WEBVTT - Syria’s hard-won freedom from a dictator

0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:07.880
<v Speaker 1>From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamio.

0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:16.759
<v Speaker 1>It's Tuesday, December tenth. The former Israeli Foreign Minister Sippylivney

0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:21.560
<v Speaker 1>says strong leadership is the antidote to antisemitism. Her comments

0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.160
<v Speaker 1>followed the establishment of an antisemitism task Force by Prime

0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:29.600
<v Speaker 1>Minister Anthony Albanesi. He capitulated to three days of demands

0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:34.800
<v Speaker 1>to take decisive action after Melbourne's Great Synagogue was firebomb plus.

0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.559
<v Speaker 1>Peter Dutton declared the Coalition will deport migrants who are

0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.440
<v Speaker 1>deemed antisemitic if the Opposition gets up at the next election.

0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.080
<v Speaker 1>That exclusive interview with Sippylivney is live right now at

0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:54.000
<v Speaker 1>the Australian dot com dot au. It took Syrian rebels

0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.800
<v Speaker 1>just twenty four hours to bring half a century of

0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:01.800
<v Speaker 1>tyranny to a stunning conclusion. The world watches and waits

0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.360
<v Speaker 1>to see who feels the massive political vacuum created by

0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:18.280
<v Speaker 1>the end of the Assad regime. That's today's story. On

0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:22.280
<v Speaker 1>Sunday evening, the streets of Southwest Sydney, the city's Syrian

0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:30.720
<v Speaker 1>communities lit up. They were celebrating the fall of a

0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.160
<v Speaker 1>ruthless regime. And the demise of a dictator who ruled

0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:44.640
<v Speaker 1>Syria for more than five decades. For some residents who

0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.520
<v Speaker 1>spoke to the Australians reporters Lea Mendez and Joanna Panagopolis,

0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:54.080
<v Speaker 1>it was a moment of jubilation because the Catufrinda not

0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:59.040
<v Speaker 1>in jail, because twenty four million people.

0:01:58.920 --> 0:01:59.440
<v Speaker 2>Actually the.

0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.240
<v Speaker 1>Mohammed el Humwi says he plans to return to his

0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:08.080
<v Speaker 1>home country for the first time in four decades. But

0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:12.400
<v Speaker 1>for others like Assyrian refugee Simon Shaheen, it's a time

0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:13.840
<v Speaker 1>of fear, interrepidation.

0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:19.800
<v Speaker 3>So when there's no government, no system in place to

0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.200
<v Speaker 3>protect the innocent, it becomes like wilderness. It's a huge

0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.120
<v Speaker 3>political vacuum. Who was going to fill it? It's going

0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:31.680
<v Speaker 3>to be insurgents and rebels who are radical and extremist

0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.520
<v Speaker 3>mentality and agendas, and they are armed to the teeth.

0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:44.959
<v Speaker 2>Well Christian. It really means a new balance of power

0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:49.160
<v Speaker 2>in the Middle East because Syria has been a stalwart

0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.560
<v Speaker 2>companion ally of the so called Actus of Evil, which

0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.760
<v Speaker 2>is between Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, who have been its

0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:58.200
<v Speaker 2>three major allies.

0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.200
<v Speaker 1>Karon Stewart is the Australian's Chief International correspondent.

0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:07.160
<v Speaker 2>So, in other words, by Syria collapsing in a spectacular way,

0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:11.239
<v Speaker 2>it has a Syrian regime. It's really robbed those three

0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:13.639
<v Speaker 2>entities of their power in the Middle East, and that's

0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:15.799
<v Speaker 2>a huge shift in the balance of power.

0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.160
<v Speaker 1>If you tuned into Syria's state television station in the

0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.720
<v Speaker 1>early hours of Sunday morning, you'd have heard a familiar tune.

0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.960
<v Speaker 1>It was Tchaikowsky's Swan Lake playing on loop. The office

0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.960
<v Speaker 1>of President Bashah al Assad said he was tied up

0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:40.880
<v Speaker 1>with constitutional tasks. In reality, he was on the lamb

0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.320
<v Speaker 1>his wife and children in tow as the regime his

0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:47.920
<v Speaker 1>family spent fifty three years building crumbled.

0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:53.160
<v Speaker 4>Syria's government has collapsed after a lightning offensive by rebel

0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.480
<v Speaker 4>forces over the past week. People are celebrating the end

0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.280
<v Speaker 4>to the fifty year a sad rule in the streets.

0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.000
<v Speaker 4>After the capital Damascus fell.

0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.680
<v Speaker 1>Rebel fighters took up officers in the Syrian capital's lavish

0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:11.120
<v Speaker 1>presidential palace and gleefully looted a fleet of luxury cars

0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:20.520
<v Speaker 1>from Assad's private collection. No they unlocked dungeon prisons, freeing

0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:25.120
<v Speaker 1>those held captive for years under the regime. Civilians poured

0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:30.800
<v Speaker 1>into the streets of Damascus waving flags and chanting in victory,

0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.080
<v Speaker 1>and a week after rebel forces first swept into Aleppo,

0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.560
<v Speaker 1>the leaders who toppled this brutal regime in less than

0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:58.279
<v Speaker 1>twenty four hours joined in the celebrations. The ousted president

0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:02.320
<v Speaker 1>re emerged in Russia on morning, having been granted political

0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:03.720
<v Speaker 1>asylum by the Kremlin.

0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:12.040
<v Speaker 2>He really was a truly brutal dictator. He didn't start

0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:15.240
<v Speaker 2>out necessarily being like that. He was actually an eye doctor,

0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.040
<v Speaker 2>but of course he got canapulted into that position, succeeding

0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.279
<v Speaker 2>his father after his elder brother died, and he became

0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:27.040
<v Speaker 2>harder and harder and harder as a dictator as the

0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:29.520
<v Speaker 2>years went on, and the big threat to him of was,

0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:32.480
<v Speaker 2>of course, the Arab Spring in twenty eleven, where pro

0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:35.680
<v Speaker 2>democracy protesters looked like they might topple him, and he

0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.120
<v Speaker 2>came back very very hard, got his allies Russia and

0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:50.520
<v Speaker 2>Iran and Hezbollah to crush the resistance movement, but he

0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.560
<v Speaker 2>used chemical weapons on his own people. Some three hundred

0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.520
<v Speaker 2>thousand people arrestimated to have died during that conflict between

0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.440
<v Speaker 2>twenty eleven and twenty eight, and he was one of

0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.120
<v Speaker 2>the most dictators in the world, and even though there's

0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.839
<v Speaker 2>a lot of uncertainty about what happens now in Syria,

0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:08.599
<v Speaker 2>and you know, what are these rebels going to actually be? Like?

0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.039
<v Speaker 2>I think there's general celebration in the West and certainly

0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:14.479
<v Speaker 2>in Syria that this despot has been toppled.

0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.839
<v Speaker 1>Coming up, what this historic defeat means for the Middle East.

0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.960
<v Speaker 1>The demise of the Assad regime isn't a story about

0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:50.840
<v Speaker 1>good triumphing over evil. There are several groups with a

0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.640
<v Speaker 1>vested interest in what happens in Syria, but no clear winners.

0:06:55.520 --> 0:07:00.000
<v Speaker 1>Chief among them is Higher to Rear al Sham or HTS,

0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.200
<v Speaker 1>hardest group from northwest Syria with links to the terrorist

0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:07.520
<v Speaker 1>group Al Qaeda. They're responsible for mounting the stunning resurgence

0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:11.600
<v Speaker 1>that ultimately led to Assad's downfall. There's Russia, which has

0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:16.160
<v Speaker 1>air and naval bases dotted along Syria's Mediterranean coast, but

0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:20.240
<v Speaker 1>was otherwise occupied and failed to send back up as Aleppo,

0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:26.480
<v Speaker 1>Hammer and Homs fell. In the southwest, Lebanon's proxy militia, Hezbollah,

0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.560
<v Speaker 1>has lost a powerful ally and the land that connection

0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.840
<v Speaker 1>affords it. To the north, Turkey has been given an

0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.120
<v Speaker 1>opening to expand its influence in the region by backing

0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:41.400
<v Speaker 1>the ascendant rebel groups like HTS in Iraq. There are

0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:46.000
<v Speaker 1>concerns the Syrian revolt could inspire similar action by Sunni Muslims,

0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:49.440
<v Speaker 1>and there are the Kurdish and Alouite Syrian factions whose

0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:56.920
<v Speaker 1>fight for survival is not yet done. Further afield, the

0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.160
<v Speaker 1>United States has already taken steps to prevent the koreation

0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.960
<v Speaker 1>of a new extremist Islamic state, conducting air strikes on

0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:05.800
<v Speaker 1>ISIS camps in central Syria.

0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.040
<v Speaker 3>We're cleared eyed about the fact that ISIS will try

0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.920
<v Speaker 3>to take advantages of the vacuum to re establish this

0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:15.760
<v Speaker 3>capabilities to create a safe Hayman. We will not let

0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:16.400
<v Speaker 3>that happen.

0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.760
<v Speaker 1>And in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya, who took credit

0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.560
<v Speaker 1>for the chain of events he says ultimately led to

0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:25.680
<v Speaker 1>Asad's demise.

0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:27.240
<v Speaker 2>This is a.

0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:28.960
<v Speaker 3>Historic day for the Middle East.

0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:31.640
<v Speaker 1>It's set off a chain reaction of all those who

0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.640
<v Speaker 1>want to free themselves from this tyranny and its oppression.

0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.679
<v Speaker 2>No one knows how this group will govern. This is

0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.319
<v Speaker 2>a massive vacuum of power. I mean they controlled a

0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:47.480
<v Speaker 2>very small area up in the northwest of the country,

0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.839
<v Speaker 2>very very different to control all of Syria. And what

0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.320
<v Speaker 2>I think is really interesting in the last twenty four

0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:58.200
<v Speaker 2>hours Christian Is we've seen the nations around Syria really

0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.680
<v Speaker 2>take steps to protect their own interests. We've seen Israel

0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:06.040
<v Speaker 2>go into the demilitarized zone between Syria and Israel that

0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:09.640
<v Speaker 2>was created back in nineteen seventy four and move beyond that,

0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.960
<v Speaker 2>moving its troops actually into Syrian soil. And they're saying

0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:15.960
<v Speaker 2>this is a temporary move, but they are doing it

0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.280
<v Speaker 2>because they don't want to be threatened on their border

0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:21.200
<v Speaker 2>by a militant group. And then on the other side,

0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:23.760
<v Speaker 2>we've had the Americans who've got a thousand troops in

0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:28.960
<v Speaker 2>eastern Syria. They've been bombing Islamic State camps in eastern Syria,

0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.160
<v Speaker 2>and the message they're trying to say there is don't

0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.640
<v Speaker 2>let Islamic State join with this new rebel group that's

0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.599
<v Speaker 2>taken over Syria. And on top of that, the Iraqis

0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.120
<v Speaker 2>have closed their border and the Turkish forces had a

0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.400
<v Speaker 2>skirmish with the Kurdish forces who are up in the

0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.040
<v Speaker 2>northeast of the country. So, if you like, everyone suddenly

0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.600
<v Speaker 2>reacting to this incredible victory by their Eble forces by

0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:53.800
<v Speaker 2>protecting their own interests. And I think that goes to

0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.760
<v Speaker 2>your original question. No one knows exactly what is going

0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:57.640
<v Speaker 2>to happen next.

0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:00.640
<v Speaker 1>And to that point, this is an one of those

0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.280
<v Speaker 1>questions that likely doesn't yet have an answer. But there

0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:06.800
<v Speaker 1>is a conflict already raging in the Middle East that

0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:11.679
<v Speaker 1>is primarily Israel and Hamas in Gaza. How does that

0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:14.280
<v Speaker 1>play into all of this? Is that dynamic likely to

0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.200
<v Speaker 1>shift now or is this likely to become part of

0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:18.200
<v Speaker 1>a wider conflict.

0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:22.400
<v Speaker 2>Well, it's interesting because Israel is now conducting some air

0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.120
<v Speaker 2>strikes as well in Syria to destroy some of the

0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.440
<v Speaker 2>military apparatus that the Asarz regim had, and that's to

0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.040
<v Speaker 2>make sure that this new rebel group doesn't get those

0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:33.640
<v Speaker 2>armaments and if it was inclined to attack Israel, that

0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:36.160
<v Speaker 2>it can't attack Israel. So Israel is trying to make

0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.520
<v Speaker 2>sure that this new front in Syria doesn't become another

0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.320
<v Speaker 2>front in its own conflicts against Kamas in Gaza and

0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.280
<v Speaker 2>of course Hesbela in Lebanon. And of course the reason

0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.360
<v Speaker 2>why Asad's infall in part was because Hesbellah backed him well.

0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.080
<v Speaker 2>But now Hesbelar is completely and utterly frozen. In Lebanon.

0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:57.000
<v Speaker 2>It's a ceasefire agreement and so there's not going to

0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.400
<v Speaker 2>be any movement on that front. So I think Israel

0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:02.199
<v Speaker 2>will now try and shore up Syria and then it

0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.440
<v Speaker 2>will pay attention to Hamasin Gaza, which is really the

0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:06.839
<v Speaker 2>biggest frat it has at the moment.

0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:21.040
<v Speaker 1>Camaron Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. This story

0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.480
<v Speaker 1>is developing quickly. You can read our comprehensive reporting and

0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.680
<v Speaker 1>analysis anytime at the Australian dot com dot au