What Did Al-Shaybani Say to the Financial Times?
There are numerous narratives about the sudden and rapid fall of Syria, as if it were a country without an army. Just as quickly, the terrorist gangs of globalized politicized-religious forces are being whitewashed, and sanctions imposed on Syria — whether since 1979 or 2015 — are being lifted. The Western camp that imposed the economic blockade on Syria is the same one that armed hundreds of thousands of terrorists, then proceeded to rebrand them as statesmen. Soon, they may even be labeled as liberals, modernists or even post-modernists, and a new Fatwa might suggest there’s no need for an elected president.
In the same swift manner, most political regimes in the Arab East have welcomed al-Julani as the president of Syria, despite the competition between Saudi Arabia on one side and Turkey and Qatar on the other for influence in Syria. None of them object or challenge the Zionist Entity’s occupation of whatever it wants of Syria’s land and confirming that the U.S. is engineering the dismantling of the Syrian state and the creation of a completely different Syria.
Especially after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the U.S. has reinforced its hegemony over the entire Arab homeland, except Yemen/Sana and shown that other world powers remain weak. Russia bartered Syria for Ukraine, and China exchanged its vast trade with the U.S. for abstaining from playing any role in the Arab world — particularly concerning the genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
As part of reengineering Syria, there’s an effort to uproot the two foundational components of the Arab state in Syria:
First: The Arab identity of a united, resistant Syria — one that rejects the Zionist Entity and believes there is no solution to the Arab-Zionist-imperialist conflict, including Arab Zionism, except through liberation. With Syria’s fall (excluding Yemen/ Sanaa), the counterrevolution completes its victory over Arabism. This coincides with global capitalism’s victory over labor worldwide.
Second: Transforming the Syrian state’s structure on two levels:
· Level one: Fragmenting Syria into contradictory and even warring entities, all necessarily subordinate to imperialism and Zionism. These would be governed by political-religious forces and normalized with the Zionist Entity — serving as a model for other Arab states and advancing the project to dismantle Urobah.
· Level two: Economically gutting the Syrian state to destroy society from within.
This was evident in the Financial Times interview with Asaad al-Shaybani, the foreign minister of al-Julani’s group— an outlet that’s a longstanding and prominent mouthpiece of Western right-wing thought. The interview focused on dismantling Syria’s socialist infrastructure: selling off the public sector, eliminating free healthcare and education, and cutting subsidies on essential goods — essentially abandoning ordinary citizens to savage capitalism.
Some key socialist features had already been weakened after Hafez al-Assad’s death, thanks to neoliberal “social market” economic policies led by Abdullah Dardari (a tool of the IMF and World Bank), but much still remained. The interview highlights privatization — effectively a ploy for the wealthy to loot the public sector. Capital itself is already stolen labor, and under the current occupying regime, public enterprises could even be sold to Zionist capitalists. Julani recently suggested that his “regime and Israel share a common enemy”.
For politicized-religious movements, the real enemy is socialism — not occupation, resource theft, or exploitation of labor (which is the sole source of production). This aligns perfectly with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which doesn’t believe in Homeland, Urobah or patriotism but in power and wealth in the hands of a few. Julani’s organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is essentially ISIS under a different name.
The interview is cloaked in buzzwords like “development” and claims like “we don’t want to live on humanitarian aid.” The term “development” has been hijacked from socialism by capital-friendly intellectuals, especially after the fall of the socialist bloc. As for rejecting foreign aid — that’s a shallow and deceitful statement. Foreign donors don’t actually help; for every dollar they “give,” they extract ten, funneling wealth through comprador regimes that keep most for themselves.
Despite sanctions since 1979 (or even earlier), Syria never relied on aid. It had no debt and no trade deficit before NATO’s war. When Tunisia faced famine around 1980–82 and cried out to the world, only Syria sent them wheat for free.
Today’s famine in Syria is a result of the economic war via the Caesar Act — a U.S. decision enforced by surrounding Arab and Islamic states, making their complicity as criminal as that of the U.S.
Shaybani claims the new authority “aims to privatize state-owned ports and factories, invite foreign investment, and promote international trade as part of an economic reform plan to end decades of isolation.” But Western capitalist investment isn’t charity — it’s an exploitative mechanism with strict conditions, ensuring no nationalization and unrestricted repatriation of profits. If risk arises, capital will flee — as happened in the 1997 East Asian financial crisis especially when the west pulls its’ hot loans and the regimes there fall on their knees and let foreign capital buy shares of more than 50 percent.
As for international trade, it depends on domestic production. What does Syria produce now besides terrorism? Moreover, global trade has shifted from “free trade” to protectionism. Even the U.S. under Trump embraced harsh protectionism, claiming to be freeing the American economy from exploitation. Thus, Syria’s opening and privatization mirrors Sadat’s 1975 policy in Egypt — which devastated the country — while Syria is collapsing without even opening up.
Syria didn’t choose isolation; it was deliberately isolated by a Western-Zionist plan implemented by neighboring Arabs and Muslims.
Shaybani added: “Assad’s vision was a security state. Ours is economic development.” He continued: “There must be laws and clear messages to open the door to foreign investors and encourage Syrian investors to return.”
And yet, the world has seen the “laws” of political-religious regimes through sectarian massacres on Syria’s coast, daily killings and assassinations across the country, and attacks on Christian Arab Syrian liquor shops. Shaybani merely parrots clichés for capitalists’ ears. Every state in the world is a “security state” to varying degrees. Syria had no choice but to accept the adoption of security, regardless of its flaws, but what is the relationship or contradiction between a security state and a development state or vision? A security state that represents the interests of the people is best able to achieve actual development. This is what the Soviets achieved during the Stalin era and China during the Mao era. As for the claim of development under a religious, political, imperialist, and Zionist occupation, it is merely fattening fat cats and foreign predators.
Shaybani knows well that Syria’s debts are the result of the politicized-religious invasion and the Caesar Act, which imposed an economic blockade. Syria had neither debt nor a trade deficit before the NATO war. But who will challenge him in Davos, where he was received—a temple of capital and a forum for the sharks?
He says:
“We are studying public-private partnerships in sectors like airports, railways, and roads. The biggest challenge is finding buyers for institutions that have been deteriorating for years in a devastated and isolated country.”
This is laughable. Any “partnership” will simply be between:
· Capitalists
· And the comprador capitalist bureaucratic authority, which is part of the same class and governs in their interest.
If there is an economic and political comprador class in the world, Syria today also has a demographic comprador, having imported international terrorists. What results is a dictatorship of capital disguised as “partnership.” Finding buyers won’t be a problem—privatization means selling public assets for next to nothing. Look at what happened in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Egypt. A Soviet factory producing ammunition for the Third World was once sold for the price of a medium-sized bakery in Switzerland.
As part of the West’s hypocritical narrative, the Financial Times claims Europe cares about Syria’s stance on women’s and minority rights. Despite the West’s exposed double standards, it clings to such claims—while it is the same force that commodified women, oppressed minorities, and begged for ties with medieval Gulf regimes.
Shaybani claims:
“The new leadership wants to reassure Arab and Western officials that the country poses no threat.”
He adds that countries like the UAE and Egypt are worried about the return of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, while others fear that a revolution in Syria could inspire rebellion at home.
But there is no single “Islam” in Syria anymore. There is two Islamic camps:
First: Islam of Politicised Religion:
· ISIS, with its own expansionist ideology, though non-mobile (unlike al-Qaeda, which travels by American planes to practice terror)
· Julani’s version of ISIS, made to order by the U.S.
· The Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological mother of them all
· The UAE Islam,” i.e., Zionist-aligned Islam
· The Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia
Second: Original Arabic Islam of the masses as believers.
Naturally, they all fear each other. But in the end, politicized-religious forces adapt to their own interests. This is what the U.S. understood, instructing Julani to insert 3,500 foreign terrorists into the new army. Even if these factions fight each other (as they reproduce amoeba-like), when needed, they all return to “Mother America.” This is the true meaning of Syria’s loss.
Notably, many of these terrorists are being gathered near the Lebanese border, not the occupied Palestinian one.
The question isn’t whether there was a “revolution” in Syria—despite the posturing of Trotskyists, Julani, or Shaybani, who boasts of it. Exporting such a “revolution” depends on the factions yet to be restrained. But a more pressing question arises: If it’s true there are over 100,000 foreign terrorists in Syria, isn’t it possible for them to seize full power in this collapsing country?
There’s not enough space here to address the differences between the terrorist faction in Damascus and the Kurdish Zionists who have had relations with the Zionist Entity since the 1950s and became under U.S. protection. It wouldn’t be surprising if the U.S. sells them out to Erdoğan tomorrow—provided they can still serve a role in undermining Syria’s Arab identity, which will inevitably resurge.
Shaybani’s discourse is a clear example of the non-nationalism and non-Arabism of politicized-religious forces. He did not mention, even in passing, the Syrian land occupied by the Zionist Entity. He never once named the Zionist Entity, nor did he mention the return of millions of Syrians who left in support of the NATO-backed rebels.
The map of occupied Syria is still unclear, but it appears that the Turkey-Qatar axis has more chances than the Saudi-UAE axis, but both are committed to dismantle Syria. Turkey is an entrenched colonial force; Qatar is an ideological base for the Brotherhood—unlike Saudi and UAE regimes, which lack the capacity to construct a meaningful axis. What they care about most is eliminating Syria’s Arab character.
Julani’s claim of independence from Turkey is mere rhetoric. Turkey has moved from Aleppo to Homs unchecked—except by Israel. And since Julani is indifferent to the Golan Heights and Quneitra, why would he care about Iskenderun, which has been occupied by Turkey since the eve of the second Imperialism/ world war 1939-1945, or Homs? This is how Arab politicized-religious movements operate: with no patriotism and a destructive ideology.
The Military Academy of Terror and the Cultural Fifth Column School
Let’s conclude with two interconnected and essential points about Syria’s role in the broader terror dynamic:
- The Sixth Cultural Column Against Urobah
The enemies of Urobah, especially Syria’s enemies, established a “Sixth Cultural Column School” that specialized in castrating Arab culture—through grants, job offers, stipends, and bribes. Intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals flocked to it, each contributing to cultural sabotage. Among them was Mufti Yusuf al-Qaradawi and ideologue Azmi Bishara. Naturally, politicized-religious forces align with the dismantling of Urobah.
- The Terror Base in Syria Today
Now led by Julani, it’s no surprise that this base is on the brink Of launching a war of terror against Arab countries.
Politicized-religious movements and sectarian religious awakenings have brought this region to the point where anyone with money can create an army of terrorists—and a team of intellectuals to ideologically justify it. Yet the law of history remains unbroken: a reckoning will come, and an awakening is inevitable.
https://www.ft.com/content/43746784-4e14-4c70-a6be-1aa849cd66ee
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The opinions and views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Kana’an’s Editorial Board.
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