The Syrian Political Labyrinth and the Way Out

While the majority of the Syrian people across all regions of Syrian geography suffer from harsh living conditions, misery, and a lack of security and safety, the old and new political forces, weak in influence, which are forming successively, suffer from a general confusion regarding their political positioning, accompanied by an almost complete absence of tangible activity with the people they claim to represent.

It is as if political work is limited to devising this or that document, all similar in their general principles, but hiding an unannounced practical inclination waiting for some regional or international force to pick it up or adopt it. The majority of the opposition political forces, and those standing in between, have abandoned the people, as they did during over a decade of revolution and its defeat to this day.

We find almost the same individuals and political and civil “groupings” assembling themselves into this or that coalition, then reproducing a new coalition, and so on. Political work for them seems confined to self-rotation, closed in on itself, to the point that they might eventually consume themselves.

They have left the people, the civilians, alone as prey before the brutality of the sectarian authority’s militias that have slaughtered civilians in the coast, Suwayda, and other areas. A Thermidorian authority that ignited the flames of sectarian and chauvinist incitement, dealing with people primarily through clerics and tribal sheikhs, making this sectarian authority solely responsible for the sectarian and national fragmentation festering in our societal fabric today.

This has contributed to religious Druze figures leading the confrontation against this brutality in Suwayda, becoming in the eyes of the people of the region a symbol of confronting the brutality of the sectarian militias affiliated with the authority. Meanwhile, the Alawites of the coast, Homs areas, and Hama countryside, whom the ideology of the Thermidorian authority, and also ridiculous theorizing by “secular” opponents in previous decades, have charged with being an organic part of the Assad regime, are left without representation or a significant political force defending them against the authority’s brutality.

Several disparate representative bodies for them have been announced, most of them sectarian in content, with no clear influence, competing among themselves, with none able to transform into a recognized symbol of resisting the authority’s brutality. Added to this is an inherited consciousness among Alawites that makes it difficult, so far, to politically rally the majority of them as a sect around any religious figure. This situation makes the Alawites the most exposed group to the brutality of the authority’s militias and all kinds of gangs that practice daily against them all forms of killing, plunder, and kidnapping.

Meanwhile, the ability of the Thermidorian authority to practice its brutality against the Kurdish people and the areas of Autonomous Administration remains very limited to this day, for geopolitical reasons related to the imperialist military presence intervening in Syria, especially America, which balances Turkey’s interventionist tendency and its desire to crush the Autonomous Administration. Most importantly, the significant military capability of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in facing any military attack that the authority’s militias might carry out makes the latter hesitant regarding any wide offensive intentions, although this does not deter them from carrying out military skirmishes and sabotage operations.

What is clear is that this authority, like other authoritarian regimes, understands only the language of force. It retreats before armed masses that break its power, or before masses rising up against it. This is what we have witnessed from its practices since the end of last year, and also during the years of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s control over Idlib.

The brutality of the previous regime and the current authority, with a noticeable absence of mass and revolutionary political forces, has planted a spontaneous tendency among the masses of victims of massacres, and given their inability to confront the criminals, to seek or accept protection from annihilation from any state or powerful military force whatsoever. This was their situation facing the exterminating regime of Assad, where demands were raised for imposing a no-fly zone and international intervention. However, when the latter came via American and Turkish intervention, it mostly did not serve the interests of the Syrian masses and did not prevent massacres against them.

This applies to some cries of joy for the intervention of the Zionist entity against the current authority’s forces, whether in Suwayda or in the coastal areas and others. The main issue in dispelling this illusion is concrete experience; the results of imperialist countries’ interventions have not differed, neither in the past nor presently. This demand is a dangerous illusion with consequences, because regional and international countries act according to their own interests, not according to the desires of the peoples. Making the illusion of seeking protection from this or that state in facing the authority’s brutality is like seeking fire from embers.

The duty of leftist and democratic forces is to refute this dangerous illusion, not by being condescending and averse to the masses of victims fearful for their existence, but rather this necessitates first standing among and with the victims in confronting the killers, and working to organize the masses to resist the authority’s brutality and its sectarian militias by all available means.

Hence, from the perspective of how to build a wall of mass and popular resistance facing a authority of sectarian militias, in addition to the necessity of building a united popular front of leftist and democratic forces and groupings that does not suffice with general statements only but engages in the field among the people with practical activities, aiming to prevent massacres, stand against exclusionary, sectarian, chauvinist, and anti-social policies affecting wide sectors of the Syrian people, and also end the authoritarian rule and build a decentralized democratic republic in a free and independent Syria.

In this complex and complicated struggle, we see it as very harmful for accusations of separation and partition, which some wave as a bogeyman to condemn or not support sectors of Syrians who are victims of this authority, to be used. Such positions, launched by some political forces including traditional leftists, rejecting separation and partition with slogans of nationalism, serve as a pretext for them to break with leaderships in Suwayda, Northeast Syria, and elsewhere.

While these leaderships are surrounded by wide segments of Syrians, which in our opinion only serves the current authority. While we are convinced of the necessity of criticizing and exposing positions that contradict the interests of the Syrian people and revealing their danger; this cannot be done and have credibility except through our shared struggle at the heart of the people’s struggles to protect their lives and freedom. Then they themselves see tangibly the real political alternative to this authority and their true protector, which distances the masses from such erroneous positions and from the leaderships that raise them.

Doing this allows, at the same time, for the formation of a broader front or alliance encompassing Suwayda, Northeast Syria, and leftist and democratic political and social forces, capable of resisting the Thermidorian authority and achieving democratic and social change in a unified, decentralized, democratic Syrian republic that includes all Syrians equally, recognizing and respecting their religious and national plurality.

Revolutionary Left Current in Syria
September 2025