Angry Planet - Eating at KFC in Kurdistan

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

This week on War College, producer Kevin Knodell is back from his trip to the Middle East and he’s got stories. He shares his experiences climbing a mountain in Kurdistan, eating at KFCs that are better than the ones in America, and talks about the future of the region.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. I think if there's a moment, though, it was really just getting to hike up in the mountains, Kurdistan. It's just one of the most beautiful places in the world up there. And it also just struck me after we got done hiking, we went to this kind of resort town. It was really, pretty. Like there were streams and like little restaurants and everybody was just very friendly. And I knew that that's just led. I was probably one of the only Westerners up in the mountain that day. And, you know, it felt special, but also it made me a little bit sad that I was one of the only Westerners because so many Westerners don't know that this is here. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind

the front lines. Here are your hosts So Welcome back to America Thank you Is it everything you thought Is it everything you dreamed it would be? America

America No My return is not How long were you gone again? About a month and a half And where all did you go? D.C., Germany, Iraq, Syria How long were you in Iraq and Syria?

Hold on Let me think. I mean, a month, because that's what the visa was for. And I overstayed it by a day. Okay. And you said, I think earlier you said, how many conflicts did you witness or were near? Yeah, because there's kind of an interesting little, probably three. I think you, didn't you say four last time I don't you?

Oh, well, hold on. It well depends on how you engage this because the conflict against ISIS and also the conflict against Iran. You can really look at it as for a lot of them overlap, you know? Yeah, fair enough. There's a lot going on in that region right now. Hello and welcome to War College, by the way. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. With me here is producer Kevin Nodell, who's just returned from a trip to the Middle East.

What you heard just now is called an experiment with format, because when you've been doing the show as long as we have, sometimes you want to play around. Kevin, welcome back. Thanks. Okay, so how does this work? You fly, you go to D.C., you fly from D.C. to Germany. And then from Germany, how do you get where you're going? Well, usually on a plane.

We had to fly through Turkey, or I did. And he got to have a nice chat with the Turkish police who wanted to know why I was in Turkey and why I was going to her bill and what relationship I had with the Kurds. And we talked for about an hour. They went through my phone, my computer, and inspected the stickers on my laptop and had lots of questions for me. What were the stickers on your laptop? And what raised the most concern with Turkish authorities?

The biggest thing was that I was going to be going, that I was going to Iraq and specifically the Kurdish region. They also didn't initially like that I had pictures of military things on my camera because the first thing they found was pictures of U.S. military exercises. I think they wanted to know if I was a spy

or a terrorist, and they kept asking a lot of questions related to that. Asked if I'd ever written about the YPG and lots of other questions of that nature. I think I eventually got out of that room by getting a laugh out of the what seemed to be the head cop there when I mentioned that I had flown out of Baltimore to like on my itinerary. He said that he hears Baltimore is very beautiful and I told him he heard wrong. And I was out about seven minutes after that. That's funny. So do they, and what's that like to be? I mean,

Have you ever been interrogated by police before? Is it any different than, say, American cops? Um, well. I mean, obviously the stakes maybe feel higher. I think the stakes feel a lot higher because, I mean, it was about, I was thinking, like, this is how Midnight Express started. I don't want to do that. Um, you know, uh, yeah. Yeah, but Midnight Express, like there was heroin involved.

You didn't have, you weren't smuggling heroin into Turkey. No, but I'm even worse. I'm a journalist in Turkey right now. How close did you get to the conflict areas? Well, as close as I could. Definitely, one thing in Iraq is it's not super active, but you get the impression that it is very tense out there when you go to some of these areas.

I did go out with a Peshmerga unit on the line between them and the Hachdel Shabing, which is, the popular mobilization forces, the Iranian-backed militias that kind of are running a lot of the show in Iraq right now. And in between the lines between them were, was an ISIS cell that was beneath the ridge, and Peshmerga said, like, they're right below there. They're at an angle where we can't actually shoot at them, we can't get to them, and some of them are actually probably in caves right beneath us. and they occasionally go and burn people's crops and rob people out in the villages out there. But since they're between the Iranians and the Peshmerga, nobody can really do anything about it or nobody chooses to do anything about it. Okay.

So what exactly is the state of the conflict in Iraq right now? Is it just fighting ISIS? Like I said, there's this sort of standoff between the Peshmerga and the Iraqi forces. that started after they tried to do an independence referendum and had a brief military engagement with one another. You could call the war. If you ask the people out there, they say it was a very brief war. Several people died on both sides, and the lines changed, because the area that we were overlooking was a town that has traditionally fallen under the control of the Kurdish regional government. It's now no longer controlled by Kurdish regional government, at least from the perspective,

of several of the Peshmer guy talked to. I mean, they were frustrated with the fact that there were ISIS guys living beneath a cliff that they were on. But they said that personally, a lot of them were much more concerned by the militias and the Iranians that were currently occupying their land. Right. That's another thread that I'm interested in here because, you know, While you were gone, Iran has been asserting much more dominance in the area on the world stage, right? Are you see, did you see any of that? It sounds like you did on the ground as well. Are they more out and active?

A lot of this stuff used to be proxy based, only even just a few months ago, right? Or at least as far as we knew. Yeah. Well, it turns out since I didn't go out. I had a visa that was really only good for the Kurdish area, so I didn't really get a chance to go out and talk. to these gentlemen. So I didn't really personally see the Iranians, but everybody I talked to said that the Iranians were very active out there, that Iranian agents were there. No, yeah, I want to make a distinction clear.

When we say Iranians, do we mean like actual Republican guard troops or like a Hezbollah or some sort of similar proxy? You called them agents just now. I think there was some Iranian guard out there probably as advisors. I think that most of the people on the ground are probably Iraqis. I mean, there's been some reports of some heads below running around Iraq too. There may be some overlap, but I don't think it's so much large units of Iranians on the ground, at least that I was aware of there. But everybody was pretty certain that there are at least some Iranian individuals out there calling some of the shots.

And how much time did you spend with the Peshmerga? Oh, them, about a day. Just a day? And what are their primary concerns? Well, like I said, it's that they're also, well, anytime you talk to the Peshmerga, they always say they need more guns from America. They will say that 100% of the time because why wouldn't they? Anytime they can ask, they will. But, you know, the group that I saw was not particularly well equipped,

though I will say this just as a critique. I saw much better equipped people as you went further in. And I wonder sometimes why the guys who are on the outer rim actually manning the line don't have all the cool gear while all the people in her bill seemed to hoarer. all the cool equipment. Did you ask anybody, though? No. Also, I wouldn't have expected to get a real answer.

It just wasn't exactly one of the top things I'm doing, but it's an observation that I'm not the first one to make that observation. But I also didn't stick around with the Peshmerga for too long, also because while I basically got the idea of what was going on at spending a day with them out there, the next day was going to be exactly like that day, and the next day was going to be exactly like that,

and the next day was going to be exactly like that. It's a standoff, and I also didn't necessarily want to hear so many war stories from their general, who talked a lot. And I didn't let his soldiers talk so much. I liked his soldiers a lot, but he was a bit much. And spending more than a day with them would have been spending probably just lots of time with that guy.

I really liked to talk about himself and not so much about his men. I did hang out with the SDF a little bit. I didn't really get to see them in the field, but I stayed in their garrison. And one of their groups I stayed in their garrison a few times because we didn't want to, because it's long getting across Syria, and we didn't have access to hotels in some of those towns. So we stayed with the Syrian Democratic forces one or two nights. And they got Bella Chow stuck in your head? Yeah, they did.

What is, tell the, what's Bella Chow for people that don't know? Bella Chow is a Italian folk song that became a rally cry for, communist partisans. It has become sort of an anti-fascist rally cry for lots of organizations and activists around the world.

And it's something that actually is something that's very interesting about these guys. And there's a certain irony in it that probably the force that the Green raise, the U.S. Special Forces, have the most affection for that they've ever worked. with is made up of a lot of pretty hard left

just guerrillas. Like the Waipaga and like the Kurdish fighters that were working with in Syria at one point were exactly the sort of people that US Army Special Forces were made to fight. Like they were designed to put down revolts like this.

Right. And there is something interesting about that. Because I would see Hammer and Sickles out in certain towns on full display and some of the martyr portraits. You really see that. Like you, you understand that this is a a left-oriented group. However, that's what they are on paper and they are motivated by that sort of ideology. I also talked to some of them and they said, like, what do you want? And they said, we want American companies in here. I want a KFC. can't wait literally KFC

that is that is what what a Kurdish friend that I made over there did literally say he said I want a KFC there's so many better chicken places anyway you know what they actually make you know what honestly I think a lot of the fried chicken I had in Syria was better than anything

I've had at KFC but that's neither here nor there though I actually on a side note because fast food places are a little bit different in other places. The KFC bill is actually pretty good. Really?

I don't think they use the Colonel's secret recipe. I think they use their secret recipe. I don't know what it is they do, but I was a fan. I can see. That's the headline for this episode. Our producer ate at a Kurdish KFC. Okay.

Okay, well, I mean, it's a catchier song in the international, I've always thought, which I think is dour and shitty, and people are always singing it. But that's my opinion. What do I know? Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it was definitely an interesting experience to stay with the SDF. I didn't get to spend much time with them in the field, which was a disappointment. It just didn't really pan out. But it was interesting to have dinner with them and to be sort of in what sort of their garrison, which was basically an apartment complex that they had sort of taken over and used. And it was interesting to be in a space where the troops were staying, but they also had, a lot of them had families with them. So you would see kids playing around out in the garrison, which is different, I think, from what. we're used to in this country.

Like, you don't, like, kids don't stay in the barracks, but they don't have really separate housing there. The SDF doesn't, so the barracks and family housing and everything is the same thing for them. What about Turkey? Turkey's also in the area. Did you see any evidence of Turkish forces or what they were doing? Yeah, we had, when I went hiking up in northern Iraq, up around Duhak, definitely drove by a gas station that they had bombed.

There's been a escalating conflict of sorts between the Turkish military and PKK militants that are currently living and operating in Iraq. They came down during the fight against ISIS to help the Peshmerga and help other Kurdish groups fight against them in various parts of the country, but they ended up kind of sticking around. They didn't leave, and they've been using parts of Iraq as a sanctuary for them

as they continue to conduct operations against the Turkish government in Turkey. So that's kind of drawn Turkey further into Iraq as Turkish troops have kind of set up shop in parts of the Kurdish region, and there have been aerial bombings on a semi-regular basis, and they're now starting to move into populated areas, as the PKK have increasingly conducted operations within Kurdish towns and populated areas. It really sounds like it's, you know, I think in the West we think of,

if we can even conjure the image of the region, you have these very distinct borders between countries, and it feels like now you, in the areas of Syria and Western Iraq, it is, I'm trying to think of what even to call it, just a contested war zone between these regional powers where these fights are playing out. Did you get that sense at all? Are the borders kind of porous? Well, when it comes to the Kurds, those borders don't really mean a lot to the people who live there.

I mean, they do because it affects their daily lives. but in terms of the borders in the area, they are a little bit porous, or if not porous, they are just this sort of annoyance to a lot of people there who are separated by these borders, but not separated culturally so much, or who have intertangled trade and personal ties that just transcend these borders,

and it's just something they have to live with or live around. So I think if we were to say that, I don't think it's so much new that this area feels a little nebulous because really for the Kurdish region, these borders were drawn around the Kurds without them really asking about it. They didn't really have a lot of input on that when that happened. So this area has always been a little bit like that. Well, you see lots of refugee camps while you're out there and lots of IDP camps internally displayed. place person's camp. But I specifically did go to Domi's camp to write a story about

this urban gardening initiative in the camp being sponsored and sort of coordinated by this group called Lemon Tree Trust. So they've got a big community garden and they also have gardens

for growing food, growing produce to give the refugees something to do while they're there, but also because a lot of times in these camps when people are just dependent on food aid that they get brought in, you don't necessarily have a lot of nutritional diversity. And it's nice for them to get some fresh fruit because that's not usually what those aid bags contain. How long is that specific refugee camp been there?

Domese. Ooh. Well, since about the start of the Syrian Civil War, it's where, it's where, where a lot of the Syrian Kurds went because they weren't going to go to Turkey. Jordan really wasn't like a lot of other countries, some of the Syrian Arabs went to, but most of the Syrian Kurds just went to the Kurdish region of Iraq when they got displaced. So that camp is almost entirely made up of Syrian Kurdish refugees. and at this point it's actually more of a town than a refugee camp.

That was actually my next question was at what point does a refugee camp, especially if you're growing your own food, just become a town? Well, and they're really wrestling with that, and that actually is one of the challenges. Because I talked to several people about that. And one thing about that project is it's really cool what they're doing with that garden, but I ask the question of, well, we usually like to think that a refugee camp is a temporary thing if we're sitting, if we're laying down foundations like this, or when do we expect people to go home? But a lot of people candidly said, we don't expect these people to go home, most of them. Like, back to what home?

A lot of them had their homes destroyed, and reconstruction hasn't really happened. I mean, parts of Kurdish Syria are doing a lot better now, and we'll get to. that later, but it better doesn't mean great. Most of these people aren't going home. Now, there's hardly any tents left. Most of the people there have kind of turned their, what used to be, tent spaces into homes made from cinderblock and various other things.

It looks a bit like a very, very nice shanty town. It's actually kind of nice out there, but you, and you can forget that you're in a refugee camp, but you remember when you leave and come in because it's surrounded by barbed wire and there's armed guards. So it's, the people there are still very separate and they have to check in and check out. What's the population? Oh, off the top of the head, I don't know, but it's a few thousand. Definitely. Who's doing the, who are the armed guards? Kurdish security forces. The yes, Aeshe, man the post from what I could tell. Is it still growing?

Not really. And I mean, and actually to a certain extent, some of the people there have been able to get certain permits that they could actually leave the camp and get apartments in various parts of Kurdish Iraq. Some of them are getting jobs outside the camp, though some of them still commute to their jobs from the camp. It's a very, very strange situation there. Because, yeah, it is, for all intents and purposes of town. And I actually did learn recently from somebody that there's some talks about doing some municipal planning with that particular camp and maybe actually formally turning it into a town and making it no longer a refugee camp, which was surprising news when I heard it, but also kind of pleasantly surprising.

because, yeah, when you walk around there, it's a reasonably well-run camp. I mean, it still sucks because it's a refugee camp, and, you know, there's dirty water running through the streets there, but that's just the nature of the thing, and it's due to the limitations of what they have and the fact that they can't expand and the fact that it's very difficult to build new things in this confined space. Right, but if you turn it into an actual municipality of some kind, presumably some of those problems are fixable. Like you can take down the walls and actually expand and start to build a city there or a town there. Right.

And like I said, even like there, there's stores in that area. Like there are, um, there's women's clothing stores. There's perfume stores. There's restaurants. There's cafe. I saw a cute little teenage couple on a date at one of the, at one of the cafes right when I was getting ready to leave. Uh, like life goes on within that camp.

Was that the only refugee camp you saw? That was the only refugee camp I spent meaningful time in. I certainly saw other ones. Like I said, you can't drive through Iraq and Syria without seeing either refugee or IDB camps. They're just around because there's lots of displaced people. And I will say that a lot of the other ones I saw, like the ones the Yazidis were living in elsewhere, they're still living in tents. it's not as good. Is there any sense of where they're going to go or what they're going to do?

Or do you think a lot of these camps are just going to become towns? Well, I think in a lot of cases, that would be the logical thing to do. But, I mean, even with dummies, like, that's kind of unusual. And that's not historically what governments have done. And there's still places that are sort of like that, but are still considered refugee camps that have been around for decades in parts of the world. Well, like an example, I think, would be the I&L Hillwick camp in Lebanon, which is the largest Palestinian refugee camp.

It was established in 1948 after the war that brought Israel into existence, and from then on there were refugees just living there. And since the Syrian Civil War started, the population of the camp has grown, grown with Syrian and also Palestinian refugees in Syria moving to Lebanon. And that camp had, after the Syrian Civil War started to swelled in population two, somewhere in the neighborhood of 120,000 people. I don't know what the current population that camp is, but that's an example of how long camps can just kind of exist.

What, all right, so then you go into Syria proper, right? Yeah, eventually it is something that I do. How do you get into Syria, or is that something you can talk about? Yeah, we probably shouldn't talk about that. I mean, I'll tell you about it off the air, but yeah. I mean, it's not that crazy. I mean, actually, there's a fun story, but it's a story that I really shouldn't tell on the air. All right, so you get into Syria somehow.

mysteriously. What's Syria like? It's hot. It's hot during the summer. The region that I was in was mostly what we're calling Rojava now, the Kurdish-controlled area, the part that's controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian forces. It's a lot of oil fields when you first cross the border and get through, and you see just miles and miles and miles of pumps just pumping oil. So it gives an idea of why that part is strategically important. And a lot of wheat fields. Yeah, a lot of farming out there. It wasn't so much a desert area like I think a lot of people would envision.

It's very hot, but it was pretty grat. It was either, everything I saw was either planes or agricultural. Sounds like Sacramento, like the middle of California. Have you ever been there? Yeah, no. Well, a lot of it does kind of look like that. or kind of like parts of the Midwest if it was more oppressively hot. Right.

And, yeah, and, like, actually a lot of it kind of looked like eastern Oregon or eastern Washington, to be honest. But, again, about 20 to 30 degrees hotter than that. So, I mean, it's also a pretty big area, so traveling from town to town takes a while. so you get to see a lot of wheat fields and a lot of just nomads moving around and a lot of small town. But the main town that I was staying in and where really a lot of Western media actually stays is Camislo, which given that media stay there most of the time, I'm actually surprised that there isn't as much coverage about Camiselo because it's a really strange microcosm of the entire conflict there. What do you mean?

Well, the city itself is divided between pro-regime forces and the Syrian Democratic forces, which meant that as somebody who was in there with the permission of the Syrian Democratic forces, but not the Syrian government, I had to navigate which streets I went down with some care. so it's not to run into the Syrian regime. But also, in addition to being controlled by both the regime and U.S.-backed forces, it's also on the border with Turkey. So it's across from that, too. So you have a lot of very competing interests in a pretty small swath of territory.

Does a fight ever break out? Is there any kind of conflict with it on the city streets themselves? There has not been a firefight since 2016. I believe. There was a brief confrontation between the pro-regime and the SDF forces. They fought for, I think, a few days, and they fought over a prison. So there hasn't been so much of that. There was, a bomb did go off about a few blocks away from where I was staying while I was there. And I've heard from a few people since that there have been more, there's been more of that since I left. So it's definitely not. a, it's not a safe place. I'll just put it like that. There isn't outright fighting, but there seem to be

these guerrilla sort of attacks. And it's not always clear who did these attacks. People don't always claim credit for it. And that also leads to a lot of rumors and conjecture among the people there about who is behind any

particular bombing. Why isn't there more active fighting? Well, I think, one, I don't think the regime really wants to get in a knockdown real fight with the Kurdish forces while the United States military is there. I think it's really the presence of U.S. forces that prevents that from happening. Turkey is hesitant to take big swaths of territory, which isn't to say that they've never done it. in 2018, the Olive Branch operation, they went in and just took Afrin from forces aligned with the U.S., and lots of them died in that battle.

And I talked to a lot of people who were from Afrin, who had been displaced by the fighting there. Kurds who were working there. Actually, the interpreter that I worked with was an IDP from Ephrine, who lost his home out there. So it still happens, but both Turkey and the Syrian regime are, I think, just a little bit hesitant to go up against the Syrian Democratic forces, just because they don't want to, well, they don't want to be hit with an airstrike. Fair enough. How was the food? The food's really good. It's a little rough on your digestive system sometimes.

Well, you have a weak digestive system anyway, don't you? Thanks. We can cut that. No, that's fine. You can say that. No, it just really good food. I really enjoyed the kebabs while I was there. After the bombing, I kind of watched the street to see what people were doing.

And for about 15 minutes, they got off the streets just to see if a firefighter, more bombs were going to happen. And when nothing happened, everybody went back to doing what they were doing. So I went out and I got a burger because otherwise the terrorists win. Literally a hamburger. Yeah, I got a hamburger. It was pretty good. Nice. I mean, they, I mean, this is the first time I've been to the Middle East. So I know that sometimes the burgers are a little bit different.

The fries aren't, the French fries aren't always a side. A lot of times they throw the fries into the burger with everything else, which I'm actually not opposed to. I used to do that as a child because I was weird. but then I found out that that I guess Arabs are spiritually my people because they do the same thing with their burger, the same weird

stuff with their burgers that I always did. So yeah, the food there is really good. And people are always offering you food and you end up eating too much of it. I think it's one of the things we forget here because we haven't had violence on the streets

in America at that kind of level, I think, since the 1960s and 70s, that you get used to it, that life continues, right? That you adjust to it and continue to live your everyday life. Did you find that? How we're, like, what was the mood of everybody? Yeah, I mean, I think people are definitely, people are tired of the war, but they definitely just kind of go forth and do it. Yeah, when you talk to people,

they get frustrated if you really talk to them about it. Obviously, they're frustrated with the situation there. But they don't have time to live in despair. Because despair leads to nothing. You're not productive, and you can't feed yourself, and you can't feed your family. And people just need to, they just kind of go on living because they have to. I mean, obviously, for some people, the other option is to try to leave. And some people have successfully done that, but that's getting a little bit harder.

for several reasons. But yeah, it's people are trying. And people are also very curious about the outside world. They actually, I mean, in some places you can detect a little bit of hostility to foreigners and some of the areas that, like a small minority of people, I would say, in places that ISIS used to control who I got the impression were probably ISIS sympathizers and didn't particularly care for me. But for the most part, when you run into people out there,

they're really excited that a foreigner is in Syria because they want to know what's going on outside. They want to know all about you and where you're from, you know, and just like, what's your favorite food? Which part of the West are you from? And when they find out you're from America, like, which part of America, you know? What kind of stuff are they interested in about the outside world? what are their particular concerns and interests?

Well, I mean, I think for certainly if you're talking to some of the people who are a little bit more educated, they want to know what cool places to visit one day might be because they, I think, hope to be connected to the world again someday in a way that Syria just kind of isn't right now. I talked to one young man, an Arab from, he was from Damascus, but he was living in Camislo. and was staying in Camusia because he didn't want to get drafted into the Syrian army and sent to go fight in Idlib. He was an interesting case in that he had some skepticism about the Kurdish forces and about some parts of America's role, I think, in things. But ultimately, he was also still not particularly a fan of any of the other factions and preferred the American-backed forces for all their flaws. to anybody else.

But he was working real hard and practicing his English with me. And he said, you know, I learned Arabic and Persian, but, you know, I never really learned English in school.

And English is the language that you use if you want to talk to anybody else in the world. So he was real keen to learn English and practice as English so that he can talk to anybody he might encounter, which was something.

that was interesting to me. What that kind of leads into a question I've been thinking about during this conversation? You've met, you met the young man, you met the blowhard general. Who are some of the other, like, personalities and people that you met that really stuck out to you? Well, there was that, and there was the shop owner I bought some scars from who told, who told me how much he loved America, loved America, and told me he also loved Alexis, Texas, which got a laugh out of me. What is Alexis, Texas? Is that what I think it is?

If you're thinking an adult film star, then you're absolutely right. That is exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, you would be correct. But yeah, well, but I mean, that does strike you. I mean, it is striking that they, that he would say that. And also, it is interesting to me that there are people who are just very interested in different forms of freedom, different forms of expression out there. Because a lot of this.

What do you mean by different forms? forms of freedom. What does that mean? Well, different forms of freedom that are just, that just haven't been traditionally available to, I think, a lot of people in the Middle East. Certainly, sexual freedom is something that you don't really run into a lot out there. And it's a part of the world where there's still very, very conservative ideas about sexual relationships and also gender dynamics. However, that's been very challenged in Syria by the presence of YPJ fighters who people in the region are terrified of.

Just in general or specifically the women YPG fighters? Well, I mean, that's why it's specified YPJ, specifically the women. There are a lot of people in that region that are terrified of them. One, because I think they do have a reputation now of being very fierce fighters. But two, and even people who are a little bit progressive, if you talk to them, they'll kind of say like, I don't know about these radical women. They frighten me. What they represent is something that I'm not sure if I or the society is ready for.

But they don't seem to really care whether people are ready for it or not. And there's parts of this whole Rojava experiment that I think sometimes certain people in the West get a little bit over-excited about. I think some of the games have been over-celebrated, but that's something that is not imaginary. That is a very, very real thing that's happening out there in terms of the way that women are starting to assert themselves in northeast Syria. What do you call Rojave an experiment? Partly because of what is, in theory, supposed to be their decentralized form of governments and the reliance on local. councils. Though I would say that they're actually under the current system, I don't think it entirely lives up to the hype on that. I think it's actually still very centralized.

And even these councils themselves end up centralizing power a lot, even if they are democratically elected and not appointed from elsewhere. The state of democracy there is certainly better than I think it has been ever. But I think there's still things about it that if you were to look at it, you'd ask how democratic it really is. Movement is still very restricted out there. And you have to ask for a lot of permission to do lots of things. It's a very, very bureaucratic system, as it currently exists in a lot of places there. Were you ever scared? Yes. I wasn't particularly, well, I don't know. There was a part where I did get a little bit nervous. It was when the car that we were in broke down in the middle of the night out near a wheatfield

and was pretty much out of battery and we were stranded. I didn't know where we were. It was dark and I knew that there are, there were Isis cells out and about. Not so much in the air. area that we were in, which was good. And that was kind of one of the things that our interpreter said afterwards. It's like, hey, you know, like, if we're going to break down, this is the place to do it. Not outside, yeah, not outside of like another. I'm like, it was ultimately okay, but there was, I sat there long enough because we were broken down for like two, three hours before another Syrian was able to come and tow our

vehicle and get us to someplace that we could be and swap out cars and get me back to where I was staying. So yeah, I had a lot of time to sit there and think about all the things that could happen. So that ended up being a little bit nerve-wracking. Other than that, I never really there were times where I was alert. Like after that bomb went off, I was certainly alert when that happened, but I wouldn't so much say that I was scared. I think one thing that was interesting, for me, having been, because I was an editor, overseeing Iraq and Syria coverage for war is boring for a while. And I ended up meeting up with a lot of people that both you and I actually worked with over there. And one thing that I think was just particularly interesting in Iraq was how

comfortable I felt there, like almost immediately. Nothing seemed that strange to me, even though I'd never been there. But I'd spent so much time working with Kurdish journalists and talking to Kurdish people and also like seeing pictures, editing pictures, editing stories that I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the region. And by the time I got there, it seemed like I really did. It didn't feel super foreign to me because I'd been working with people and with the region for so long. I think if there's a moment, though, it was really just getting to hike up in the mountains, Kurdistan. Like I said, I guess it was a little bit more dangerous than some of us thought it was. Like I saw the gas station that the Turks had bombed. That was really the only sign of violence

that I saw when I was up there, but there had been more bombings since I left up there. But it's just one of the most beautiful places in the world up there. And it also just struck me after we got done hiking, we went to this kind of resort town. It was really pretty. Like, there were streams and, like, little restaurants, and everybody was just very friendly. And I knew that that's just let. I was probably one of the only Westerners up in the mountain that day. And, you know, it felt special, but also it made me a little bit sad that I was one of the only Westerners,

because so many Westerners don't know that this is here. Right. I think like a lot of us over here have a very pop culture-defined picture of that entire region, right? Well, not just pop culture defined, but also media defined. And I mean, we're even talking about this on war college. We're usually supposed to be talking about war. But, yeah, I think there is sort of an irony there. And I've talked about this with other people who go to these places and go to these places because they're interested in war and interested in conflict.

there's so many other things in these places besides the war and besides the conflict. And it frustrates you sometimes when people aren't interested in it or they don't know about it or they're scared. In a weird way, sometimes people are scared to know that it's not all terrible there because that really threatens their view of things. And that can be, it can be scary for people to know that there's actually beautiful places to hike and that the food is really good and the people are really nice. and you can have a lot of fun there, and a lot of the areas are actually perfectly safe at this point. Did you, have you encountered that, like since you've been home or maybe even before you went, like people, you know, kind of pushing back on the idea that, you know, that it's not all war in pain and suffering? Yeah, absolutely.

And yeah, I had a lot of people obviously ask me before I went, like, why are you going? Like, why are you doing this? And obviously I think there were a lot of reasons I. But also, like I said, you know, obviously I was drawn to reporting on the conflict over there because I've been reporting on the conflict over there. And I've had colleagues who were working over there. And I wanted to go actually see it up close and do some of that work myself, not behind a desk, go out there up close. you know, I'd been invited to go to that part of the world for years. I've had friends out there asking, when are you coming to Kurdistan?

You know, when are you going to come visit us? When are you going to see us? When are you going to come? Yeah. Like, one, when are you going to come report on these things? But also, when are you going to come and go hiking with us? When are you going to come and see all the rest of this stuff that we've been telling you about forever? And, you know, I always said, you know, someday, I'll get out there someday.

And eventually someday had to come. And I just got to a point where some days today, I'm going. This speaks to something you said earlier in the conversation. You feel like Kurdish Syria is kind of doing okay. It's kind of, yeah. But I mean, I have to put like lots of caveats there. Like Kurdish Syria is kind of doing okay. But there's certainly a lot of risk.

And also another thing that I think we need to clarify is, I mean, we are talking about northeast Syria. One of their big challenges, I think, is figuring out how all of the people of northeast Syria are going to live together. Because even in the Kurdish region of Iraq, it's not just Kurds there. You've got Chaldeans, you've got the Yazidis, you've got Assyrians, and you've got some Arabs who just live there and who've lived there pretty much forever. borders, it turns out, are just kind of nebulous, especially in parts of the world where you've traditionally had a lot of nomads. You have a lot of intermarriage. You have a lot of different tribes.

There's just lots of different people in these parts of the world, and they all share a space. So even when we say Kurdish Syria, quote unquote, Kurdish Syria is a place that has a lot of Arabs in it. And there's a lot of areas that Kurdish forces control that are actually predominantly Arab. like Mambesian like Rocket. I got to go to Rocka. ISIS's former capital. And I saw for myself

just how much damage the bombings did and how much work they still need to do to bring that city back to life. It sounds like you're walking away from this whole experience with hope. Hope, I think, is the wrong word. Or maybe hope. I don't know. I'm walking away from the experience

seeing that I see potential, I think is what I would say. I have a lot of worries about how things can go, though. There's a lot of things that can still go wrong, and there's a lot of things that we should be nervous about for the future. But I also feel like having talked to a lot of people out there because they don't give them to despair, given everything they're subjected to, I have no right to give in to despair about the situation if they can still figure it

figure out things to be optimistic about. You were in Raqa also, right? Yeah. Mostly, I talked to, I mean, I met some people with the local council when I was getting permission to go in there and report. Mostly the people I talked to were members of the security forces while I was there about the state of internal security in the city. And we got to do a little bit of a drive through the town.

I didn't get to talk to residents as much. I would have liked to. Part of that really came down to the fact that I ended up getting there sort of late in the day. And there aren't a lot of places there to stay overnight. So once you are there, you have to kind of leave and you've got to find someplace else to go. Raka is, it's a mess right now. You can really see how much of a number the bombing campaign really did on it. It's evident how much.

how much damage has been done to it by ISIS, by the coalition, by everybody else who has fought there. That being said, you do see life in that city. You see businesses trying to start back up. And I did see a construction site where people were trying to build things. We went down by the river where people were out playing. You saw families. You saw kids. A lot of people, a lot like anybody else.

though there's also a there's an unease there and I can definitely feel this as being a westerner I could tell that people didn't exactly in parts of the town people didn't exactly know how to relate when they saw you even people who

you'd see women who were uncovered or wearing more colorful clothes who clearly are pretty happy that ISIS has gone but they'll still kind of give you a certain sort of look because while they're happy that ISIS is gone, they also are a little bit upset that their city got destroyed in the process of ISIS being gone. I think they're a little bit frustrated by the lack of international support.

And I talked to the security forces who, you know, and they feel that way too, that they're doing their best to bring security to the city. and coalition special forces, they said, are helping them out with intelligence and surveillance and tracking the cells that are still active in the city. But the head of internal security there basically said, you know, what these people really need are jobs and we need to rebuild the city. That's what it really needs. And we need international support to do that. But that being said, even without the international support, people are taking initiative to, to start businesses, rebuild what they can with the resources that they can.

And people there are definitely not just quitting. What are people, what do you see as the challenges for this region right now? And obviously it's going to be different for every individual place you visited. But what are the, I don't know, you make it sound like the conflict is almost happening in the background. Like it's part of the noise of everyday life. Right. But, I mean, the conflict is still very real. Yeah, and I don't want to soft pedal that. Like, one of the things that I really ran into a lot there has been this campaign of crop burnings.

And that's been happening both in Iraq and in Syria, various armed factions targeting farms and targeting food supply, particularly wheat. When I was in Syria, I was up of seven to ten, five. a day out in the fields. So, you know, it's hot, and it's that season where fires do start naturally, but not on that sort of scale. And the other thing that you really realize is where the fires are starting, because a lot of them are flaring up in areas that are sort of disputed. In Syria, a lot of them are starting either by the roadside, and they have multiple

points of origin. And those ones, when it fits that pattern, are usually attributed to like an ISIS cell. But they've also been starting at military checkpoints along the Turkish border and also in disputed areas between the SDF and the regime. The regime has started several fires up, kind of up and down along the area. So everybody's sort of doing that. And that's really disrupted the food supply and it's also disrupted the livelihood of farmers this year. The self-administration kind of authority out there is trying to reimburse farmers, though like they're not reimbursing them fully, which also, like, that's an important point, lest anyone think that people are starting fires intentionally to get a payout.

It's not worth it to do that. They're getting partially compensated. And there's also been, there's still. There's still bombings going on. There's bombings by these ISIS cells, and U.S. Special Operations are very, very active there. Forces less than three times on the ground while I was in Syria. Not Air Force's ground troop. I saw them on the roads.

They were on the same roads that we were. So this conflict is still very active. But it's moved into a different phase that involves a lot more guerrilla tactics, a lot more dirty tricks, like these crop burnings, some of these bombings. And there does seem to be a concerted effort by both the regime and by Turkey to kind of stoke tensions between the various ethnic groups in the area to kind of disrupt the economy. Because a lot of these attacks seem to be really centered in disputed areas like Raqa, like Mambige and like Deriz. or it really, so, I mean, people are trying to do their best and make things work, but there is a very concerted effort to make that not work. When are you going back, you're going to go back.

I can hear it in your voice. Well, the plan is to do an embed actually in September. I'm still getting all the paperwork worked out for it. but I'm hoping to do an embed with the 25th Infantry Divisions for Stryker Brigade when they deploy this fall to Iraq to report on what life is like for soldiers downrange since there's been kind of a dearth of coverage like that at this point. Thank you so much for tuning in War College listeners. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Kevin O'Dell,

who was created by myself and Jason Fields, who had the courtesy to get married in the fall instead of the summer, which I appreciate. You can find us online at Twitter at War underscore College. If you like the show, please subscribe to us on iTunes and leave a comment, it helps other people find the show. We will be back next week, and I promise we are working on both the Libya episode and the Metal Gear Solid episode.

Until then, stay safe.