Syria: popular revolution to avoid civil war

31/05/2012
Preamble to the Int'l Solidarity Initiative with the Syrian People after the massacre of Houla
Carlos Varea, Santiago Alba, Moreno Pasquinelli, Wilhelm Langthaler
The Annan plan is not able to stop the repression and the killing – as the last massacre in Houla has shown. The political responsible for this is the Assad regime as it continues to negate the legitimate democratic demands of the Syrian people. It is targeting all political expressions including peaceful demonstrations and all expressions of popular organisation.

Thus the Assad regime is pushing the country into sectarian civil war. With its marauding Shabiha militia it is lending political ground to armed sectarian forces backed by the Gulf States which search to retaliate in the same way and are calling for a foreign military intervention.

The only way to avoid the scenario of sectarian civil war, which will mainly help Israel, imperialism and its Gulf proxies, is an all out popular revolution involving the broad masses engulfing all confessions. Therefore the latest strike movement shaking Damascus shows the way forward potentially marginalising the foreign backed Taqfirist sectarian forces.

We fully recognise the right to armed self-defence against the regime’s repression but we still believe that the military escalation is to the detriment of the popular mass movement. It does not help to break up the sectarian armour of the regime, to the contrary, which remains its prime safeguard. Only a democratic mass movement can convince all social and communitarian sectors to join the revolutionary camp en masse. To isolate and eventually defeat the Assad regime is first of all a political and not a military question that means to create a broad as possible consensus across the confessions.

No to foreign intervention
No to civil war
No to sectarianism

For a popular revolution to topple the Assad regime

For democracy, social justice, peace and national sovereignty - International Solidarity Initiative with the Syrian People

Endorsers International Solidarity Initiative with the Syrian People