To anyone who has followed events in Syria over the last 12 months it ought to be obvious that there's a popular struggle under way for liberation from a brutal and oppressive regime. The regime, meanwhile, is battling to hold on to power and the privileges of the clique around it. Lacking legitimacy at home, the regime justifies its existence by claiming to be a bulwark against imperialism and a defender of the Palestinians.

This propaganda line doesn't stand up to much serious scrutiny, though in the west it has gained credence among some elements on the left. In an article for the Socialist Review, however, Miriyam Aouragh looks at the regime's anti-imperialist and pro-Palestinian credentials – and finds them wanting.

Syria under the Assads has supported anti-US and anti-Israel movements such as Hamas and Hizbullah, she argues – but only insofar as they are deemed to benefit the regime:

"Syria has only ever offered selective support to the Palestinians, conditional on the regime's interests ... So the Syrian regime has been prepared to back the Palestinians' resistance at some points, only to turn on it when it threatens to go beyond its control."

Its record on imperialism has also been contradictory:

"In 1991, Hafez Assad, father of Bashar, helped the US in its war on Iraq. But the regime continued to support resistance to Israeli occupation and opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (while quietly aiding the US by choking off support for the Iraqi resistance). The regime offered its services in the "war on terror", becoming one of the stops in the global rendition programme."

Aouragh also dismisses the idea that the fall of the Assad regime will make things worse for the Palestinians:

"The Arab regimes have at every point attempted to limit and control the Palestinian movement, Syria has been at the forefront of this. The fall of the regime does not mean the end of the resistance, as Hamas has shown when it broke all its links with the regime and publicly supported the revolution.

"Hamas's leadership's motives may not simply be a question of siding with the revolution, but nor are they simply blindly following Qatar. They are making a bet based on the expectation that the Syrian regime will fall. But nevertheless it opens up space for greater solidarity between Palestinians and the Syrian revolution.

"The revolutions in the Arab world will release the Palestinian movement from the stifling interference of these regimes. The revolution in Syria is not a 'revolution against the resistance', or 'a western plot' but a popular uprising that opens the possibility for the Palestinian resistance to re-emerge once again as a popular movement."

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 23 March 2012