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Privatising Syria: US Plans Post-Assad Selloff

Global Delinquents Kit Klarenberg, Dec 24, 2024

Following the abrupt fall of Bashar Assad’s government in Syria, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state, or will splinter into smaller chunks in the manner of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For the time being at least though, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster, after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.

As Reuters reported December 12th, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister”.

However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last. This is clear from multiple mainstream reports, which state HTS has informed local and international business leaders it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control” when in office.

As Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells Global Delinquents, state-controlled parts of Syria’s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt they weren’t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country, is economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides, when “securing key economic assets is vital to societal reconstruction, and should therefore be a matter of priority”:

“We can see clearly what kind of country these ‘moderate rebels’ plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with US imperialism and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence other nations in the region lack. Assad’s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new ‘free market’ approach will see all of that utterly decimated.”

‘Global Economy’

Syria’s economic independence, and strength, under Assad’s rule, and the benefits reaped by average citizens as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the Western-fomented dirty war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions amply underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how pre-war Damascus “had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.”

Not only that, but per a 2018 UN investigation, “universal, free healthcare” was extended to all Syrian citizens, who “enjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.” Education was likewise free, and before the conflict, “an estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class and Syria’s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women [emphasis added].” By 2016, millions were out of school.

A UN Human Rights Council report two years later noted prior to 2011, Syria “was the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,” its “thriving agricultural sector” contributing “about 21%” to GDP 2006 – 2011. Civilians’ daily caloric intake “was on par with many Western countries,” with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country’s economy was “one of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%” annually.

At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors, and even then was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo. Simultaneously, US military occupation of a resource-rich third of Syria cut off the government’s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation only worsened with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act’s passing in June 2020………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

EU and US-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms”, in order to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and lacking employment opportunities locally stubbornly endure or worsen, while living costs constantly rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along too, US officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to personally enrich themselves from privatization of former state industries.

Does such a fate await Damascus? For Alexander McKay, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Now “free”, Syria will be forcedly made “dependent upon imports from the West” evermore. This not only fattens the Empire’s bottom line, but “severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.” He notes similar efforts were undertaken worldwide throughout the post-1989 era of US unipolarity. This was well underway in Russia during the 1990s, “until a turnaround started under Putin, post 2000”:

“The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The US and its allies do not want independent development of any nation’s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.”  https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/privatising-syria-us-plans-post-assad?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=552010&post_id=153534171&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

December 24, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Syria, USA | Leave a comment

Blinken Confirms the US Is in Direct Contact With al-Qaeda-Linked HTS

 By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com, December 16, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/15/blinken-confirms-the-us-is-in-direct-contact-with-al-qaeda-linked-hts/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that the US has been in direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a US-designated terror organization that grew out of al-Qaeda in Syria and recently led the offensive that overthrew former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said on Saturday, confirming earlier reports that said the US was talking to HTS. “Our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed, and we’re prepared to help them do so.”

HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, are overseeing the new “transitional” government in Syria. Blinken and other US officials have celebrated the ouster of Assad and made clear they’re willing to work with Julani despite his past as an ISIS and al-Qaeda leader.

Julani, who has been going by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has been presenting himself as a moderate in an effort to gain support from the West and began a rebranding campaign in 2016 by claiming his former group, the al-Nusra Front, was cutting ties with al-Qaeda. At the time, he thanked the “commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.”

In 2017, Julani merged his group with several other Islamist factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018. The US also placed a $10 million bounty on Julani’s head.

The Biden administration is reportedly considering removing the terror designation from HTS, which would allow the US to provide significant aid to an HTS-led government. Blinken released a statement a few days ago outlining conditions for US support.

“The United States reaffirms its full support for a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition. This transition process should lead to credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance that meets international standards of transparency and accountability,” Blinken said.

While the US is flexible with HTS’s designation, it frequently points to the terror designations of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to justify Israeli attacks that slaughter huge numbers of civilians.

December 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Syria, USA | Leave a comment