The recent political reversal [13] in Bolivia raises the question of whether the advances of nearly 20 years of rule by the indigenist left will survive—including a constitution [14] that refounded the state as a "plurinational [15]" republic. In Episode 299 of the CounterVortex podcast [16], Bill Weinberg explores how the lessons of the Bolivian experience can be applied to Syria, where the new revolutionary government faces a challenge in Kurdish [17] and Druze [18] demands for regional autonomy.
New fighting [20] in the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsoud [21] in Aleppo city between government forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF [17]), armed wing of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration [17] that still controls much of the country's northeast, points to the continued threat [17] of ethnic war. Results in Syria's first post-revolution parliamentary elections (carried out in a controlled process [18] by the central government, not popular vote) were tilted to the Sunni Arab majority [22]. Exiled left-dissident Joseph Daher [23] sees a consolidation of power [24] by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS [25]), the ostensibly disbanded Islamist formation that led the rebel offensive [26] that toppled the old regime last December, and whose leader is the current interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa [27]. Can the current transition process [18] in Syria return to the secular-democratic values of the 2011 Arab Revolution [28] without a rethinking of nationalist precepts?
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Production by Chris Rywalt [30]
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