Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Uh, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 2: about the things that are happening all around us, including
Speaker 2: shockingly in the last week something we did not expect
Speaker 2: two weeks ago, the fall of the Assad regime, which
Speaker 2: our official stance as a network is that fuck him.
Speaker 2: This is pretty good, but a lot of people feel differently,
Speaker 2: And to talk with me about that. Another guy who's
Speaker 2: always angry about Syria and also has been to Syria, James,
Speaker 2: And you know, just as a note, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of the people podcasting about this right now are
Speaker 2: talking about a place they've never been, although James and
Speaker 2: I have not been.
Speaker 3: To EdLib, so you know, it's true.
Speaker 2: We're going to be fairly focused on our experiences in
Speaker 2: the Kurdish regions. But at least we're not just bullshitting
Speaker 2: about a place that we've read about on the internet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, claiming deep on the ground understanding of a place
Speaker 4: from ready, yes that is not us. Yeah, we I
Speaker 4: briefly look to regime held Syria.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, over from a commisiala where there is
Speaker 2: kind of the governance capital of Rojava but is also
Speaker 2: a big chunk of it was held by the assad regimes.
Speaker 2: You would just periodically, like see that fucker's face on
Speaker 2: the wall as you were a crossing the street.
Speaker 4: It's a good times. But my fixer would come around
Speaker 4: at noon for whatever reason. When I was in Rajava,
Speaker 4: and like, I hate to sit in the hotel, so
Speaker 4: I'd go out for walks around the market. Yeah, not
Speaker 4: advised by the old safety people.
Speaker 2: But no, one of the sketchiest cities I've been in
Speaker 2: because of the presence of regime troops. Yes, yes, everything
Speaker 2: else was lovely. Yeah, people are lovely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'd be walking down the street and like I'd be
Speaker 4: looking around, see has anything interesting to go and see?
Speaker 4: And then you can literally take one wrong turn down
Speaker 4: the street and walk into to regime Syria, as you
Speaker 4: covered in in the Women's War. Like I was walking
Speaker 4: down one street and this man walked up to me
Speaker 4: and m curtis, she's not very good. Tried to say hello,
Speaker 4: told in my name and stuff, and then he starts
Speaker 4: getting more agitated, and he just starts repeating at higher
Speaker 4: and hier volume, a sad bad man. Yeah, stay away, bro,
Speaker 4: stay away. He's like, you're going to fucking die to
Speaker 4: be a fucking of all.
Speaker 5: Yeah, girl expars to that guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bashi Barshi.
Speaker 5: Yeah it is. It was a very straight situation.
Speaker 4: It is no longer a straight situation because in the
Speaker 4: last week the A side regime has crumbled. Statues of
Speaker 4: him have been torn down all over the country, which
Speaker 4: we love to see. It's another of us dancers other
Speaker 4: network is fuck a statue?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, fuck most statues.
Speaker 4: Most statues are probably some cool one does the lady
Speaker 4: hitting the Nazi with a handbag in Sweden? That's a
Speaker 4: good statue. But yeah, most statues, most statues of dudes
Speaker 4: in suits. Don't love them.
Speaker 2: No, very few dudes in suits. I want to see
Speaker 2: a statue of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't think of any right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not coming to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sure it will.
Speaker 4: So these statues have been torn down because your said
Speaker 4: regime has basically crumbled. It failed to really put up
Speaker 4: any meaningful resistance to disadvance by different rebel groups, right
Speaker 4: by HTS, by SNA, by the Southern Front as well.
Speaker 4: And despite I guess even what I would have said
Speaker 4: two weeks ago, right even after they lost Aleppo, I
Speaker 4: assumed that they would regroup in Hama or Homs and
Speaker 4: they did not.
Speaker 5: They completely failed to do so.
Speaker 4: Their Russian backers more or less abandoned them, focused on
Speaker 4: getting their stuff and their people. Those who survived out
Speaker 4: of the country, and as a result, there is no
Speaker 4: more a SAD regime, right A SAD fled the country
Speaker 4: at some point. It was initially speculated that a Sad
Speaker 4: had fled on an aircraft on Saturday night as rebels
Speaker 4: were entering Damascus. That seems to be untrue, or perhaps
Speaker 4: it was true, but the speculation that aircraft had crashed
Speaker 4: or been shut down, certainly it does not seem to
Speaker 4: Sad now seems to be.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Look, I made the call about two days before the
Speaker 2: regime fell that I felt he was out of the country,
Speaker 2: based on some reporting, including reporting from the scene regime,
Speaker 2: that he'd gone to Iran first. I think he left
Speaker 2: days before it fell. I don't think he's He's got
Speaker 2: enough instinct for self preservation that I think he got
Speaker 2: the fuck out of there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn't want to be found in a hole
Speaker 4: in the ground like here, or end up like Canafi.
Speaker 5: I guess, so he left.
Speaker 4: It's quite possible that he was doing a sort of
Speaker 4: final please please help me tour of Russia run, which
Speaker 4: turned turned into his eventual exile.
Speaker 5: In breaking news, Robert, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've seen this telegram post, and
Speaker 4: obviously we can't confirm it because we don't have a
Speaker 4: direct Clansiasad regime, but allegedly he is planning on setting
Speaker 4: up a specialized hospital in the field of ophthalmology in Russia,
Speaker 4: Abkhazia and Dubai.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Great, great place for him to be working.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wonderful, cool stuff. Yeah cool. Yeah, not at the
Speaker 4: Hague where he belongs. And yeah, anyway, he's gone. And
Speaker 4: we have seen in response, like some of the worst
Speaker 4: social media posting that I've seen, And I don't want
Speaker 4: this to be like like Twitter review. I think that
Speaker 4: obviously that's pointless and pure ut but I want to
Speaker 4: address I guess this kind of really disappointing response I've
Speaker 4: seen from a lot of people on the left that
Speaker 4: oh yeah, well, either I mean, you have the like
Speaker 4: the grey zone tendency, right that a sab was great
Speaker 4: actually in the protection of human rights in the region,
Speaker 4: and the like the Syria was socialism in Karna, which
Speaker 4: is obviously nonsense, right, Like, this is a person who
Speaker 4: as we have seen in the last week whose regime
Speaker 4: prisons were holding thousands of people, killed, tens of thousands
Speaker 4: of people, tortured people to death in some cases in
Speaker 4: Sednaia Prison, which is a big prison in Damascus, certainly
Speaker 4: a Damascus, I should.
Speaker 5: Say, it's towards the coast.
Speaker 4: It looks as if there were children in that prison
Speaker 4: who were possibly born in that prison and may have
Speaker 4: never been out of that prison, which is like one
Speaker 4: of the most horrible things I've ever had to think about,
Speaker 4: you know, like like a little child four or five
Speaker 4: years old never having seen the sky.
Speaker 5: It's just it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 4: Like a lot of the things we are going to find,
Speaker 4: the things we're going to hear about in the next
Speaker 4: few weeks are heartbreaking.
Speaker 5: And anybody who's.
Speaker 4: Prepared to apologize for that or prepared to say that
Speaker 4: that was good, I think you really need to question
Speaker 4: if there's someone who's aligned with you.
Speaker 5: But in addition to.
Speaker 4: That tendency, there's one that sort of holds that in Syria,
Speaker 4: like what will come next is worse right, what will
Speaker 4: come next?
Speaker 5: Or we don't know?
Speaker 4: Of course, we don't know what will come next. None
Speaker 4: of us can see the future. But what will come
Speaker 4: next will make a sad look like it was a
Speaker 4: preferable option, and like, I feel that we need to
Speaker 4: address that because I think it's one of the long
Speaker 4: legacies of authoritarian socialists. How do I say this, like
Speaker 4: the authoritarian socialist media project.
Speaker 2: And that kind of colliding with the Iraq War anti
Speaker 2: anti war movement. Yes, you know, yeah, the whole hands
Speaker 2: off Syria thing that groups like the PSL, the Party
Speaker 2: for Socialism and Liberation, we're doing when the rebel started
Speaker 2: this offense of being like we've got to stop you know,
Speaker 2: these US backed rebels from taking uh, you know, Syria
Speaker 2: for the Empires, Like, man, the fuck it. It's not
Speaker 2: the US that was primarily backing the rebels that did
Speaker 2: most of the fighting, Like these guys are Turkish backed,
Speaker 2: you know yeah, yeah, the extent that that even matters, right,
Speaker 2: Like the that like this is not the CIA did
Speaker 2: not orchestrate all of this. The guys the CIA were
Speaker 2: really trying to back in Syria basically all died Like.
Speaker 5: Yeah they've gone.
Speaker 4: Some of the weapons, sure that the US supplied in
Speaker 4: Timber Sycamore are probably stood in the hands of HTS, but.
Speaker 2: Yes, some of them but like, even that's not the
Speaker 2: bulk of the weaponry that those fuckers know using.
Speaker 4: The entire weaponry of the Syrian and arabambi is also
Speaker 4: in the hands of the HDS, which we'll move on
Speaker 4: to actually, because maybe we should address that now before
Speaker 4: we address responses. Actually, yeah, when we talk about international
Speaker 4: involvement in Syria, right, we talk about the United States
Speaker 4: who has supported the SDF, not as a project, and
Speaker 4: this is important. They don't support the Democratic Autonomous Administration
Speaker 4: Northern Assyria as a democratic project. What they support is
Speaker 4: the SDF as a partner force in the fight against ISIS,
Speaker 4: and that's been very clear when they have failed to
Speaker 4: defend the Anes against genocidal violence, ethnic cleansing, and a
Speaker 4: free right what we're seeing again now in the Talifat area.
Speaker 4: I'll use that terminology because if you want to look
Speaker 4: it up on Google Maps, that's easier to find the
Speaker 4: violence that we've seen repeatedly from the Turkish back Syrian
Speaker 4: National Army or Turkish Free Syrian Army as are sometimes called. Right,
Speaker 4: the United States hasn't defended the people of the Ans
Speaker 4: against and it won't because that's not what it's there
Speaker 4: to do. And as much as we would like it too,
Speaker 4: I don't think that as in the nature of the
Speaker 4: US mission in Syria. And I don't think it's in
Speaker 4: the nature of the US as a state to support
Speaker 4: a project which is seeking to build democracy without the state.
Speaker 5: It's not in the nature of the state.
Speaker 2: We stumbled backwards, accidentally into exactly one, supporting the good
Speaker 2: guys in the conflict, you know, specifically in the conflict
Speaker 2: with ISIS. Yeah, like a broken cloak, and we immediately
Speaker 2: ever since we have been trying as hard as we
Speaker 2: can to pull back and you know, betray them, yes
Speaker 2: to their deaths like that.
Speaker 3: That that is the story of US support of Rojava.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not. This is not a US proxy state.
Speaker 4: Some people are trying to tell you, this is not
Speaker 4: a CIA revolution of Some people are trying to tell you.
Speaker 5: Indeed.
Speaker 2: Now, part of what gives fuel for that is there
Speaker 2: are a number of photos of like US troops really
Speaker 2: vibing with the WHITEPG and YPJ, and they're vibing with them.
Speaker 2: And you and I could both say this having been
Speaker 2: with those people.
Speaker 3: They're nice. Yeah, they're fun, they're chill folks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they have good music and they like to done
Speaker 4: generally cool people. Yes, yeah, I enjoy that company. I
Speaker 4: have vibed with the WHITEPT you know, like.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to see a bunch of young women
Speaker 2: who like left isis captivity and immediately said give me
Speaker 2: a gun. I'm going to learn how to use it,
Speaker 2: and be like, yeah, that's pretty cool. Good for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's one of the cooler things that's happened in
Speaker 4: the Middle East in the past century. Like, the United
Speaker 4: States does not have a plan for what has happened
Speaker 4: in the last two weeks, and it appears to be
Speaker 4: trying to think on the hoof right now. Joe Biden's
Speaker 4: foreign policy has been dog shit and it doesn't look
Speaker 4: like he's going to pull a one eighty. Now. We
Speaker 4: should not expect the United States to save for Java.
Speaker 4: We should do everything we can to get the United
Speaker 4: States to continue supporting the people who gave more than
Speaker 4: ten thousand of their children in the battle against ISIS.
Speaker 4: The US didn't want to say ground troops right at
Speaker 4: Bama didn't want to have another ground war. Noithery did Trump,
Speaker 4: and so they got people from the SDF to do
Speaker 4: the dying, and a lot of the killing were they
Speaker 4: maintained an aerial presence, was a light ground footprint. We
Speaker 4: shouldn't expect the US to show up for the people
Speaker 4: who showed.
Speaker 3: Up for it.
Speaker 5: That's not in its nature.
Speaker 4: The only state that had a plan for what happened
Speaker 4: in the last two weeks appears to have been Israel.
Speaker 4: Disappointingly right, Russia and Iran seemed to have largely scrambled
Speaker 4: extracted their state assets. Russia got some of its people out,
Speaker 4: they took some of their aircraft out. Iran Likewise, the
Speaker 4: US seems to be kind of scrambling. I'm sure there
Speaker 4: are still some like Oda's, some special forces guys embedded
Speaker 4: with the SDF. I'm sure that in the areas where
Speaker 4: ISIS has written up, because in some areas where the
Speaker 4: regime has pulled back, there has been an increasing presence
Speaker 4: of ISIS sleeper cells trying to sort of once again
Speaker 4: control territory and attack the SDF in those areas. I'm
Speaker 4: sure that there are US special forces like directing air strikes.
Speaker 4: But I don't think the US is going to come
Speaker 4: and say brijha. But the only country that had a
Speaker 4: plan was Israel, and what Israel's plan was was to
Speaker 4: invade Syria in the Golan Heights, right, to increase their
Speaker 4: area of control, and then to bomb almost all of
Speaker 4: the aircraft. And perhaps I don't know it also includes
Speaker 4: air defense systems. But from what the IDF is saying today,
Speaker 4: they have bombed all of the Syrian air Forces aircraft
Speaker 4: that had fallen into rebel hands. This includes ammunition for
Speaker 4: the aircraft and includes the ammunition dump at Kamishlow Airport.
Speaker 4: About half an hour before Robert and I started recording
Speaker 4: here on Monday, I saw a video from a friend
Speaker 4: in Kamishlow of the ammunition dump at the airport, which
Speaker 4: have previously belonged to the regime now belongs to the
Speaker 4: a and ees exploding after it had been hit by
Speaker 4: an IDFs.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So what they're trying to do, I guess, is deny
Speaker 4: any of those weapons to people who they perceive as
Speaker 4: a threat to their interests. Yep, and like there's been
Speaker 4: I don't know if you're seeing this. Also, Robert by
Speaker 4: a lot of like Israeli accounts being like, oh, we
Speaker 4: stand with the curd Israel and the Kurds are won.
Speaker 4: And first of all, I want to warn you. I
Speaker 4: want to warn you that we have an advertising breakcoming, Robert,
Speaker 4: is what I want to warn you about.
Speaker 2: Oh well, speaking of well, actually not speaking of the IDF, thankfully,
Speaker 2: but speaking about maybe the California State Highway Patrol.
Speaker 3: Here's some ads.
Speaker 5: We're back. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Firstly, I think when you're seeing analysis about Syria, any
Speaker 4: when he talks about things in terms of these monolithic blocks,
Speaker 4: this ISRAELI counts. Often we will support the Curds. I
Speaker 4: would be sometimes I'll maybe use that to refer to
Speaker 4: A and E S or the SDF. But I really
Speaker 4: trend on too because it's it's a multi ethnic project, right,
Speaker 4: Like the areas that we'll talk about in a minute,
Speaker 4: where the SDF is being attacked those areas, the largest
Speaker 4: component is the SDF is is Arab, Yeah, forces right,
Speaker 4: and that that is the case in the SDF as
Speaker 4: a whole. Actually, the majority of the SDF is now Arab.
Speaker 5: Not not Kurdish.
Speaker 4: I would be very skeptic of the expertise of anyone
Speaker 4: who refers to things in these monolithic absolutes, right, the Sunnis,
Speaker 4: the Shias, yeah, the allah Whites, the Kurds. There are
Speaker 4: a lot of different groups in Syria, and those groups
Speaker 4: are comprised of individuals, and those individuals shockingly have different
Speaker 4: and distinct goals and experiences and desires. Like there are
Speaker 4: absolutely Ala whites who will have remained loyal to us,
Speaker 4: sad there are others who demonstrably did not, as we've
Speaker 4: seen in the last week, right. And so I would
Speaker 4: be skeptical of anyone who tries to paint things in
Speaker 4: those terms. And I would be skeptical, to return to
Speaker 4: what we were talking about earlier, Robert, of people who
Speaker 4: tell you that, like we should expect the one I
Speaker 4: see most is Syria to turn into Lebanon, right, And
Speaker 4: like you and I have been talking about this before
Speaker 4: we recorded, but that's not a useful example in my
Speaker 4: mind of what we're likely to see in Syria, right.
Speaker 4: And the reason for that is that like in Lebanon, yes,
Speaker 4: there was there was like a US Air component, as
Speaker 4: there is in Syria.
Speaker 5: That's true.
Speaker 4: But I don't understand why we would look at the
Speaker 4: example of Lebanon, a place thousands of miles away, when
Speaker 4: we have at least two examples of governance in Syria, right,
Speaker 4: people who have been governing, in one case for more
Speaker 4: than a decade, significant parts of Syria, like they have
Speaker 4: a government project. In the case of the ANS, I
Speaker 4: don't think it's fair to call it a state project.
Speaker 4: Like they would tell you that they're trying to build
Speaker 4: democracy without the state, which is something that which might
Speaker 4: not be popular with states evidently, which doesn't let them
Speaker 4: the support of many states, as we've seen. But we
Speaker 4: have and with HDS in July and the Salvation Government. Right,
Speaker 4: we have these two governance projects. They're extremely different, right.
Speaker 4: The Salvation Government under HDS is people have been arrested
Speaker 4: for playing music at their own weddings. It is neither
Speaker 4: democratic nor particularly liberatory. And then we have the ANS,
Speaker 4: which I would argue is the only democracy in the
Speaker 4: Middle least. Yeah, certainly the only democracy where people of
Speaker 4: different ethnicities and genders matter the same amount.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly the like multi ethnic democracy. Yes, in the
Speaker 2: Middle East, that's functional.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, you're just straining the definition of democracy
Speaker 4: if you're constraining it by ethnicity, right, Right, So I
Speaker 4: think you can make a good case for it being
Speaker 4: the only democracy in the Middle East. I saw this
Speaker 4: really atrocious BBC interview this morning. Right, I'm trying to
Speaker 4: network some networks now have reporters on the ground in Damascus,
Speaker 4: and I've been trying to watch those to sort of
Speaker 4: see sort of what's going on. It can be very
Speaker 4: hard to just get your news from telegram like. I
Speaker 4: would also caution people who are perhaps new to this,
Speaker 4: who are finding these telegram channels to take everything you
Speaker 4: read on there with the pinch of salt.
Speaker 5: You'll see a lot of disinformation there.
Speaker 4: One of the BBC had an expert on and he
Speaker 4: was like, Oh, every time we see people pulling down
Speaker 4: statues of dictators, I'm a bit concerned, and like, I
Speaker 4: have to think about how to express this. It seems
Speaker 4: to me deeply as lamophobic or bigoted or racist. I
Speaker 4: don't quite know the white term to say, Oh, the
Speaker 4: people of this country and the place is in the
Speaker 4: last ten twenty years where we've seen people pulling statutes
Speaker 4: of dictators have largely been in the Middle East. Right
Speaker 4: to say that, oh, these people are incapable of self governance,
Speaker 4: these people are incapable of living in peace with one another,
Speaker 4: but like they're not.
Speaker 5: We've seen that in Java, and I don't think.
Speaker 4: That the right response now is to respond with skepticism,
Speaker 4: to like the Syrian people's ability to live in peace.
Speaker 4: They've been at war for fifteen years, fourteen years, thirteen
Speaker 4: thirteen years, thirteen and a half years. But I think
Speaker 4: that there is not an appetite for more killing, more dying,
Speaker 4: certainly from what I've seen and what I've heard.
Speaker 3: No exhaustion is a factor here.
Speaker 2: Like you really cannot emphasize enough how long I mean,
Speaker 2: HTS and the SNA have been at this and how
Speaker 2: fucking tired, particularly like HTS has to be, Like this
Speaker 2: has been more than a decade of constant terror and violence.
Speaker 2: So I do think that that's going to be a factor,
Speaker 2: and like what happened next, I should hope it will be. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean some things I don't know how to interpret. Right,
Speaker 2: HTS has asked the regime, police and authorities in cities
Speaker 2: to stay on. Some of that is probably good, right,
Speaker 2: Like the people who ensure that the water gets pumped,
Speaker 2: I hope that they stay pumping the water. The people
Speaker 2: who were the police side regime, it's here an Arab republic.
Speaker 2: I don't want those people to stay on. I want
Speaker 2: those people to fuck off, and I want those people
Speaker 2: to be held accountable for the crimes it committed. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't point to sort of wild sectarian violence. We
Speaker 2: don't have the situation we had in Iraq, right, Right,
Speaker 2: we have a US occupation which sits inside its base
Speaker 2: is and it only leaves ce big lead to kill people.
Speaker 2: Right from the perspective of the people living in a rack.
Speaker 2: That that's what the US occupation look like for the
Speaker 2: most part. Right, it's guys in big military vehicles who
Speaker 2: kill civilians by mistake.
Speaker 5: We don't have that here.
Speaker 4: There's not that resentment, generational resentment that they're allowed the
Speaker 4: Islamic state to grow there. Now, the Islamic State did
Speaker 4: grow through capturing a lot of state institutions, which which
Speaker 4: is why Yes has done But I don't see that
Speaker 4: same resentment, and they don't see that same desire for
Speaker 4: sort of redemptive violence that we saw. That I might
Speaker 4: be wrong, right, that there might be more into communal violence.
Speaker 4: I have seen some videos of what looked like summary
Speaker 4: executions in Damascus today.
Speaker 5: That's very concerning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also I mean, look, there's some people who
Speaker 2: need to be summarily executed.
Speaker 1: In this you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you've got to shoot someone, fuck it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're looking at the photos of just like
Speaker 2: thousands of shoes and decomposed bodies, dissolved ascid. That's aid
Speaker 2: Naya prison. Like you're liberating those places, you catch anyone
Speaker 2: who was working there. I'm not going to say that
Speaker 2: that's a bad thing to do. I might do the
Speaker 2: same thing, and there's that you in their circumstances.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't blame somewhere. I can understand someone doing that.
Speaker 3: What are you going to do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can understand that in the next few days
Speaker 4: they will probably be more of that violence, because we
Speaker 4: are literally in some cases opening the lid on some
Speaker 4: of the west crimes against humanity of this century.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and they are going to be catching There
Speaker 2: are a lot of mok barrat, you know, secret police
Speaker 2: guys who didn't get out, who were throwing on We've
Speaker 2: got videos of them leaving the palace, throwing on civilian clothes.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to be shocked if a lot
Speaker 2: of the justice process of that is ugly. Now, I
Speaker 2: do suspect that Joe Lannie is going to at least
Speaker 2: grab a chunk of those guys and do trials because
Speaker 2: he is really looking for state legitimacy, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's one way you get it. Yeah, that's his project now,
Speaker 2: But that's not going to be how all these guys
Speaker 2: go down.
Speaker 5: Some of these guys are going to die, and yeah.
Speaker 2: They're just gonna get fucking got yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and look they got a lot of people. They
Speaker 4: kind of had it coming to him. I'm not particularly
Speaker 4: concerned about that. I'm more broadly concerned with, like what
Speaker 4: are you doing on the left? If you see people
Speaker 4: in the streets, you see people tearing down statues of dictators,
Speaker 4: you see people celebrating the end of a regime that
Speaker 4: oppressed them for decades, and you meet go to, oh,
Speaker 4: this is bad, Like why do you even bother? If
Speaker 4: we don't believe that people can govern themselves, if we
Speaker 4: don't believe that the people in the street are normally
Speaker 4: the people who are right, and if we don't believe
Speaker 4: that the downfall of tyrannical regimes is.
Speaker 5: A good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what what do you believe?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: If you're just torturing it to be like, well, no,
Speaker 2: you know, you and I both read that there was
Speaker 2: a post earlier today with someone being like these leftists
Speaker 2: purity politics, you know, to be angry that a side
Speaker 2: kept a lid on radical Islam and isis and just
Speaker 2: didn't do it super cleanly. And it's man, he was
Speaker 2: fucking guessing children.
Speaker 3: Like you, where are you here? Yeah? What is wrong
Speaker 3: with you? Come on? Man?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is yeah, this is a person who dropped
Speaker 4: chlorine gas on blocks of flats with little children in them, right.
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, fuck this guy. It's good that he's gone.
Speaker 5: I wish he was dead.
Speaker 4: I'm sad that he gets to go and be an mphthalmologist,
Speaker 4: like he, of all people, needs to be held accountable
Speaker 4: for his crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some could have we get have a song
Speaker 2: on antilirium kind of situation, right, Yeah, who's the Armenian
Speaker 2: who shot a member of the Turkish government in Berlin? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we could have something like that go down, God willing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you never know they Yeah, I guess people
Speaker 4: there he's in Russia.
Speaker 3: Now he's in Russia.
Speaker 5: Someone will find him and his in his high end
Speaker 5: eye clinic one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's probably going to be going back and forth
Speaker 2: to Dubai. There's some Syrians who wound up in Dubai.
Speaker 2: Somebody might stab them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can hope, but I want to take one
Speaker 4: more break talking of stabbing. Maybe maybe we will get
Speaker 4: an advert for knives, you know, yeah, I've never had
Speaker 4: a knife advert, have.
Speaker 2: We No, I don't know that we have. And I
Speaker 2: would sell the hell out of knives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, almost any knives, even crappy gas stach Night, like,
Speaker 4: if you make the ones that look like an oil slick,
Speaker 4: get in touch with the advertising department at iHeartMedia.
Speaker 5: We'll pimp them. All right, we're back.
Speaker 4: That's thing I want to talk about, Robert, is how
Speaker 4: the rebels won because there was not a lot of
Speaker 4: fighting after the collapse of a Lepo, but before there
Speaker 4: was fighting, and in part how that fighting went I
Speaker 4: think led to the downfall of the morale of the
Speaker 4: syrianat of army. Right, So there are some things here
Speaker 4: that both Robert and I are somewhat nerdy about about conflicts,
Speaker 4: right like it there's something even when we're not attending
Speaker 4: was we like to read about them. And you and
Speaker 4: I both take a great interest in history, and I
Speaker 4: think we'd be unwise to not look at this and
Speaker 4: learn from it, especially with HTS who massively professionalized since
Speaker 4: the ceasefire in twenty twenty, I think professionalists is probably
Speaker 4: the right word like that command that technology, that the
Speaker 4: way they operated looked a lot more like a modern
Speaker 4: military than it did, you know, the militias, Like I'm
Speaker 4: sure you and I both remember the early Syrian of
Speaker 4: a war for people who are a bit younger than us,
Speaker 4: Like some of the most incredible improvised weapons that I've seen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there was literally at one point they had
Speaker 2: an Ottoman era black powder cannon on the back of
Speaker 2: a flatbed that they were using to hit regime positions.
Speaker 4: That they had literally taken out of the museum in
Speaker 4: a leopard to get it out of the museum.
Speaker 3: Fucking amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: Like only I thought the top of like that sort
Speaker 2: of thing was when fucking inserts in Afghanistan would use
Speaker 2: seventeenth century jazails to shoot at US troops. But the
Speaker 2: Ottoman cannon is really a was that's a flex.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with a huge flex.
Speaker 4: They they also worked, you know, they fired propane cylinders
Speaker 4: out of huge tubes, these improvised mortors they called hell cannons,
Speaker 4: Like really incredible and like it speaks to the ingenuity
Speaker 4: of people and their desire not to be oppressed, right,
Speaker 4: they desire to fight against state tyranny. But when we
Speaker 4: compare that to what we saw with HTS in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, a world of change right. In particular, I
Speaker 4: think it was very interesting that they captured armored vehicles
Speaker 4: and then they were able to combine armor and infantry
Speaker 4: very effectively, which is not easy to do right, that
Speaker 4: has eluded even some professional militaries. They also very effectively
Speaker 4: used drones, both drones to drop bombs and drones to
Speaker 4: adjust their artillery and mortifier, which I think is something
Speaker 4: that again like that modern militaries do, but it's not
Speaker 4: easy to do right, and it's not like HDS could
Speaker 4: do massive exercises in the lead up to this operation,
Speaker 4: like they seem to have professionalized very quickly. Another area
Speaker 4: that they were you can see that they've learned a
Speaker 4: lot from the conflicts in Ukraine and perhaps in Memmar too,
Speaker 4: was their use of FPV drones, a first person in
Speaker 4: view drone. How do you describe it? It's like your
Speaker 4: eyes are on the front of the drone. Is that
Speaker 4: a good description, Robert, Yeah, it's like you're flying. And
Speaker 4: there are videos of whole classrooms of HTS, I guess, soldiers, militants,
Speaker 4: whatever you want to call them, practicing flying drones or
Speaker 4: using the controllers to play like a computer game where
Speaker 4: you have to like go through checkpoints and follow a
Speaker 4: route and things. And they seemed to have developed like
Speaker 4: a training course that then gave them this drone brigade,
Speaker 4: which they used incredibly effectively. They had these massive first
Speaker 4: person view drones that were almost like a sort of
Speaker 4: Ersat's cruise missile, and it was I think one of
Speaker 4: those that penetrated some kind of command headquarters in Aleppo
Speaker 4: in the early days of the battle there, killed several
Speaker 4: important offices and commanders and helped to then spread that
Speaker 4: panic which they rode all the way to Damascus. Right, So,
Speaker 4: like this use of drones was extremely consequential. The other
Speaker 4: thing that they used in which we've seen the SDF
Speaker 4: use a lot, is these pulse art thermal optics. So
Speaker 4: a thermal optic sees heat, right, I guess would be
Speaker 4: the easiest way to describe it, and it maps heat
Speaker 4: in a visual fashion for the user, and in this case,
Speaker 4: they put them on their rifles and they're able to
Speaker 4: see other people at night. Our friend Carl, who we
Speaker 4: had on last week week before maybe Carl made a
Speaker 4: really good video about thermal versus night vision on his
Speaker 4: Arrange TV channel. I'll link it in the notes because
Speaker 4: I think it's worth people checking out if they're not
Speaker 4: familiar with this technology at all. The optics he used
Speaker 4: were not the optics they're using, but these thermal optics.
Speaker 4: You've seen them a lot with the SDF, especially in
Speaker 4: a freen like they'll do these night missions, right, and
Speaker 4: when you look at the recording from the thermal optic,
Speaker 4: it it looks like people are glowing because they are
Speaker 4: the hottest things in that area, and it makes it
Speaker 4: very easy to target people. And HDS us these a
Speaker 4: lot when they were attacking a lapper, right, these thermal
Speaker 4: optics that they mounted on their rifles, and they allowed
Speaker 4: them to pretty much. The United States used to talk
Speaker 4: about owning the night right. Yes, it had night vision
Speaker 4: where no one else does. Night visions proliferated a long
Speaker 4: way now and in that mean that some of the
Speaker 4: ways that they used to use night vision they can't anymore. Like,
Speaker 4: for instance, they used to send out lasers that were
Speaker 4: only visible and the night vision to aim weapons. If
Speaker 4: your adversary has night vision as well, you've now created
Speaker 4: a giant line that goes right back to you if
Speaker 4: you're using a laser aiming device, so you can't do that.
Speaker 4: But these thermal uptics, especially when they're fighting against Assyrian
Speaker 4: Arabami who I mean, these conscripts are massively demoralized, right,
Speaker 4: They're underpaid, they're under fed. Did you meet any when
Speaker 4: you were in raja But did you meet any people
Speaker 4: who defected?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'd met a number of people who had, and
Speaker 2: some who had also had to flee, like from Aleppo
Speaker 2: and whatnot, because they had been on like rebels fighting
Speaker 2: the Assad regime, and some had wound up in the SDF,
Speaker 2: some more just civilians living in the area. I also
Speaker 2: there's also a number of folks who commuted like to
Speaker 2: and from regime held territory just because like if you
Speaker 2: were someone that wasn't particularly wanted, you could do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a very confusing situation for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, extremely And I think when you meet the people
Speaker 4: who have been regime soldiers and come across often they're
Speaker 4: like they seem to be happy being waiters or working
Speaker 4: in the market in Rajaba because their pay was so
Speaker 4: bad and their lives were so miserable as conscripts that
Speaker 4: they'd rather just come and work, you know, any job
Speaker 4: they can get in a nes And I think when
Speaker 4: you've got those guys going up against well trained people
Speaker 4: from HTS with these thermal optics, with these using drones,
Speaker 4: that communications were solid. You know, you can tell from
Speaker 4: their appearance that a lot of these guys are professionalized.
Speaker 4: They were almost indistinguishable from US troops. Like I think
Speaker 4: you and I had both responded to this tweet about
Speaker 4: some YouTube guy was shocked that people were wearing helmets
Speaker 4: and body armor, which that has been the esthetic of violence,
Speaker 4: at least in places where the US has operated for
Speaker 4: I know half a decade.
Speaker 5: Would you say, like they're the sort of US Special Forces?
Speaker 2: Look, yeah, I mean, and that's just the norm for
Speaker 2: dressing if you're fighting in a war anywhere on the
Speaker 2: planet now, like whether you're the Russian Army or some
Speaker 2: militia in Syria, it's you know, plate carrier, usually like
Speaker 2: some sort of fast helmet, you've got you know, belt
Speaker 2: with side arm mag pouches, and then usually either in
Speaker 2: akam or some sort of ar style weapon. Like everybody
Speaker 2: dresses that way. Everybody looks very similar yah now because
Speaker 2: it's just the most kind of. I mean number one,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of that gear lying around and it's cheap.
Speaker 2: And number two like it works, it's a load out
Speaker 2: that works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very practical, yeah, for what they're doing. I
Speaker 4: think number three as well, like we should not understate
Speaker 4: the desire to look like your avatar and call of duty.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's also looks cool.
Speaker 2: It looks like being in a movie, and that is
Speaker 2: all that matters a lot to the kind of young
Speaker 2: men who start fighting in wars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, people, I think if you've not been you
Speaker 4: won't realize how young a lot of these people are.
Speaker 4: This incredible professionism or incredible professionism. I overstating it. But
Speaker 4: this dramatic change in the appearance and conduct of these rebels,
Speaker 4: particularly HDS, occurred over about three or four years from
Speaker 4: the ceasefire in twenty twenty to this offensive in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, and I think it gives us an insight
Speaker 4: into the way that war is changing. Right, that access
Speaker 4: to information is easier than it ever has been, and
Speaker 4: access to a lot of these technologies has proliferated massively
Speaker 4: because we've seen in Myanmar, right, drones proliferate people three
Speaker 4: D print little night vision goggles in Meanmas. Spoke to
Speaker 4: Milk about it about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 4: People remember Milk from our Meanma series about three D
Speaker 4: printing little night vision goggles that use the camera from
Speaker 4: you know, those security cameras that can kind of see
Speaker 4: at night. They use those and then a tiny LCD screen.
Speaker 4: Of course, drones are everywhere now, right, things like plate carriers.
Speaker 4: Even you see rebels in Myanma wearing them, buying them
Speaker 4: from Ali Express. Like all of the technology, all of
Speaker 4: the tactics are also much easier to find on the internet.
Speaker 4: You know, Robert and I have both spoken to people
Speaker 4: who go who said they go on YouTube to learn
Speaker 4: about like military tactics and small arms even and you know,
Speaker 4: how to use different weapons systems when they capture them.
Speaker 4: I think it's a real change in the way that
Speaker 4: conflict is conducted, and it's one that we will probably
Speaker 4: continue to see as like, you know, the world isn't
Speaker 4: getting any more peaceful, nope, and with a lot of
Speaker 4: you know, Russia and Iran took a massive l in Syria.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean that they're not gone as sort of
Speaker 4: global actors. We will continue to see particular Russia obviously
Speaker 4: fighting in Ukraine, and I think it's worth looking at
Speaker 4: what happened in Syria so that we can understand what
Speaker 4: we're going to see in other parts of the world YEP.
Speaker 2: One of the ways I like to think about it
Speaker 2: that is crucial for people don't understand, is that Syria
Speaker 2: has largely been the laboratory in which the twenty first
Speaker 2: century was cooked up, Like all of our futures have
Speaker 2: to some extent been built in Syria. Both like this
Speaker 2: is where we get a lot of the fuel behind
Speaker 2: the right wing surge that has been occurring over the
Speaker 2: last few years, started because of the refugee crisis, you know,
Speaker 2: but also a lot of the tactics and weapons shit
Speaker 2: that like Israel is doing right now in Gaza. Like
Speaker 2: Syria was the lab to a significant extent for how
Speaker 2: authoritarian regimes would crack down, and it was also the
Speaker 2: impetus behind a lot of the most significant things that
Speaker 2: have been happening over the last decade and change.
Speaker 4: So it might still be already yes, Serem and the
Speaker 4: Netherlands have stopped processing asylum applications from Syria, which is yeah,
Speaker 4: which is concerning YEP, but Yeah, I think it's worth
Speaker 4: continuing to keep an eye on I will continue to
Speaker 4: post about it, we will continue to inform you about
Speaker 4: it here, and we will continue to bring on people
Speaker 4: who have more expertise and insight than we do. So yeah,
Speaker 4: we hope you'll keep an eye on it. And I
Speaker 4: just want to end by saying that like the democratic
Speaker 4: project in Rojava is under a great deal of threat.
Speaker 5: Yes, currently more than it has been for perhaps a decade.
Speaker 3: YEP.
Speaker 4: They do not have an ally in the United States.
Speaker 4: They do not, as far as we know, have an
Speaker 4: ally in Israel. And from what we've seen, it's one
Speaker 4: thing what Israel says, it's another thing what Israel does,
Speaker 4: and what Israel has been doing today is bombing ammunition
Speaker 4: that they already have in the A Andes. And that
Speaker 4: means that it's more important than ever that you do
Speaker 4: what you can to support them. If you go to
Speaker 4: the Emergency Committee for a Java, you can find them online,
Speaker 4: you find them on all different kinds of social media.
Speaker 4: They have a toolkit for supporting Java right now. I
Speaker 4: would urge you if you care about that project, if
Speaker 4: you care about building democracy without the state, care about
Speaker 4: building a place where women and men are equal, and
Speaker 4: the revolution was led by women. It's not a revolution
Speaker 4: that included women, it's revolution by women for women. I
Speaker 4: would encourage you to do what you can to support them,
Speaker 4: all right, Yep, that's all.
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