Geopolitical Outlook

Pictured left to right: Hafez al Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. Several years before his death on June 10, 2000, the late Syrian Arab Republic President Hafez al Assad (father of Bashar al Assad) lamented bitterly that, "When France entered our countries they were united [as one: Syria]. When it left they were disunited [partitioned into four separate countries.]" Prior to Syria liberating itself from French colonialism, with the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party taking power, and establishing the independent Syrian Arab Republic, the French (and the British) had divided the formerly single, united nation into four separate countries, effectively redrawing the world map in the years between 1918-1923. These four countries were: mainland Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. In fact, Palestine used to be Syria's southern third province and was actually called Southern Syria. As for Jordan: the British created it as a kingdom for the Hashemite...

Along with Nicaragua, the DPRK, and Jamahiriya Libya, one of the most unfairly maligned countries within Western 'left' circles in recent memory is Syria. Ranging from those who hail the U.S.-backed, foreign  jihadist terrorists as "moderate rebels"  -- to those celebrating the equally-reactionary and -sectarian YPG militias (also backed by the U.S.) in balkanizing and ethnically cleansing northeastern Syria in the hopes that they will fulfill the Anarchist wet dream of "beautiful utopian goals of democratic confederalism" -- it seems that Syria has indeed become a blank canvas upon which the Western left can project their fantasies. It is the new " Terra Nullius ," as author Maximilian Forte ( Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa ) describes. While sections of the Western left continue to make themselves useful idiots for U.S. imperialism, the legitimate Syrian government and the Syrian people inside of Syria are not ...