The last week has seen a dramatic escalation of the intense conflict in Syria. The rebel forces launched an uprising and military attack in the capital city of Damascus, combined with an offensive in the other key city of Aleppo. In the process they succeeded in killing three central members of the Assad regime, including his brother-in-law and his defence minister. The regime’s forces have struck back and at the time of writing there is fierce fighting taking place.

No one knows what exactly is going to happen, but Robert Fisk and other well informed journalists suspect that the regime is starting to fall apart – there have been high level military and diplomatic defections as well as desertions by many rank-and-file soldiers – even if Assad can cling on for a while.

The situation is complex and contains two major elements. The first is the mass revolt by the Syrian people which began 16 months ago following the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions. The second is the attempt by Western imperialism in alliance reactionary regimes in the region (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey etc) to take advantage of the situation and control its outcome. Socialists should stand in solidarity with the first element and oppose the second.

There is much confusion on the left about the nature of the Assad regime. It is seen by some as an anti-imperialist, pro-Palestinian, force worthy of some kind of support and as a result internal opposition to it is assumed to be reactionary and pro-western.

In fact Assad’s ‘anti-imperialism’ and support for the Palestinians was rhetorical rather than real and at the end of the day he always collaborated with the US and abandoned the Palestinians (hence Israel’s tendency to support him). Doubtless the US would prefer a more immediately compliant regime, but Syria was no serious threat to imperialism and the regime was always a brutal oppressor and exploiter of its own people.

The rebellion in Syria started with peaceful demonstrations that called only for the implementation of reforms not the downfall of the regime, but faced with murderous repression it radicalised into a full blown revolution. The demand for reforms became demand for the regime to fall and then for the President to be executed.

The heroism and persistence of the Syrian masses was extraordinary. The idea that this was not a genuine revolt, and that ordinary people would carry on coming out on to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, despite relentless killing and torture, at the behest of Western imperialism, does not hold water. Nor has it been, as is often alleged, a sectarian conflict. There is a strong tendency in the media to report all struggle in the Middle East in terms of religion and sectarianism, partly through anti-muslim prejudice and partly because they prefer dealing with the idea of sectarian conflict to dealing with people’s revolution or class struggle which are out of their comfort zone. However, ‘The Syrian people are one hand!’ has always been a central slogan of the revolution.

However the longer the repression continued, without the regime being overthrown, the more its transformation into an armed struggle became inevitable. And with this unavoidable development came dangers. Waging a military struggle requires weapons and opens up the possibility of dependence on those who can supply them: first and foremost Western imperialism and its agents.

An extreme version of this process was played out in Libya last year: a popular revolution against Gaddafi was hijacked, taken over and halted by NATO intervention, and a western client regime installed. However things have not yet reached this stage in Syria. The armed struggle waged by the Free Syria Army, many of whom are defectors from the Syrian army, is still accompanied by popular mobilizations from below. The Syrian revolution continues.

Moreover it continues to receive support from the masses elsewhere in the Arab world. Last week there was an attempt, beaten back by the army, to storm the Syrian embassy in Cairo.

The opposition to the regime is divided. On the one hand there is in exile the Syrian National Council, widely touted as ‘the leadership’ of by the West, which is pro- intervention and pro-Western and hopes to ride to power on the back of the revolution. On the other hand, within Syria and at the sharp end of the fighting, there are the Free Syrian Army and the Local Coordination Committees (and others) who are opposed to foreign intervention or sectarian conflict and who call for ‘support not intervention’.

Socialists in Ireland, and elsewhere, should support these forces on the ground rather than the opportunists of the Syrian National Council. However, in so far as we or anyone else internationally can make any difference to the situation, our arguments against the revolution falling into dependence on, or under the control of, imperialism have to be deployed from a standpoint of solidarity with the revolution.

Any equivocation on this, or worse any writing off of the revolt, will clearly undermine both the influence and the legitimacy of warnings against Western intervention and interference. It is also important, in terms of the political debate here, that we counter the deep seated scepticism and pessimism about the possibilities of popular revolt that are widespread among sections of the left and particularly acute when it comes to revolts by Arabs and Muslims.