Syria Under Fire: a bloodied revolution

Foreword to the English edition

This edition is an English translation of the book 2013-2014: Syria Under Fire, a bloodied revolution that was published in late 2014.

This book was presented in Argentina in the National Library of Buenos Aires in August of 2015. Also, it was published in the Spanish State and presented there in January of 2017.

In this edition we reproduce, before the first chapter, a review of the presentation made in Buenos Aires, before a crowded auditorium, eager to deepen the debate on the Syrian question and lift the veil that had been laid on the massacre and genocide carried out by Bashar and Putin on account of imperialism in Syria. At the table of this presentation there were two of the authors of this work: Carlos Munzer and Abu Muad, surrounded by representatives of solidarity committees with the Syrian people around the world.

In this edition in English, we then incorporate the presentation of the book Syria Under Fire staged in Buenos Aires. There they explained the arguments and fundamental opinions of the authors on the development of the revolution and the counterrevolution in Syria.

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In this book, a call is made to break the siege of silence and slanders mounted on the Syrian revolution, which gave al-Assad a free hand to carry out the greatest genocide of the 21st century.

By mid-2015, this siege of silence was broken when hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Syrian refugees, desperately reached the shores of Europe. They left their martyrs and their blood in the Mediterranean Sea. The image of Aylan Kurdi, a little boy of only three years old, floating lifeless on the shores of Turkey shook the world from its foundations and unveiled the hitherto hidden catastrophe suffered by the Syrian masses.

The Syrian refugees marched through Europe and the European working class came out to meet them with great class solidarity. European borders were opened and the unity of the working class was placed on the order of the day on either side of the Mediterranean.

That is why imperialism acted quickly. It launched a campaign of Islamophobia, based on the self-inflicted attacks of Paris on November 13th, 2015. Social-imperialist leftist parties played the role of spokesmen for this sinister campaign, reaffirming that the enemy is ISIS. They separated the refugees from the rest of the workers in Europe. And so the European Union closed the borders again and today the refugees have been locked in real concentration camps. The siege of the Syrian revolution was again imposed.

***

The events that came hastily on after the first edition of this book in Spanish showed the total validity of this work.

The reader will find that Syria under Fire unveils the counterrevolutionary plan of imperialism for Syria. At the Geneva conferences, under Obama's command, all his agents and lackeys were centralized in the Maghreb and the Middle East. Thus, Bashar al-Assad, reinforced by Putin, Iranian Ayatollahs, and Hezbollah, played the role of massacring without mercy the Syrian masses who had risen in a heroic revolution for bread and freedom. More than 600,000 dead, entire cities destroyed, most of the population forced to flee their homes and live as IDPs, in tents in the middle of nowhere, on Syrian borders, or as refugees in other countries, are the result of such a counterrevolution.

On the other hand, also in the conference of Geneva there was Turkey. Under Turkish command was the Sunnite bourgeoisie, essentially the one that commanded the FSA, while critically and to its left was located - and still is still located - Jabhat al-Nusra, that expresses the commercial bourgeoisie and the more nationalistic fraction of the dominant elites in Syria. This Sunnite bourgeoisie dressed as a friend of the revolution to enter like a Trojan Horse to the zones that the masses had freed of the presence of Bashar. His goal was to control the revolutionary uprising and end giving it out from within. This has been more than proven by the fall of Aleppo, Homs, Daraya, Hama and many other rebel cities.

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At the moment that this edition is being published in English, the second volume of this book is in the works that will be titled: 2015-2017: Syria, Operation Final Massacre. This publication has been delayed because Abu Al Baraa, one of his coauthors, was assassinated at the hands of the genocidal forces of fascist al-Assad and the butcher Putin, while he was defending Aleppo’s Southern Front, on October 24th, 2016.

By mid-to-late-2015, Abu Al Baraa had embarked on a journey to meet with the editorial team of Rudolph Klement Publishing House (Abu Muad, Carlos Munzer, among others) to advance the culmination of this second volume. He spent more than a month in Turkey processing his visa to go to Argentina and Brazil.

During his stay in Turkey, Abu Al Baraa dedicated himself to writing for this second volume of the book Syria Under Fire. He told about the experiences of the Syrian refugees in that country. He also wrote about the reality of the oppressed Kurdish people, who were being brutally persecuted and massacred by the Erdogan’s government, while in Syria the Stalinist PKK put them under the command of US imperialism and its operations in the north of that country. Also, while abroad, he described the suffering of the masses in his country. Therefore, in this edition in English, we have included these works of Abu Al Baraa as an annex to this work, which the reader will find on page 565.

Abu Al Baraa, a writer of this book, who is today dead, murdered by al-Assad's assassins, understood -like the rest of the authors of this book- that the victory of the revolution had a fundamental element: breaking the siege of the Syrian revolution. As the Syrian martyred people who came to Europe by 2015, international solidarity had to be conquered in order to stop the imperialist powers that from the beginning had supported al-Assad so he could do for them the dirty work of massacring the revolution.

Abu Al Baraa ended his stay in Turkey in early December 2015 without getting the visa. The governments of Brazil and Argentina denied it. Islamophobia was growing in the West. The EU was beginning to close its borders to refugees and to lock them up in concentration camps, as we said earlier.

Abu Al Baraa had then to return to Syria. There he continued his work as a fighter of the revolution, writer, and journalist; he wrote from the very place of events. He was a socialist of the Syrian revolution, but deeply internationalist. Like all the authors of this book, he was convinced that the Syrian revolution could only succeed as part of the same struggle and revolution together with the workers of the oppressed peoples of the Maghreb and the Middle East, and fundamentally with the European working class.

For this reason, after giving an account of the presentation of this book, in this edition, we have included the tribute to Abu Al Baraa by our publishing house. Also accompanying this homage is the one written by the authors of the book Syria under Fire, Carlos Munzer, and Abu Muad.

Next, we reproduce the column of the Argentinean newspaper Perfil of November 19th, 2016, written by Rafael Spregelburd, Argentinean writer, and playwright, in honor of Abu al-Baraa. This column is entitled To write a book. I have in my hands the book of a dead man. It has all the sensitivity of an intellectual who has captured the drama of the Syrian masses, which this work concentrates, and of one of its writers who died fighting for bread and freedom when fighting against al-Assad. Such a wonderful homage!

Thus, before the Presentation of the book (translated from the Spanish Edition), the tributes to our friend and comrade Abu Al Baraa, are accompanying this foreword to the English edition.

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The present edition in English of this work is published when rebel Aleppo has already fallen. For months, Aleppo was surrounded by the genocidal forces of Bashar and Putin. No food or any kind of supply could get into it. There was no way out either, for anyone who tried to leave it was captured by Bashar’s forces and did not see the light of day again. The besieged city lived incessant bombing, destruction of all its infrastructure, hospitals, schools, houses.

During 2016 we witnessed this brutal massacre, but it was also clear to all Syrian resistance facing that counterrevolutionary coup that it would not have been possible if Bashar and Putin had not had the aid of - that is, the giving out of the resistance by - the Sunnite bourgeois generals who were in command of all fractions of the Free Syrian Army and the al-Nusra front.

Survivors of such a massacre, who suffered starvation while resisting Bashar, reported that in besieged rebel Aleppo the generals of the Free Syrian Army kept their warehouses closed which had enough food to feed the people for months. They had also grabbed the armament, and meanwhile, they told everyone who resisted against Bashar that there were neither arms nor ammunition or any more forces and that they had to back down.

This sector of the Sunnite bourgeoisie had called to abandon the battle in Aleppo against the dog Bashar. It withdrew forces from that city to support the Turkish invasion of Syria under the pretext of confronting ISIS.

Jabhat al-Nusra mobilized its forces and took them in from Idlib; they announced a multi-phase plan to break the siege of Aleppo. They did not advance a millimeter to immediately declare that the encirclement could not be broken and that there were no conditions. They argued that if they continued in their attempt, Bashar would continue to massacre civilians at a time when they needed humanitarian aid. Thus they justified their withdrawal and signed a pact with the UN to enter Aleppo with food, etc. But it happened that Al Nusra left and Bashar continued to massacre an isolated and sold out Aleppo, reason why he could finally enter it in December of 2016.

Thus the plans of the Geneva Conference under the command of US imperialism were applied. al-Assad, Putin, and Hezbollah massacred without mercy; while Turkey and the Sunnite bourgeoisie guaranteed that the Resistance was given out from within. Each of these bourgeois forces sought and even seeks today its share of the spoils of a broken and martyred Syria. But they all have a limit in this dispute: the danger that the armed masses will advance to conquer the bread by attacking the interests of usurers, bankers, millionaire businessmen of the various bourgeois gangs of Syria, minor partners and subjected to imperialism. The same is ISIS, whose generals are the guardians of the oil wells and pipelines of northern Syria and the Sunnite triangle of Iraq.

The fall of Aleppo marked a before and after in the Syrian revolution. When this book was published in Spanish in late 2014, the battle for Damascus was open. The fall of Bashar in the capital was raised a thousand and one times. Imperialism saved him, sending Iranian and Putin’s troops since his army had melted down. The Kurdish commandos worked together with them for the fall of Aleppo and the key cities of the Resistance. Today we live the tragedy of seeing the revolution in its last trenches, with a holocaust on the verge of consummation, after the Sunnite bourgeoisie of the FSA gave out from within the heroic resistance of the masses of Aleppo.

As the Introduction to this book says on page 59: Syria: a great revolution drowned in blood and covered with betrayal. It is increasingly clear that in Syria imperialism concentrated its efforts to chastise the workers and peoples of the world that dare rebel against tyrannies and oppressors and fight for bread and all their demands, and also imperialism sought to contain a chain of revolutions that from Tunisia to Libya to Yemen to Egypt to Damascus threatened to reach Jerusalem.

US imperialism could not intervene directly with its army since, as shown in this book, it had already had to flee from Iraq and partly from Afghanistan, as the American masses were no longer wanting to die for Bush or for the imperialist oil companies, much less for Wall Street looters. Thus, in these six years of the Syrian revolution, countless times the masses were able to assault and regroup for new counteroffensives, all given out from within by this cruel and cynical Sunnite bourgeoisie.

***

If this treacherous plan of the Geneva conference could be applied, it was because there was also the whole international left, in its Stalinist, social democratic and renegades-of-Marxism variants, which ended up dressing al-Assad as anti-imperialist and depicting the heroic resistance of the Syrian people as enemies of the workers of the world.

The tragedy of the Syrian revolution is that the world working class could not concentrate its forces because the reformist left prevented it, encircling the revolution. They said that the enemy was ISIS and not Bashar. Some openly supported this genocidal dog who acted on behalf of imperialism. Others called for neutrality and to refrain from intervening, so he could continue to massacre with impunity. Other ones supported the Sunnite bourgeoisie that gave out the revolution from within. Finally, others followed the Kurdish PKK and its pact with Bashar as the soul to the body. All infused Islamophobia to the world working class and separated it from their class siblings in the Maghreb and the Middle East.

All tendencies of the reformist left and the union bureaucracies left the Syrian revolution isolated and allowed imperialism to carry out its counterrevolutionary plan with all its agents.

***

At the end of this edition in English, a new meeting of the Astana (capital of Kazakhstan) conference -a continuation of the Geneva conference- has just been completed. The reader will find that the present work speaks of a plan of partition of Syria, which is precisely what they have decided to impose already in this last meeting. This plan is expressed in Chapter 3 entitled The Plan for the Lebanonization of Syria and in Chapter 5, entitled The objectives of the Geneva II conference.

Since the Astana conference, the implementation in Syria of safe areas, which are ghettos - perhaps the size of provinces - where the resistance has to be completely disarmed and to accept the control of these areas by the armies of Russia, Turkey, and Iran. The USA, which has already put troops on the ground and launched some bombs to prove that it is who will distribute Syria, has openly entered the north of that country.

That is to say, we are entering a critical phase of the Syrian revolution, where the partition of the nation and the disarmament of the masses are tried to be imposed, and the massacre consummated. The last trenches of resistance have not surrendered; but as they are subjected to the bourgeois gangs and with the Syrian revolution isolated from the world working class, it is day by day strangled more. We are living a tragedy for all the workers of the world.

That is to say; if the plan of safe zones is imposed completely, it would mean the defeat of the revolution and the distribution of business in a split Syria… i.e., the peace of the graveyards.

Thus we see that the Syrian north and east - the oil zones - are under the control of the American troops that have put the Kurdish YPG under their command and now order the gradual withdrawal of ISIS, being careful that they do not make the masses rise up in this process. Turkey, in turn, controls a corridor and a northern border crossing, guarding the pipelines and securing the transit of its trade route. The role of gendarmes goes to Iran and Russia, to support fascist al-Assad. But they are mere hitmen; they cannot have Syrian territory under their direct control.

If this plan were to be imposed, Syria would end, with areas under American and Turkish control, a possible accession of the UN, also of al-Assad with mercenary troops (supported from behind by the Russian bayonets) or the Sunnite bourgeoisie imposing the safe zones, which mean nothing more than surrender and disarmament.

***

When this English edition of Syria under Fire is published, we witness the tragedy of the Kurdish people. The responsibility comes from its leadership, the Stalinist PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan), which has maintained since 2012 a pact with the dog Bashar and also with US imperialism, that tied the luck of this people to that of its oppressors. The reader will find in the present work the denunciation to this pact and the warning of the terrible consequences that it would bring for the exploited Kurds. Today we see that not even autonomy has been given to the Kurdish people in Syria, while the Turkish killer army encircles and chases it, and imprisons, represses and brutally assassinates it in Turkey.

US troops have landed openly in the so-called Rojava, the Kurdish area of Syria. They have installed military bases there. They have taken US marines, tanks, and planes. They command and lead the actions of the YPG, who have already become true mercenary troops for US imperialism.

In this book an even more precise definition of ISIS is elaborated: it is the guardian of the oil wells for imperialism, and it served to control militarily from within the revolutionary uprisings in eastern Syria and the Sunni triangle of Iraq. Therefore ISIS continues to guarantee the flow of oil to the transnationals and where it has stepped and imposed itself, the revolution has stopped.

In Syria, we see today that after ISIS imposed itself in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, these cities ceased to be bastions of the fight against al-Assad. The 2014 offensive of the Sunnite triangle Iraqi masses was stopped by ISIS at the gates of Baghdad and did not join with the exploited Shiites of the south. Barely a year after this book was published in Spanish, the Iraqi Shiite masses began an uprising against the government of the US protectorate because of the subhuman living conditions they were suffering, proving that the unity of the exploited all over Iraq was the order of the day; this was just what ISIS prevented.

ISIS was the big counterrevolutionary stick brandished by imperialism and at the same time the great excuse, because under the pretext of facing its terrorism all the massacres in the Middle East were justified and continue to be justified.

Since 2014, US imperialism has been bombarding not ISIS but civilians in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, as well as in Mosul in Iraq.

Undoubtedly, after the services provided by the bourgeois generals of the ISIS in the Sunnite triangle of Iraq, imperialism pushes them more and more to crush the masses there, so that imperialism and its ground troops can take control of the cities that two years ago they lived a true insurrection of masses against the Yankee protectorate.

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This edition of the book Syria under Fire comes then in moments where, as reflected in the resolutions of the last Astana Conference mentioned above, under the command of the United States, a definitive closure to the revolution is sought to be imposed. Obama had centralized and used all his agents against the revolution; now comes Trump to try to settle the counterrevolutionary triumph, putting his gunboats directly on the ground and making public his military presence in northern Syria.

They want to give the final blow to the Syrian revolution, as a warning to all the workers of the planet who dare rise for bread, freedom and a life worthy of its name.

Trump assumed the presidency of the USA declaring that there can be no dominant imperialism that does not win a war. As we said earlier, US imperialism had already had to withdraw from Iraq in 2008 - as it did yesterday in Vietnam - and its own working class did not allow it new military invasions. Today we see that Trump shows his army and his gunboats in the world, as in Syria, in Afghanistan and in the Pacific. US imperialism still chooses its targets very precisely and bombards from afar. They fear that dead American soldiers coming home in black bags will wake up again a powerful anti-war movement in the streets of the United States. But, though carefully, they advance to regain their full firepower on the planet. Whether or not they succeed will depend on whether the world and American, working class, in particular, allow it.

Thanks to the treacherous leaderships that imperialism succeeded in strangling and crushing the focuses of the world revolution, not only in Syria and the whole Middle East but also in Ukraine. The deformed Cuban workers' state was finally given over to imperialism by the new Castro bourgeoisie. The rise of masses in Latin America was aborted. In the US, the whole left called for support to Obama, who snatched all the gains from the American working class. They then called in to trust the swindler Sanders, who in turn called for Clinton; though, the American workers did not vote for her, since they identified her with Obama, and ended up voting for Trump.

No less serious than this is that, proclaiming the fight for a real democracy and a more social Maastricht, the European reformist has taken the Greek, French, Spanish, etc., working class from the streets and left isolated hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Europe, now set in real concentration camps. In imperialist Europe of Maastricht, who is giving in the masses from within is not the cruel Sunnite bourgeoisie but these Judases of the labor movement, who live as pseudo-leftists in trade unions and parliaments, receiving crumbs that fall from the banquet of exploitation and plunder of the semi-colonial world by their own imperialist bourgeoisie.

Under these conditions, the Operation Final Massacre is developing in Syria, where they seek to impose the peace of the graveyards. On this, the second volume of the book, which will be published before the end of this year, is all about.

However, even so, the last chapters of the Syrian revolution are still not written in heaven. Its end will be written by the masses in the class struggle at the international level.

If the revolution does not arrive in time, if the masses of the imperialist countries do not revolt, if there are many setbacks, if the definitive defeat is imposed in Syria and the world working class is out of the scene, no doubt that open disputes will begin among imperialist gangs, as were the First and Second World Wars. Therefore, the Syrian question is a question for the working class of the whole planet.

We present, therefore, this English edition of 2013-2014: Syria under Fire, a Bloodied Revolution, which retains all its validity and has proved its correctness regarding this crucial question for the world working class.

In turn, we announce that we are preparing the release of the second volume of this book: 2015-2017: Syria, Operation Final Massacre, explaining how the counterrevolution in Syria has been imposed and the current conditions in which it develops, and we advance in this prologue.

August 22nd: with the attendance of hundreds of youth, workers, and intellectuals and with more than 17 international delegations

The book Syria under Fire was presented in the Argentine National Library in Buenos Aires

With the Augusto Raul Cortazar room of the National Library full of attendees, on Saturday, August 22nd the book Syria Under Fire, a bloodied revolution was successfully presented. The authors of the book Abu Muad and Carlos Munzer were there, and Abu Al Baraa sent his message. The correspondents that worked on this book, who have been in Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon and Palestine, were also there. International delegations from different parts of the world that are fighting to break the fence imposed on the Syrian revolution sent their salutations and directly participated in the event. There was a salutation letter of the JRCL of Japan, direct interventions from the comrades of Africa, Maghreb and the Middle East and Latin America. This was because, as it was shown in the presentation, this book was a result of a collective elaboration by all those who relentlessly fought and still fight all over the world to stop the massacre on the Syrian masses and for the victory of their revolution.

Against so many slanders and lies by the media and the organizations that wanted to falsify the facts of the Syrian workers and exploited's revolution, the presentation of the book became a tribune for a truth that nobody can hide anymore: In Syria we are before a genocide by Bashar al-Assad on behalf of the imperialist powers meant to stop the chain of revolutions that shook Maghreb and the Middle East and threatened the imperialist dominance in the region and consequently his fascist gendarme, the Zionist State of Israel.

This truth is already coming out everywhere with millions of Syrians that, in their attempt of running away from destruction, death, and the overcrowded refugee camps, try to reach other countries of the region, but mostly the European coasts. The massacre of 400 thousand exploited and the displacement of 10 million refugees barely surviving can no longer be hidden.

With the entering into Europe of 50 thousand oppressed in Syria, we are witnessing the biggest migration of refugees since WWII. Going from Macedonia to Serbia, entering from Turkey into Greece, millions of women and children run away from the massacre and the genocide of al-Assad who is supported by Obama, Putin, and other imperialist lackeys of the region.

The presentation of the book Syria Under Fire happens at the same time with this fact that is shaking the entire world. The massacre of the Syrian masses can no longer be hidden. Those who speak on behalf of socialism and silence this genocide imposed by the dog Bashar al-Assad on the Syrian workers and peasants are his accomplices.

Those so-called Bolivarians, who today sell out Cuba to imperialism and starve the people in Latin America like in Venezuela, Equador on behalf of Wall Street bankers, are the same ones who support the Iranian Ayatollahs and the murderer Putin, who hold Bashar al-Assad's sabers to kill the Syrian people. They all did the dirty work of the imperialist powers to chastise the revolutionary masses of Maghreb and the Middle East, which since 2011 have initiated a huge revolution that shook the world.

With the Syrian genocide, imperialism wants to punish all the workers of the world who fight for their fair demands. The imperialist counterrevolution did not stop with the Syrian massacre. It made a bloodbath in Tahrir Square and today, with the Saudi and Emirati troops, there is an invasion of Yemen, where the workers and peasant masses unified in a great revolution...

The fight is not over. Syria, the massacred revolution is reaching to Europe. The tragedy is that it is not arriving there by the revolutionary path but through a migration of starving and persecuted people escaping from the massacre.

The world working class cannot stay any longer watching the sufferings of their class brothers and sisters of the world. Break the siege that the treacherous leaderships and the left parties impose on the masses for them not to fight together with their Syrian brothers and sisters against imperialism and for their demands!

If the counterrevolution is settled in Syria, the future of the world working class and the Palestinian masses, in particular, is in danger. We have to take to the streets in the entire world, to surround the Syrian embassies! In Europe, the enemy is at home!

The European imperialist powers, that today turn a blind eye, are the ones that supported Bashar's hands and today roughly attack the migrant workers, such as the iron lady Merkel does, the speaker of the German Transnational Companies.

With the presentation of the book Syria Under Fire, an international current is expressing, which in 2011 arrived at the battlefield of the revolutionary masses in Maghreb and the Middle East, and it will never leave alone this heroic resistance that fights in Aleppo, Idlib, Yemen and the Palestinian intifada.

This presentation was a political fact in the life of the left of the Argentinean working class and its youth. When the primary elections campaign was over, the walls of Buenos Aires only showed the pictures of the candidates of the employers, with their infamous smiles and promises, and also the pictures of the candidates of a left that is adapted to them. The signs calling for the presentation of the book Syria Under Fire, fighting against oblivion and against forgiveness to the killers of the Syrian masses, filled Buenos Aires. That is our pride. The massacre and the fight of the world working class will not be hidden, as it is being done. The forces of the Fourth International have devoted to this task.

When the presentation of the book started, Walter Montoya, director of Rudolph Klement Publishing House, said it took 2 years in conquering this book, which was elaborated from the very terrain of the developments. One of our comrade correspondents, as a journalist, was detained in Tunisia. And there were impostures and fallacious charges on comrade Carlos Munzer, when he returned from Japan after fighting with the workers of the Pacific to break the siege on the Syrian revolution; those charges were pressed by DAs and fascist judges that ordered the police to break into an office of our Publishing House, accusing him, under the orders of the fascist judge Melazo and the judge of SIDE in La Plata, Maria Victoria Huergo, of being part of a criminal association. But it is clear that the only criminal association is that of these judges, advised by the intelligence services, who support the Iranian bourgeoisie and Bashar the dog, the same that under Obama's command are killing the Syrian masses.

The book which was presented has a tribute to the anti-imperialist fighters that fought on the streets of Libya and Syria. A tribute to the heroic Palestinian resistance was paid, with its banner at the head of the presentation of the book and demanding the release of all the Palestinian prisoners tortured by Mossad.

In the presentation of the book, together with the authors Abu Muad and Carlos Munzer, correspondent in the Maghreb and the Middle East and comrade James, a textile worker from Zimbabwe and member of the Workers International League (WIL) were there. James brought with him the salutations of the fighting committee of the workers of Marikana (South Africa) and the fighters for socialism in Zimbabwe.

Also, there were comrades who saluted the presentation of the book. Those comrades were an important part of this book because of their fight for the Syrian masses. They were David Soria, representing the dismissed workers of Paty and Claudia Pafundi, from the Commission of Convicted Workers of Las Heras, their Families, and Friends.

Also, comrade Jacobo of the LCT of Venezuela also spoke, denouncing the Bolivarian governments as accomplices of the massacre on the Syrian masses, and that, supported by the entire left parties, they were disguised as anti-imperialist fighters and hid the counterrevolution in the Middle East, because they are prepared to play the role of al-Assad and Gaddafi against their own people, attacking and starving the masses, repressing them harshly using against them the accusation of being useful for the right-wing or imperialism. As we see, this happens today with Maduro shooting bullets on the starving masses of Venezuela while paying the fraudulent foreign debt that was acquired by the Venezuelan right-wing during the 1980s and the 1990s.

Comrade Jacobo denounced that the same ones who supported the holy crusade of the fight against terrorism in the Middle East are the ones that supported the guns of the killers in Iran, who supported the killer Bashar, handled by the USA and their counterrevolutionary agreements against the masses of the region. We are seeing also the Castro brothers selling out Cuba to imperialism while, enthusiastically, they applaud the massacres that Gaddafi performed yesterday against the Libyan people and al-Assad performs now against the Syrians.

One of the most emotional moments was when Cheo Navarro -who was part of the internationalist group Simon Bolivar, promoted by the Morenoite current in Latin America, which went to fight in Nicaragua in1979 against the dictatorship of Somoza- gave his campaign backpack that he carried back then to comrade Abu Muad, as a representative of the movement of internationalist worker volunteers that went to Maghreb and the Middle East to take their international solidarity with all the subjugated masses of the region.

The next speaker was comrade Abu Muad. A video was shown. There the internationalist worker fighters were seen who carried on the great struggles of the Libyan masses and self-organized committees of Aleppo. Abu Muad participated from within in these struggles and events, and from there he wrote and made decisive contributions to this work.

Abu Muad posed the tough hit that the book's title ... a bloodied revolution means, because, as Muad Abu said, "to have to define in this way a revolution is a tragedy for all workers in the world".

He continued saying: In this presentation of the book the word revolution was used, and also the words fire, blood and punishment, which is what imperialism wants to exert against anyone who has 'dared' to revolt and threatens its dominance in the world.

When we were covering the frontline in the battlefield, it came to mind the word betrayal. If we are here writing a book about the bloodied revolution, it is because there was a betrayal. There was plenty of courage from the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East who rose up to fight against all those mechanisms and devices of oppression that imperialism had imposed. There was plenty of courage from the masses. The problem was not how much courage the masses had, but there was too much treason of the treacherous leadership that left us alone like dogs, against the current, against Putin, against Iran, against Hezbollah. They all did the dirty work on behalf of the great imperialist powers. Because here, this book, like the comrades who spoke earlier said, was not written in a beautiful room like this one, in a small office with air conditioning or heating, or with a new laptop. This has been written in the same battlefield. It was written with fire, blood, sweat, tears ... in the cold, in the heat, it stood by the masses and keeps standing by them. The masses, their suffering and their heroic struggles that made possible that this book was written. I came here to share the revolution that I lived ...

Carlos Munzer, one of the authors of the presented book, posed that the events that shook the world of the Maghreb and the Middle East did not begin in 2011 nor ended in 2015 and that Syria remains under fire. These events, he said, ... began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 when genocide was done in that country at the same or higher level than that of Syria today.

"It started with two wars by the Zionist state of slaughter against the Palestinian people in 2002 and 2008, and a war of Zionist aggression in southern Lebanon in 2006. What we saw there were the counterrevolutionary wars for oil, on which the American war industry was mounted. In US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the same amount of money was invested as during the Second World War. And, since their control of the oil routes, they rose up the price per barrel to $140, so their imperialist oil companies do highly profitable business."

He added that "The mass uprising did not begin in Tunisia in 2011, but it had already begun with a fierce and tough resistance from the Iraqi masses in 2007/2008 that made Spain, England and the USA and other imperialist powers to leave Iraq and then Afghanistan. A huge anti-imperialist mass movement rose up in the USA and Europe against imperialist oil wars. In the USA, with the million workers movement against the war, and Spain shouting 'you make war, we put the dead,’ a Viet Nam-type scenario was opened in the USA.

In those weak conditions of the imperialist control devices in the region, huge revolutions rose up in 2011, from Tunisia to the tormented Syria today which shook the world."

They want to show us the end of the movie; i.e. the face of counterrevolution to impose fear over the world masses. And in Syria imperialism concentrated all its forces to impose that fear, which needed to create it because there was a big revolution there, which is what they want to hide.

If the conditions are of resistance today and counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism is not due to the exploiters’ armies bravery or the hitmen of imperialism; but because the revolutions of Maghreb and the Middle East were fenced; because they were submitted to the democratic bourgeoisies and the frauds of Constituent Assemblies".

The world left movements who talked about Arab springs and democratic revolutions… There they have the Arab springs and democratic revolutions"… the worst massacres against the masses of Syria, Maghreb and the Middle East.

"When the USA was running away from Iraq and the uprising in Tunisia had begun, the conditions for a huge masses’ uprising were there; they also found imperialism, since 2008, in a world bankruptcy.

"Imperialism could not intervene directly and revolution was threatening with entering to Europe and USA, like we saw it within Greece, Spain, the general strike of Belgium, occupations of factories in France, the fights of Guadalupe and Martinique, the revolution in Madagascar. In 2009 the Bolivian working class rebelled against the retrenchment by Morales. A generalized mass uprising was posed as that seen in 1968-'74."

"In Syria, all these contradictions were met. There was the definition whether the imposition of this punishment of a generalized process all over the planet may open. That is why so much anger, so much massacre.

After all these massacres, Syria, where imperialism concentrated its forces, was the starting point of a fierce international counteroffensive. It has already started in Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco… and they were preparing Zionism to attack wildly the Palestine nation.

Our reporter from Maghreb and Middle East stated that "The massacre in Syria and the defeats we are suffering today in Maghreb and the Middle East are due to this historical tragedy: that on behalf of the left and ‘socialism’, a bunch of supporters of capital and its rotten bankrupted regimens is meeting to tell the masses that socialism is no longer possible. They say that socialism is a ‘leap to the void’, as Altamira said in Argentina; that Cuba is no longer necessary; furthermore that Cuba is not possible anymore, not even in Cuba.

Saying this when world capitalist system is entering into the mess of the hurricane called world economic crisis, when its center in China and the Pacific area, it does not only mean going against the tendencies of history, but it really means telling the masses that they have to prepare for barbarism… because it is what we are living in Maghreb and Middle East, and it is what is coming for the entire civilization.

‘Socialism is no longer possible’ they say, at times when Europe is in such a bankruptcy that can only be compared with WWII… The question is becoming clearer and clearer. All these people are the ‘socialists’ who traveled to Egypt to take snapshots with the masses in Tahrir Square, like PTS, NPA, British SWP. They all talked about the virtues of Constituent Assemblies and bourgeois parliaments… and they proved to be a detour to new bloody and Bonapartist coups against the masses.

Towards the end of the presentation, several companions voiced their salutation to the event, such as James, textile labor leader and member of the Workers ' International League (WIL) Zimbabwe, or Cheo Navarro, member of the Morenoite Simon Bolívar Brigade that went to fight alongside the Nicaraguan masses against Somoza bloodthirsty dictatorship in 1979; then, the authors of the book drew the latest conclusions of the presentation.

Carlos Munzer insisted that: "this is the truth that we come here to say: that the limits that these mass uprisings had were the limits imposed on them by the corrupt leaderships of the world proletariat while they were fighting.We come here to say that the massacre, the Syrian genocide is to give a warning to the world working class. We come here to say that the masses presented battle and besieged imperialism, beat it in huge defeats, threatened the Citadel of power. We come here to say that it was not due to the strength of the imperialist armies that this counter-revolutionary offensive has been conquered by the exploiters, but due to the cowardice of the treacherous leaderships that abandoned the masses to their fate. The revolutionary uprisings that shook the region from Tunisia to Palestine put in the order of the day the seizing of power by the exploited. And that's what everyone wants to hide.

That’s why so much silence that gave the dog Bashar a free hand to massacre the masses. Nobody now remembers the hundreds of thousands who filled Cairo's Tahrir square. Now the ‘left champions of democracy’ are not anymore in it taking fashionable snapshots. They are now in the streets of Athens, taking selfies there and giving lectures on how to organize electoral fronts with a left coming from betraying the people straightforwardly, such as Syriza and all its sycophants in the world.

And while they talk nonsense and advise the Greek left on how best betray the working class, the European beaches and borders are filled with corpses of Syrian immigrants, in their desperate attempt to reach the continent to escape the massacre by Bashar al-Assad, whom these same leftists support.

But the betrayal and the siege of the Syrian revolution prevented millions of workers and oppressed peoples of the world from doing for the Syrian exploited, even 10% of what they did in favor of the Palestinian masses, what would have paralyzed the genocide by al - Assad. This world masses’ upheaval did not happen because the lefts marked the rebel masses in the region as 'barbarian tribes', as 'backward peoples', as 'agents of imperialism', and they also made the torturers pass as allies of the world working class.

Of this we acknowledge them: they have left dog Bashar hands-free for that under the command of the US 7th Navy Fleet in the Mediterranean, he could make a war of extermination against the exploited, who are still threatening to defeat him in Damascus."

Then, Abu Muad intervened saying that: Before this presentation, an extensive interview was made to us the authors of the book, whose answers I prepared, in a common development, with our comrades in Syria. From there came the name of ' 2015, Syria remains under fire '. There we pose that the path of counter-revolution today is the partition of Syria, Libya, Iraq (...) We denounce the perfidious anti-worker and anti-Marxist policy of introducing the uprisings of the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East as ‘clashes between religions, tribes and clans’, of 'Sunni' against 'Shiite' (...) that are nothing more than a smokescreen and a lie to hide that in this society there are classes that today collide violently throughout the region in dispute,(exploited that arise) against hunger and the imperialist plundering of one of the richest regions in the planet in black gold. The fact is that the masses do not support anymore to live in extreme poverty with so many riches under their feet that (imperialism and the native bourgeoisies) have looted and continue robbing from them.

"Upon my arrival in Argentina, I have witnessed an election campaign by the shameful FIT, where they have silenced the massacre of Syria, Egypt, the Palestinian masses, the militarization of Tunisia. It's like if in the ' 70s or ' 80, left organizations which allege to be 'Socialists' in the world, silenced the massacres by Videla and Pinochet. They will tell me that in their 'digital daily' or internal newspapers, which nobody reads, they ever took any report. That is a fallacy. It is a double deception. They have silenced before the broad masses the massacre of the exploited of Syria, as well as the sellout of Cuba to imperialism.

"My contribution, as that of the comrades in Syria, in this book, is to collaborate in taking lessons to prepare the conditions for victory. The conditions to succeed were abundant. What was missed is a revolutionary leadership. Under these conditions of disaster, revolution, and counterrevolution, we will set it up.

"I believe that in Syria the conclusions raised by Trotsky can be drawn on the relationship between the huge battles of the masses and the lack of a revolutionary leadership in the processes that were developed. In the preface to the history of the Russian Revolution, comrade Trotsky posed:

 Only studying political processes on the own masses an understanding can be achieved of the role of the parties and the chiefs, who in any way we want to deny. They are an item, but independent, very important in this process. Without an official organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate, as steam dissipates if not contained by a boiler. But either way, what drives the movement is not the boiler or piston, but steam.' In Syria and in the revolutions of the Maghreb and the Middle East, there was more than enough steam. But there was also an overabundance of treacherous leaderships that fenced internationally and isolated these heroic revolutions in the region.

From the Rudolph Klement Socialist Publishing House, we salute this brave presentation of the authors of a book written from the same events. We know about the attacks, slander, persecutions that we have received and continue to receive by the bandits, imposters, and members of this Holy Alliance that has joined together to crush the revolutionary masses of Syria and the world. We do not fear them! Already lots of blood were left on the way. Martyrs have already returned to fill the core of the world working class.

Here it is about the unprecedented suffering of the masses. When hundreds of thousands of Syrian workers arrive in Europe, we can only call the workers of that continent and around the world not only to receive them and to treat them as members of honor of European and global working-class, requiring for them all rights - like legal stay documents, living wage, jobs for all - but also we call to organize from European capitals, from the United States and the world, mass actions to stop the massacre by Bashar the dog and all genocidal and murderous dictatorships in the Maghreb and the Middle East, that massacre their people on behalf of the imperialist oil companies and MNCs.

Editorial Board

Editorial Socialista Rudolph Klement

(Rudolph Klement Socialist Publishing House)

October 28 2016

Rudolph Klement Publishing House: Before the assassination of its writer and journalist Abu Al Baraa by the genocidal forces of al-Assad

Our Publishing House has suffered a huge loss as the writer Abu Al Baraa, co-author of the book 2013-2014 Syria Under Fire. A Bloodied Revolution, together with Abu Muad and Carlos Munzer. Was killed by the bullets of al-Assad and Putin. True journalism, that which has confronted with its words big capitalist media corporations that from their editorial offices and TV sets spread poison to hide the reality and deceive the world oppressed.

Our writer knew even the smallest detail of the fate of the Syrian people, since he was one of the millions who took the streets in 2011 demanding bread, jobs and freedom face the dictatorial and murderous regime. His writings, notes and contributions were decisive to illustrate the tragedy suffered by workers and peasants there. It was a man in all true senses since he defended his ideas as part of that great and heroic struggle.

He was director of the The truth of the Oppressed, a journal in Arabic.

We feel a terrible pain since we did everything for our writer to be able to go out of Syria to end up his work abroad so that he could tell the world oppressed everything about the slaughter and genocide carried out by those war criminals acting under the command of Obama and the other big imperialist powers. But we were not able to fulfill our aim.

The Argentinean and Brazilian governments in 2015 denied him the visa despite we had presented all the required documents on time. Without having any rejection for the required papers we had presented to the Argentinean consulate in Istanbul, Turkey: invitation of our Publishing House containing the required Number issued by the National Unique Registration for Foreign Requests, a letter containing the details as regards the aim of the visit of our Syrian writer; affidavit form fulfilled by the invited journalist; passport in order; and all our papers presented legalized before a public notary, as required by law.

In the case of Brazil, the very same CSP/CONLUTAS, a trade union central with 4 millions affiliated, processed the visit of our writer in the Brazilian consulate in Istanbul and the Brazilian Foreign Office in Brasilia fulfilling all the required pre-requisites as dozens times they have done before for invited people from all across the world. But both countries had taken a decision: to deny Abu Al Baraa entry. Dozens of organizations expressed their solidarity immediately with the comrade, among them, the CONLUTAS Central Union from Brazil and the International Federation of Journalists, and public figures such as (politician and former Congress Representative) Luis Zamora or (well known and respected journalist) Rafael Spregelburg in Argentina.

However, neither of both governments changed its decision since they are Bolivarian governments aligned with murderous al-Assad. Had he been a journalist from The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC or any other media or an al-Assad’s general or official, surely there would not have been any problem. If they had applied the same modus operandi (denying Abu Al Baraa an entry visa) on Bloody Diamonds, one of the greatest journalism works, it would have never been published because they would have prevented the entry of this colored worker from tormented Africa. This black worker escaped from a brutal massacre and achieved telling the world the ongoing reality: that the opulent diamonds of the big imperialist powers are obtained over the blood of tens of thousands of black slaves.

Abu Al Baraa expressed perfectly what was happening in Syria. The book Syria Under Fire would have been impossible without his decisive contribution from the forefront of the struggle of the oppressed masses in Syria. Abu Al Baraa was a journalist, writer and actor of that great struggle. When he fell fighting in the most advanced forefront against al-Assad in Aleppo, he had just completed his most prized work along with his companions in Syria and abroad: the newspaper The truth of the oppressed, the voice of the revolutionary coordinating committees of the Syrian resistance.

His place in the trenches against genocidal Al-Assad, Putin and their Chief Obama, cost Abu Al Baraa having no visa... for any country in the world. For France, USA and Great Britain, he was a jihadist. For the embassies of the Kirchners, Maduro, Dilma and other bourgeoisies in Latin America, servants to imperialism, he was a fighter from the FSA, an enemy of al-Assad’s democratic Government. The international bourgeoisie knew perfectly well that Abu Al Baraa was leaving Syria to collaborate in breaking the siege erected against that great revolution and exposing the slanders and the infamy that the left of Obama and other counter-revolutionary traitors have poured against the heroic masses of Syria.

Back in 2013, a journalist and correspondent to our Publishing House, had gone to Tunisia, where 2011 revolutions had started over the Maghreb and the Middle East, to carry the the solidarity and the truth of the Syrian revolution, to thousands of fighters that in that country were keeping on the spark young Mohammed Bouazizi had lit when immolating himself. He was detained for 10 days in the dungeons of the democratic Government of Tunisia that is supported by all the pro-imperialist left, servant to the French Fifth Republic. By means of international solidarity we did pull him out of jail; the same solidarity that different currents of the international labor movement exerted when a visa was demanded for Abu Al Baraa from Argentina and Brazil. In the latter, the CONLUTAS Central Union had already organized a conference with its affiliates so that Abu Al Baraa could be able to expose the truth about the struggle of the Syrian masses.

Abu Al Baraa knew that the frontlines of the Syrian revolution were international. He came to South America to give lectures and to tell his truth to working-class organizations and rebel youth fighting bodies. Through our publishing house he had taken notice that members of the Syrian community abroad, especially in Spain and England, had begun to write books, brochures, articles, novels, denouncing the Syrian genocide and telling the truth about the Syrian revolution. When we see today scores of Syrian intellectuals and journalists writing in the diaspora and denouncing (as our Editorial does with its reports and articles from the same battlefield) the lies and the infamy that have been written about the Syrian revolution, everything is becoming clear... It is very clear now why Abu Al Baraa could not receive a visa and leave Turkey. This would have allowed establishing a link, as today it already begins to be established, between the intelligentsia of the Syrian revolution in Europe and around the world and the fighters who give their lives for the victory of this revolution at the battle front.

The revolutionary vanguard of Latin America could not know or listen to this representative of a heroic youth that today continues dying and leaving their blood on the streets of Syria.

From Rudolph Klement Publishing House, we that met and could know Abu Al-Baraa, could also see in him what a great socialist revolutionary he was, as Leon Trotsky commented with regard to the attitude of the youth that has rebelled when a revolution starts: the generation that enters a revolution does not stop in its bout until they see it succeeding, even if that means leaving their blood along the road.

As the first edition of the first volume of the book Syria Under Fire has run out of print, our Publishing House will publish a second edition, incorporating the events of the presentation of the book in the Argentina National Library in Buenos Aires in 2015 as well as several interviews with its authors, including Abu Al-Baraa, about ISIS as the perfect enemy and the experience and the tragedy of the Kurdish nation harshly punished in Turkey and used in Syria as a shock force by imperialism to break the military front against al-Assad.

The second volume of the book Syria under fire- Operation massacre is just to be finished. Undoubtedly, Abu Al-Baraa’s murder means culminating this work with an enormous anguish but also with the satisfaction of fighting for his voice and his truth to be made known.

Other currents that call themselves Socialist, have ignored until today and looked the other side before the murder of our correspondent in Syria, as does the FIT of Argentina and the parties that conform it, and also the self-proclaimed anti-capitalist currents in Europe, etc. All of them are hanging from the coattails of the democratic bourgeoisies; they refuse to recognize the Socialist workers that dispute the leadership of the war to the businessmen that only seek to control the revolution. These fake Socialists hide their heads in the sand like an ostrich; they want to ignore