elguwopismo [he/him]
I have literally said zero good things about him, he’s not a good guy, his regime is corrupt. Of course he’s not the most popular he’s Alawite in a Sunni-majority country and the Alawites have gotten preferential treatment from his father and himself. This ignores the reality of the alternative and the environment which gave rise to such a situation. From everything I’ve heard since the winding down and the funneling of the jihadis into Afrin and Idlib, it seems to me that the popular sentiment is a begrudging embrace (even for those less violently sectarian people whom nonetheless possess very little love for the Assad government) of the potential for stability in a region which had been thrown into utter chaos and violence for near a decade.
Oh fuck off sorry we don’t take issue with the military intervention for the prevention of mass killings, enslavement, and sexual assault on the non-Sunni populace by Salafist Jihadi militias. Whatever Assad isn’t a swell guy, corrupt regime etc. Same for Putin. This understands nothing of the political and historical realities of either of these people nor their ‘regimes’. I’ll agree the YPG and PKK really showed some promise, communal progress and solidarity in the face of chaos, slaughter, a history of oppression, and so on. However you obviously possess zero understanding of the political and sectarian history of the area beyond the Kurds being oppressed. What about Turkey’s role in all this, our NATO ally? Or the coming to fruition of a history of Wahabbism, emanating from the penninsula (also our allies), in the rise of Islamic State? None of this can be separated from the long opposition to Secular Left Nationalism/Socialism, and especially Communism, by Western powers nor from the reaction of the Islamic world to the Shia revolution in Iran nor Israeli reaction to the rise of Hezbollah - we especially cannot ignore the catalyst found in the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter of which saw the Sunni minority lose its position of power over Shia-majority Iraq with the fall of Saddam and the Ba’athists. The harsh reality was that beyond a certain point there were no moderate militias in Syria, radicalism has been brewing for a long time and this has absolutely been a historical material interest for the US and its allies. It’s not like Rojava was going to prevent mass sectarian violence throughout non-Kurdish Syria, it was difficult enough maintaining their own territory - it’s a fucked situation for the Kurds, it has been for a long time and will continue to be (If you wish for me to write an ode to the awfulness of Erdogan’s government I can do that too). However this should be a matter much simpler and more immanent than the staging of some abstract duality of practical Leninist discipline in opposition to utopian Anarchist mutuality over the topic of Rojava - Russian intervention in Syria saved lives and the Assad government is preferable to Salafist rule, plain and simple. Those are the lessons I want to draw from the situation.
Personally, whatever take your moral purity, I could give a shit. I ‘support’ Putin and Assad insofar as I support taking tough and decisive action in order to protect life in the face of a brutal reality - this seems to me to be the only socially useful way of approaching the concept ‘support’ with regards to international politics and conflict, a way that may actually inform my approach to future conflict in this quagmire of a hellworld. Or I suppose you can go back being shocked at cold-blooded Nationalists doing shit that cold-blooded Nationalists have done throughout all of history, the libs sure seem to enjoy shaking their fists these boogeymen - seems like a good time.
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