The KKE condemned the deadly and criminal attacks in Paris and expressed its sincerest condolences with the families of the victims and its solidarity with the French people.

Today, a few days afterwards, we see that there is an attempt to use these attacks, in the name of combating terrorism, as an alibi for the further imperialist involvement in Syria and at the same time for the further strengthening of police state measures, repression, racism and xenophobia in Europe.

As regards these developments, which require vigilance on the part of the workers and the development of the people’s struggle, it necessary for us to pose the following issues:

1.   The war, which has now been raging in Syria for 5 years and has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, while millions of others have been uprooted from their homes, is a part of the imperialist aggressiveness and inter-imperialist competition. It demonstrates that capitalism, which increases the wealth of a handful of exploiters, at the same time creates crises, social problems, wars, refugees, with painful consequences for millions of ordinary people.

The KKE, from the very first moment, and when the other parties both bourgeois and opportunist celebrated the so-called Arab Spring, highlighted capitalist barbarity that was the terrain on which the war in Syria unfolded. It also highlighted the organized attempt of the imperialist powers, the USA and the EU, and their allies in the region, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, to intervene in Syria’s internal affairs.

2.   The aims of this intervention are the promotion of the plan for the “Greater Middle East”, which, as we had stressed in a timely fashion, is related to the safeguarding of the access of the US and European monopolies to the energy sources and new energy deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean, to the control of a large region that is a “passage” for trade and transport.

At the same time, it aims to reconstruct the bourgeois regimes in order to ensure the most stable basis possible for the expansion of the monopoly groups into the region’s markets.

These plans come into fierce opposition with the monopoly interests of other powers in the regions, such as those of Russia, China, and their regional allies.

3.   So-called political Islam was utilized by the Euro-Atlantic imperialists to achieve the aims of this intervention, as they had previously used the Taliban in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Various such groups were supported, organized and armed by the imperialists during their intervention in Syria.

The imperialist intervention in Syria, together with those that preceded it in recent years, such as the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the dismantling of Libya, are what led to the monstrous and murderous creation of the so-called Islamic State.

4.   The Russian military intervention in the region at the end of September 2015 was a sign of the further sharpening of the contradictions. We are talking about fierce contradictions over the control of raw materials, the transport routes of the commodities, the shares of the markets, the acquisition of geo-political and military footholds in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

The bloody attack in Paris, which is being used in order for France and other capitalist states to escalate their military intervention, can have tragic consequences, such as the dismemberment of Syria or a more generalized military confrontation or a fake peace compromise “with the gun to the people's head”.

The workers must not be misled by the pretexts of ‘international law”, a “humanitarian crisis”, “the wave of refugees-immigrants”, etc which each imperialist power uses in order to advance its plans.  They must not allow their children to become cannon fodder in the inter-imperialist competition and to shed their blood for interests alien to theirs, i.e. for the interests of the various alliances of monopolies.

5.   The workers in Greece and the other European countries must examine what is concealed behind the armed murderers, i.e. those that plan, create, arm, fund, train and in the end utilize these forces in order to advance their plans.

The attempt to create an atmosphere of fear, toleration for  the imperialist interventions, imperialist war, repressive measures against the peoples, a new wave of xenophobia and racism that is developing and being fostered by various bourgeois apparatuses, must not succeed.

The workers must reject the positions being promoted by bourgeois parties and mass media, and even by the fascists of Golden Dawn that allegedly “Europe is under attack”, that what is being waged is a “war of civilizations or religions” and that we must all “respond to this attack with a spirit of national (or European) unity.”

This misleading “pro-western”, “pro-European” and “patriotic” rhetoric” has only one mission: to poison the consciousness of the workers with racism and xenophobia, and then to lead them into being slaughtered for the interests of the monopoly groups of the USA, of the EU, of NATO and their allies, which are coming into conflict in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean with the Russian and Chinese monopolies and their allies.

6.   The SYRIZA-ANEL government bears enormous responsibilities  because it has seized the baton from the previous governments of ND and PASOK, both in foreign and domestic policy, and is implementing a dangerous anti-people political line.

Behind the talk about a so-called multi-dimensional foreign policy and the attempts at geo-strategic enhancement, the government serves the interests of the Greek monopoly groups. It declares its faith in the Euro-Atlantic unions that have led to so many torments for our people and country, to the loss of sovereign rights. And so now it is providing territory, ports, airports and other infrastructure in the country for the imperialist unions of NATO and the EU so that they continue the imperialist interventions and wars. It is also reinforcing its military cooperation with Israel against the peoples of the region.

The government has been exposed by the unanimous decision of the EU’s council of defense ministers which, under the pretext of the murderous attack in Paris, activated article 42, paragraph 7 of the EU Treaty (Maastricht Treaty) that recognizes the fundamental role of NATO, i.e. the hegemonic role of the USA and provides for the provision of military assistance in the efforts to escalate and generalize the imperialist intervention in the Middle East and North Africa.

Our people must be on guard about the developments in Greco-Turkish relations, the “rewards” Turkey is seeking from the EU for regulating the problem of refugees and immigration, which are also related to the developments in the negotiations over the Cyprus question, as well as its permanent aims to establish forms of “joint sovereignty” in the Aegean, to expand the “Grey Zones” etc.

At the same time, our people must be in a state of readiness as regards the consequences of the policy of “closed borders:, which is being implemented by states in the region, making the entrapment of the hundreds of thousands of refugees and immigrants in Greece more likely than ever.

7.   Now the people’s struggle against our country’s participation in the imperialist intervention and war must be intensified.

The country’s armed forces must not be placed at the service of the imperialist plans.

All the US-NATO bases must be closed immediately.

None of the country’s facilities or infrastructure must be provided to serve as launching pads for attacks against Syria or other countries.

 Our people must be vigilant, they must not tolerate any authoritarian measures, in the name of “combating terrorism”, at their expense.

The attack in Paris must not be used to implement measures against the refugees and to trap them in our country.

The people must isolate the Nazi criminal organization of the Golden Dawn murderers, which supports the imperialist military interventions and sows hatred against the peoples.

The people’s slogan “No land, no water for the murderers of the people!” must become a reality.

The people’s struggle must be strengthened against the monopolies and capitalism, for disengagement from the imperialist unions of the EU and NATO, with workers’-people’s power.

THE POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE KKE

20^TH OF NOVEMBER, 2015