageous fight on the part of the majority of the Syrian people
against the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. As the story goes,
the al-Assad “regime,” (it is never referred to as a government), can
only maintain its power through the use of force. By attacking “its own
citizens,” the regime, representing the minority Alawite community, can
only maintain its dominance over the rest of the country through sheer
terror.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>However, events in Syria, with the election being a
dramatic example, continue to reveal fissures in that story.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>First, it became clear that substantial numbers of
non-Alawite people and communities support the government. And even
those elements of Syrian society that were not enthusiastic supporters
of the government grew to understand that the legitimate indigenous
opposition had been displaced by powerful non-Syrian forces from the
U.S. and the Gulf States who provided material, political and
diplomatic support to an opposition that not only had tenuous ties to
the country but seemed only committed to waging war. This convinced
many that the only politically consistent option was to support the
government, as an expression of support for Syria’s sovereignty and
its’ national project.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>As a result, not only did popular support for the
government hold over the last three years of carnage, it expanded to
include those in the opposition who were against the destruction of the
country and the slimy Syrian ex-pats who traveled from one European
capital to another begging for the U.S. and NATO to do what it did in
Libya – destroy the infrastructure of the country through the use of
NATO air power and flood the country with weapons.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>But the most graphic undermining of the dominant Western
narrative has been the participation of tens of thousands of ordinary
Syrians who have braved threats and violence to participate in the
election process.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Western corporate news outlets, especially in the U.S.,
were unable to explain the huge turnout of Syrian refugees voting in
Lebanon preceding the election on Tuesday, so they just decided not to
cover it. Images of Syrians displaced by war yet backing al Assad for
president did not support the carefully crafted story that the only
people fleeting war were those who had been terrorized to do so by the
government.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Instead, the U.S. press raised the question of the
“legitimacy” of elections taking place in a country involved in a
“civil war,” a position consistent with their narrative of the war
being one between the Syrian people and the government as opposed to
what it has turned out to be – a war largely being fought by foreign
forces, with the indigenous opposition forces allied with the feckless
Syrian National Coalition; isolated, out-gunned and militarily
irrelevant.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>And while the U.S. press uncritically propagated the
position of the U.S. state, which wrote off the election as
illegitimate and a farce, the media seemed not to notice the
contradictory position of the U.S. writing off the election in Syria
because of conflict but giving enthusiastic support to the election in
Ukraine in the midst of a conflict and contested legitimacy. The
Western media could explore a few obvious questions if it was really
independent, such as: what makes the election in Ukraine legitimate
when half of the country boycotts the vote and the national army
violently attacks its own citizens in Eastern Ukraine who refused to
recognize the legitimacy of the coup-makers in Kiev?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Other questions might be: if they deem it appropriate to
support an election in Ukraine, why would the Obama Administration
violently oppose elections in Syria, especially if, as it claims, the
majority of the people oppose the current government? Wouldn’t the
illegitimacy of the government in Syria be confirmed by the low
turnout, even in areas where there was a modicum of security? If Syrian
authorities organized opportunities for displaced Syrians in various
countries around the world to vote and very few participated, wouldn’t
that verify the Administration’s position that the al Assad government
lacks popular support?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Yet in various European capitals and other countries like
Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt, efforts were made to
block the opportunity for displaced Syrians to vote in their election –
why? Were the authorities afraid that the narrative of non-support for
al Assad might be challenged if there was a proliferation of images
like the ones that came out of Lebanon showing thousands of Syrians
marching to the polls holding signs of Bashar al Assad?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>It will be interesting to see how the authorities and
their spokespeople in the corporate media spin the voting process in
Syria.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><b>The U.S. position is a position of continued war in
Syria </b></big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Secretary of State John Kerry declared that Syria’s
presidential election was a <a
href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/uk-says-moderate-syrian-opposition-must-survive"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://bigstory.ap.org']);">“farce,”</a>
and that the U.S. and its partners are prepared to quickly redouble
efforts to support opposition forces in the county. The meaning of this
position is that it does not matter what kind of public display of
support is given to al Assad or anyone who might emerge as the head of
state in Syria, the U.S. objective is more death, more war and more
chaos.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>This is the essence of the “new” global strategy unveiled
by President Obama during his foreign policy <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/us/politics/transcript-of-president-obamas-commencement-address-at-west-point.html?_r=2"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nytimes.com']);">speech</a>
at West Point last week. The U.S. declaration that it will “change the
dynamics on the ground in Syria” came out of a meeting of the so-called
“Friends of Syria,” a motley collection of 11 Western colonial nations
and their Arab creations. The Obama Administration intends to work
though these kinds of regional formations and alliances to advance its
strategic objectives with as minimal a cost to the U.S. as possible.
Of course, the interests and desires of the states or peoples involved
are of secondary concern. The desire on the part of the majority of the
people to end the conflict in Syria is not even considered. As part of
the effort to secure public support in the U.S. for destabilizing and
then attacking Syria it was posited that by deposing the al Assad
government a real democracy can be introduced. That is why policymakers
pretended to back so-called moderate elements that support democracy.
But over the last year or so, even that proposal has been eliminated.
Democracy in Syria is as much a threat to U.S. imperialist interests as
it is in Ukraine – and increasingly even in the U.S.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Policymakers in Washington and London have already made
the shift to supporting what are being called “moderate” Islamists
forces grouped around the Islamic Front (IF) with al Nusrah, al Qaeda’s
official Syrian affiliate, operating in the background. The problem for
the Syrian people is that these moderates the west is supporting are
Salafi-Wahhabi fundamentalists who reject representative democracy and
support the imposition of sharia law in Syria. So while the U.S. and
their allies characterize the election in Syria a farce, their solution
is to back forces who would eliminate even the pretext of democratic
participation. This is the progress that is being imposed on the
secular, pluralist society of Syria by the Western “liberators.”</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><b>It is not about al Assad, it is about the people of
Syria and imperialism: </b></big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Questions of democratic legitimacy have never determined
U.S. relationships with any state where the U.S. had strategic and
economic interests. If a commitment to democracy and democratic
governance was the determining factor for U.S. support, the Obama
Administration would not be in alliance with the dictatorship of the
royalists in the Gulf states, it would have condemned the coups in
Honduras and Egypt, not given diplomatic or economic support to the
coup in Ukraine, and would not be supporting right-wing elements in
Venezuela attempting to destabilize the democratically-elected
government in that country.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>There was a time when this position would have been clear
to the peace and anti-war, anti-imperialist progressive and left
movements in the U.S. and the West. But over the last two decades, with
the ideological infiltration of the left by liberalism, social
democracy and the rightist tendencies of “anti-authoritarian”
anarchism, the resulting political confusion has seen a consistent
alignment of the left with the imperial project of the U.S. – from the
attacks on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia through to attacks on
nationalist projects throughout the global South, from Libya to Syria.
Since the last gasp of anti-imperialism solidarity represented by the
massive marches in opposition to the illegal attack on Iraq in 2003,
the peace, anti-war and anti-imperialist movements have been in
relative disarray.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>This disarray and ineffectiveness is taking place right at
the historical moment when in order to maintain its global hegemony,
the colonial/capitalist West has decided to revert to what it does best
– spread death and destruction. For those of us who understand our
responsibility situated, as we are, at the center of this monstrosity
called the U.S., we have to strip away the veneer of <a
href="http://www.ajamubaraka.com/human-rights-and-humanitarian-imperialism-in-syria-a-view-from-an-african-american-human-rights-defender/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.ajamubaraka.com']);">humanitarianism</a>
that hides the ugly inner logic of domination and we have to “struggle”
– a term now passé for the hip post-modern nihilist left.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>When a people, like the people of Syria, demonstrate their
commitment to the integrity of their own national experience in
opposition to the efforts of the imperialist states that we reside in,
the only principled position we can take is to stand in solidarity with
those people, no matter how we see the internal contradictions of that
nation/state. The people of Syria have said no to foreign intervention.
Those of us in the imperialist West, can we do anything less?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong> is a human rights
activist, organizer and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate
Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C.
His latest publications include contributions to two recently published
books “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA” and “Claim No Easy
Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral.” He can be reached at <a
href="mailto:info.abaraka@gmail.com">info.abaraka@gmail.com</a> and <a
href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></em></big></big></p>
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