Angry Planet - How Assad Clings to Power

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Is the Syrian civil war over? Did Bashar al Assad win it? And if he did, what does winning even mean for a country of rubble?And most importantly, what’s next for the dictator and the people who live within the sort-of nation’s borders?To help us understand what’s happening, we’ve got Washington Post correspondent Liz Sly. She’s covered the war since it began in 2011 and has made many trips to Syria. She’s also a fantastic writer and multiple award winner.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.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. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt. Is the Syrian Civil War over? Did Bashar al-Assad win it? And if he did, what does winning even mean for a country that's pretty much made entirely out of rubble? Most importantly, what's next for the dictator and the people who live within the sort of nation's borders? To help us understand what's going on, we've got Washington Post correspondent Liz Sly. She's covered the war since it began in 2011 and has made many trips to Syria. She's also a fantastic writer. and multiple award winner. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. What's the state of Syria's civil war now?

The war is not over, but it's not raging either. People call it a frozen conflict, but that implies nothing's happening, which isn't quite true either. You still have front lines, and that fighting takes place along them, but at very low level. You have a front line in the north,

west in Idlib province, across which shelling takes place on a regular basis, between rebels and the last remaining rebels and the Syrian army. And every now and then Syrian and Russian regime warplanes go over the Idlib area and drop bombs on people and towns and various targets, sometimes military, sometimes not in the area. You have a front line in the northeast between the Kurds and the Turks, across which fighting continually takes place, occasional shelling.

And there's been a number of mutual drone strikes going on there as well. or I know I wouldn't say mutual drone. Turks have been assassinating Kurdish commanders on the other side. And the Kurds are sending bombs and rockets and things over to the Turkish side of that. And then there's a sort of confused front line in the east where you have American troops who very occasionally, but in an increasing, to an increasing extent, getting attacked by Iranian-backed forces on the other side of the Eucharides. And there's also a simmering ISIS insurgency going on in that area, an ongoing one,

the remnants of the ISIS Caliphate that was never defeated. So that is the state of the war at the moment. Nothing major, but definitely not over. How do you rule over that kind of country, faced on all sides by that much conflict? How do you keep control? Assad doesn't rule over those, should we say, three areas or two areas, the northwest where the rebels control, and the northeast and east where the Kurds and the Americans caught in toll. His area of the country is roughly maybe two-thirds,

but it's a little less than two-thirds. He rules that area, pretty much with an iron fist. The rest of it is beyond his control. It's quite significant because he's lost significant borders and therefore significant trade routes. And that is something that obviously he says he will not let go. He will not rest. He will not stop fighting until he's got his territory back. Under the current circumstances, it's extremely hard to see how he would ever get that territory back because his army is small and tired and has not been able to do it in 10 years. And we can't see any significant shift or military injection of funds or ability suddenly enabled him to do so. And without a compromise and some sort of political settlement,

the forces there are not going to give up. Who are the people left in Idlib that are fighting? Is this the Free Syrian Army? It's the remnants of the Free Syrian Army. You've got the Free Syrian Army remnants who are now grouped in an entity called the Syrian National Army, which is basically a Turkish proxy these days. Because the Turks also have what they call observers there. It had like another little bit of Syria. Sorry, this is getting so complicated. Turks have observers there under a deal with Russia that they made a few years.

But the Turks basically controlled the Syrian National Army remnants of the FSA. And then you have. HTS, Hyatt, which is the evolved form of Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the Al-Qaeda affiliate, says it has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. And they are probably the dominant force. They are the dominant force in the region of Idlib. You touched on something I think is really interesting just a second ago when you apologize for this being so complicated. In your career, have you ever seen anything like this? It seems unique and it seems so indicative of war and conflict now.

things are messy and complicated and there are so many sides. What's your take on that? Well, the more a country is in conflict, the more complicated it does seem to become. It's a good question. And sometimes one can have little sort of academic arguments with one friends over, was Lebanon more complicated during the Civil War, or indeed now? I went to Afghanistan when the Taliban fell in 2001. And I was like, whoa, this is complicated.

I thought Lebanon was complicated. But what about Afghanistan? Iraq got pretty complicated. Syria is really complicated. I wouldn't put one or other of them in the front of that top four complicated countries. I would add Pakistan to being really complicated, but it's a different story. Do you think it's just then my dumb American brain being raised on World War II stories that I want to reduce these conflicts down to easy sides? I kind of balk when they're not.

Maybe that's more of a statement than a question, actually. I think it's astonishing how much simpler World War II scenes than Syria is now, yes. No, it's, and people do want to reduce conflicts to their simplest forms. The thing is, it becomes really hard to write any story about Syria, because you always forget some element. I didn't, I forgot in my rundown of the state of the war, I forgot Israel. Israel periodically bombs Syria in different places. Israel is fighting Iran in Syria. There's another layer to it.

No matter what story you write, you will have forgotten to mention. So no matter what peace plan you come up with, there will be some little twist or some little agenda or interest that you haven't satisfied so that plan won't work because it won't suit those people. And so it spins round and round and round and nobody ever comes up with a viable solution. I'm also not seeing many people try. To just boil down to one particular area, I'm interested in how the American, are now involved. Are we talking about Iranian proxies actually firing live rounds and the U.S. soldiers fighting back? Or what form is it taking and how serious is it? I mean, are a lot of people dying?

No, we haven't had any deaths as a result of this yet. What is happening is fairly under an unreported rockets being fired at a large American base east of the Euphrates River. Not that. often, maybe every couple of months or something, every few weeks. I'm not sure. I'm not following everyone and they don't get all reported. There was a very interesting attack a few weeks back against a small American outpost, which is very complicated. So it's stuck on the Jordanian Iraqi border called El TANF. And it's a sort of post that was created when the American started supporting the FSA against ISIS, but then the FSA kind of crumbled. That effort was given up. They switched to the Kurds but ended up with this little outpost surrounded by regime territory

and now Iranian militia territory and regime territory on the Jordanian Iraqi border. And they're still there. And this base got attacked by drones, drones a few weeks. And it caused quite a substantial amount of damage. And it appears the Americans had some kind of warning in advance and were able to clear people out of places that they might have got injured in. Now, we don't know if that was a warning shot, a message. the launch of campaign, the limits of a maximum capacity that they can't really do it again, because that was the most they're capable of or the first step in an escalation.

But it can't be ruled out that America could get caught up in fighting with Iran in Syria. If things, the nuclear negotiations go badly, if Iran decides to escalate elsewhere in the region, yes, it just never stops being getting more and more complicated. because you also have to put the Iran nuclear negotiations into this. And that's a whole separate level of conversation. And the reason why the base at Deltanth was attacked is because a statement, what appears to be a group of pro-Iranian militias in Syria, said they were retaliating for an Israeli airstrike elsewhere in the country

that had killed a bunch of pro-Iranian militias and would have been targeting some sort of military facility that Iran was acquiring in Syria. And so it looked like the Iranians were trying to drive the Americans into the Israeli conflict. Fantastic. Can we talk a little bit about Assad and what his Syria looks like right now? Yes, his Syria is largely at peace. There are occasional attacks and little kind of hit and runs on checkpoints and very occasionally some sort of bombing.

But mostly it's at peace. It's also incredibly poor. to a level that Syrians had not anticipated or experienced in decades, maybe a century. The currency has lost pretty much 100% of its value. It can't have done that, obviously, but it's something like 97.8%. And buying power has been eroded to practically nothing. There is a severe risk of famine. Syria is an eastern Mediterranean country.

It's near Europe. It's one of nine countries in the world this year that the World Food Program has colored in red on its It's a severe fine warning map, along with mostly countries in Africa and Yemen, of course. So this is a huge collapse for Syria and for Syrians. It's a country that grows its own food, and that probably will save it because it does grow some of its, a lot of its own food. But there is a risk of hunger. People don't have work. There is no investment and there is no reconstruction. So it's absolutely stuck, absolutely stuck in the very immediate aftermath of war. Is there any sense that people are tired of Assad, the ones in his immediate area, I mean,

or is it just 10 years of war has worn everybody down? I think it's both. I did a story a few years ago. You could definitely pick up on social media, lots of rumblings of discontent among Assad loyalists, that they stood by Assad all these years and sacrificed his minority alloyate community in particular, the most. The reports are that maybe 100,000 of the Aloites died fighting for Assad and young men, they gave the lives of their young men for him.

There is now no reward. Their lives are not getting back to normal. There isn't investment. There isn't reconstruction. There aren't new jobs. There's a lot of frustration, but people also feel they don't have any alternative. And the draconian nature of the regime deters any significant level of expressed opposition. Does the memory of his father play a part at all?

Well, that's an interesting question, too. The memory of his father has tended to grow fonder among, oh, I think it was always probably quite fond, but fonder among Assad supporters, because there is a grumbling among many Assad supporters. Son is not the father. On the other hand, there is plenty of Assad family cult worship going on. And one element you do see with supporters of the regime

is a sort of sense. And you had this at the very beginning. even with the opposition and the people who joined the protests, that this isn't Assad's fault. Assad is above all of this. Assad is sort of this semi-godlike figure. If only he knew there was so much corruption, because corruption is the biggest issue, it's in the economy.

I mean, the hugest part of the economy being just in such a mess, is that there's just so much corruption going on. People are stealing at every level. If only Assad knew that he would stop it. And it's not his fault, but all the people under him and all the people close to him are evil. The question about the corruption, what is going on now and what is the Assad family's role in it?

Well, that's sort of the million or billion or whatever dollar question because there is no evidence of direct asset family corruption, or at least Bashar al-Assad and his wife. Nobody's ever accused them of squirreling away money. They've been never found with any bank accounts in places. everybody who sort of studies the regime and looks at this and people who have defected or kind of put distance with the regime do believe that something's going on, but there's not a lot of evidence. But what does happen is that people around him are encouraged to get the plum contracts, the

lucrative contracts on their own behalf and indirectly on his behalf so that he can control the economy and see where all the money is going and perhaps have a hand in it too. The big and notable exception to the Assad family not having evidence of corruption is Rami Maclouf, who is the cousin of Assad. He is from a very venerable Aloite clan that his father Basha's father Hafez married the aunt of Rami Makluv. And so they are almost blood relatives. and Rami McClough has been found to be very corrupt and it's known and it's overt. His son's live in Dubai and drive around in flashy cars and put their cars on Instagram. They have private jets and boast about them and again Instagram their private jets.

The Asa children are barely seen in public when they are there looking very well-behaved standing next to their parents, occasionally making a very political or, you know, small walk about kind of appearance. Rami McClough has been found with bank accounts here and bank accounts there over the ages. He's been reported to have 10 billion of assets, 16 billion of assets. How much of that is left now? We don't know. But when the protests began in 2011, the very first protests were against Rami McClough, not against Bashar. And it shifted to Bashar after Bashar implemented a severe crackdown against these.

Now, Bashar has now turned against his cousin, removed his own shirt of the tail, which was a big mobile phone company that you can talk. Mobile phones are almost the only thing that makes money in Syria because everybody has to make the owner of mobile phone. It's a cash cow. There are no other cash cows practically. Rami McClough appears to be under some sort of house arrest but not free to move around in his villa outside Damascus and every now and then he makes videos complaining about how corrupt everybody else is and everybody accuses him of being corrupt. So the saga is ongoing but he's been stripped of power and of course that's probably reasonably popular among most people living in regime health Syria, because much has always been the biggest

issue and the original course of the uprising. To paint a picture for the audience, Ali, one of Rami's sons, was spotted in Beverly Hills in October. Somebody filmed him because they noticed a gentleman next to him in a Ferrari 488 spider, which is a $300,000 car. And he was kind of ambushed on the street and like, hey, I love your car. You know, how did you make the money to get this. And he's like, oh, from an internship, he said. And of course, the internet quickly figured out who this guy was and realized his connection to the Assad regime. But that is the kind of, when we're talking about corruption and how much money that family is pulling down and how ostentation has been with it, driving $300,000 cars around to Beverly Hills and appearing on Instagram

videos is what we're talking about. Right. And one of the contrasts between Rami and Bashar, for example, when I say there's no evidence of direct or about corruption, Bashar has never been seen driving a flashy car. It's never been any flashiness associated with him. The rumor, the myth, I believe it's a myth, but it might have been true once, is that he lives in a pretty shabby apartment building in central Damascus with the people, like the people. Nobody believes he really lives there anymore because of security and he's probably hiding where he lives. But that's certainly the myth that's around asset.

He doesn't have a presidential palace or anything? Well, there is a giant presidential palace that his father built. but he didn't build it, but he's made a point of saying he doesn't live there and goes to work. And there's a famous video of him that came out on the morning after the first airstrikes on Syria that Trump ordered, which I've lost track of time. I think it was 2018. And he's walking into this giant atrium of the, glassy atrium of the marble presidential palace, holding his suitcase, like reporting for work at 9 o'clock in the morning on the morning after his country was born. And but a subliminal message in this is that Bashar also doesn't live in this palace. He goes to work there.

It's a government dog. I think it's quite unlikely he is actually living there simply because it sticks out like a sore thumb on top of a hill. And it's a massive target for anyone. But who knows, he could have under the grandbunkers. I have no idea where he's living. Can we talk about sanctions against the regime? Because we're talking about money and around money. How isolated is Syria at this point?

Syria is, I would say, as countries and isolation go, it's pretty isolated. It has the support of Russia. It has the undying support of Iran. It has a few outreaches from some Arab countries. And you know, there are countries that have never, ever cut ties with Syria and do business and are fine with it. The Bricks, the Syrians love with the Bricks. They talk about Bricks a lot, which is Brazil. what's the next one?

South Africa, but South Africa is in there anyway. Is it Brazil, India, China, South Africa. The South Africans have maintained their embassy there. They do business. Brazil has always maintained relations. But nobody puts money in because it's a loss-making enterprise. It's not a viable proposition. And so I guess politically it's not that isolated, but economically it's very isolated.

The Russians don't want to put money in because they've spent billions propping up the regime with military assistance, and that's quite enough for them. The Iranians don't have any money. The Gulf countries are very, very iffy because of sanctions and their relationship with the US to go all out with Syria and money. But also you have Chinese, nothing to stop the Chinese going and doing some investing there, but it's not a viable investment. And that's going to stop the Gulf countries too. So I believe the biggest reason why Syria isn't getting the investment is because it's not viable. And the money will get stolen and there isn't an investment proposition.

and what do you invest in? That sanctions are a bit of that sort of unnecessary popping on that, if you like. The regime is able to blame the sanctions for the failure to deliver living, standards and to deliver reconstruction and get off the hook for being unable to deliver the kind of good governments and investment environment that might actually attract some money. All right, angry, independent listeners, we're going to pause there for a break. We will be right back after this. All right, angry plaintiff, listeners, thank you for sticking with us.

We're back from break and back on to talk about Assad. So we end up with a regime just trying to get by, having the telephone company is one source of revenue. Another source of revenue that has been mentioned or reports of is Caphtagon and amphetamine. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes, that's a fascinating subject. It's not when I'm an expert on. There was a very good story in the New York Times over the weekend that went into the detail on this. But yes, everybody's sort of noticing now that as Syria steps out of war, it's becoming what they call an anarchist state.

And there's a very substantial catagon industry growing up, especially along the coast in areas controlled by Assad. It appears to be directly under the control of Mahal Assad, who is Bashar's brother. And the third wheel, if you like, in the triumvirate power that is Bashar Asma and Mahal. And that appears to be bringing in some illicit income for the regime. And what happens to it, of course, we don't know. Does it all go to Maha? You would have to do a lot of accounting to figure it out. There was a report last year that 2020 seizures of Katkin amounted to $3.5 billion, something like that.

That is more than the country's annual budget. It's three times more than the country's annual export. So it is possibly the biggest industry in Syria. And it's all illegal. and it's all being run by Assad Kronos, Assad loyalists, and Assad's brother. Where's that money going? How much of that is profit? How much of it is like costs along the way?

We don't know. Where's the amphetamine going? The amphetamine is mostly going to the Gulf. It appears to be popular in the Gulf. Some people on Capitol Hill and some other people are trying to get more attention for the drug angle to the Assad regime, seeing as human rights is really sort of, is all the way. nobody cares about human rights anymore.

Terrorism's kind of gone away. So there's no real reason to care about Syria anymore. So some people are saying, hey, it's becoming a drug state. We should care. Why should the West care about this? Well, there's a concern that this drug will start reaching Europe. But at the same time, Europe has its own thriving and active and successful drug markets. And it's my understanding that Caphtagun is way down the quality league of drugs.

So it's not whether it takes hold in Europe or. spreads across Europe, I don't know. But there have certainly been shipments caught in Italy and Greece. That doesn't necessarily mean they were going to Europe because that could have been the most convenient eastern Mediterranean transshipment point for them. What's the state of the Islamic state problem at the moment? It's a very, very interesting question because the state of the Islamic state problem has been kind of the same for almost the past three years now, which is they are coming back, they're not coming back, they're coming back, they're not coming back, they're not defeated, they're not coming back. They do steady, steady ticktocks of attacks. They are infiltrated

in that eastern area, which they can control, but completely, of course, when that area was taken back, huge numbers of people who were their fighters and everything got caught and are still in these kind of dismal prisons and everything. But the huge numbers of people who were loyal and did subscribe to their ideology just stayed on in the community. And I spent a fascinating 10 days, a week, 10 days in Raqa in the end of 2019, where you could just feel their presence all around you, but they weren't actually there. And it was really hard to make a call on whether they could come back or not.

You would talk to people, and if you got into depth with them, they would start talking about the Islamic State with such fondness and reverence that you began to feel you were in the presence of a true believer. Well, because things were stable, right? Things were stable, little, attacks, nothing major. Things were stable, little assassinations. It was kind of sinister,

but I just couldn't make a call on whether they secretly controlled the whole place from behind the curtain, as they would say, or were biding their time to make a pounce one day, or struggling to stay alive, but they certainly still have support. Sorry, you said that you could feel them more than anything. And I'm just wondering, was there like, was there like graffiti or propaganda or red or is it mostly just the conversations with people? Graffiti would go up overnight. And like what kind of... Their slogan was in Iraq and Syria when they conquered it, was remaining and expanding.

And they would put this everywhere. Obviously, they are not expanding now, but the word remaining would go up overnight. That's kind of quite chilling. We're still here. And yes, in the people who, when you got deep into talking to them, they would just start talking about how great life was under the Islamic State, not for reasons of stability. And actually, the economy is not doing too badly in that. It's been so stable.

There's been a big impact, including of people from regime areas who want to go and live there and take advantage of the economic opportunities. People would just talk about how, you know, all these laws and being Islamic was so good and everything. But one thing that has happened recently, and this is relevant to Syria, but I'm not sure what big in place. It's just happening now. There's been a lot of attacks.

in Iraq, especially in the Kurdish areas. And it seems the Islamic State has begun infiltrating people that was hiding, sort of sleeping cells from and fighters, undercover fighters from Syria into Iraq, hundreds in recent weeks, apparently. So watch that space as well. This goes into my next question, which was, how are the Kurds doing? The Kurds in Syria are doing fine. I haven't been there since the end of 2019. I had all these plans to go back because it was so interesting.

And COVID has interrupted that. And since then, I haven't been able to. get away for other reasons. But the Kurds have done a much better job than I originally anticipated in governing this vast area, mostly desert, but overwhelmingly majority Arab. It's a misconception that this is a Kurdish area that is a tiny handful of majority Kurd villages, one small corner of territory that is overwhelmingly Kurdish. And the rest of this vast area they govern is overwhelmingly Arab. And they've managed to keep control of it, despite a history of Arab Kurdish tensions and general neighborly dislike of each other and have probably

delivering the best governance in Syria. Is Turkey going to let that go on? Well, that's one of the huge questions. Turkey has to let it go on because America is that. How long is America going to stay? Look what happened in Afghanistan. Yeah, look what happened in Afghanistan. Yeah, if I were, Kurdish, I would absolutely be watching what happened in Afghanistan, right? Well, I think the cards were watching very closely. Also, there's been some expressions. of doubling down and affirmation of the determination to stay in northeast Syria by the Americans lately that makes me think that actually if you've got American tricks that you want to stay right now, Afghanistan might have been the best thing that could have happened to you

because I don't think the Biden administration wants another Afghanistan to occur and pictures of Kurds clinging onto American helicopters or anything like that. I don't think it can afford those images to happen anywhere else. and if the Americans leave, somebody will go in and slaughter to the Kurds, that's for sure. And you can't rule out the regime doing it with the Turks. Can I zoom out, since we're talking about the Biden administration, can I zoom out and ask a question? This is for everybody that's on the call, bigger than just what we're talking about immediately. It seems like between the situation in Syria, the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, China, the tensions between China and Taiwan, Ukraine and Russia.

It really feels like there is a military test coming for this administration sometime in the near future. right? Does anyone have that sense? Does anyone else worry about that? That's something that's been keeping me up lately. Well, I have that feeling too, but it could just be that there's so many things bubbling at the same time that any one of them could take off. I study these scenarios and look at the scenarios. And in each scenario, the cleverest people seem to come out with the point of view that it's not going to end up in a war. I think probably the most dangerous one of those is China, Taiwan, and I don't know enough about that. But I lived in China in the 90s. I stay in touch with people who've remained engaged in living in China since then. The people I know who know

most about China and have spent much, much longer, more recently than me, all are kind of convinced that China will make a military play for Taiwan one day. I think the Russians in Ukraine might try to get things out of the West, putting the troops on the border, they believe will give them the leverage to get. And the Iran situation is so complicated that when you go around and round in the circles about it, you sort of end up with no war, I think. Yeah, and we can get back to Syria. I'm sorry, it was just, it's something that's been on my mind. It's just something that's been on my mind as we, as we approach the holidays. And it really feels like we've got so many, so many flash points. Yeah, just, you know, I'd like to throw that out there, like to add that

layer of tension to everything. Yes. If you're a journalist, sometimes you have to wonder if you're going to get at Christmas. Right. Yes. Yeah. We all, especially after the last two years, we all need it desperately. Sorry, Jason, go ahead.

I wanted to ask you about human rights in Syria. I don't think people necessarily know just how bad the Assad regime is. There are a lot of secret sites and are people still disappearing? That's a good question. I haven't looked into it recently, but for sure the answer is yes, because they've never stopped disappearing, not before, the uprising, not since it. People would go to prison. There's no. People are taken away.

People disappear. We know of people who, this is a kind of issue right now is refugees being sent back by countries who say it's safe and there's a big issue in Denmark around this. And then people disappear. If there's anything on you, you will get taken. And people are, but not in the huge tens of thousands that were being rounded up, a dead. decade ago, many of whom, the majority of whom, have probably not come out again. Why is that not something that people are more concerned about? I mean, you're talking about, you just said that people are not coming back out of these prisons. I assume that means

they're being executed? There are secret executions. There are summary trials. If you oppose the government, you're accused of terrorism. And this gives them the right under their laws to in a prison and have a child that nobody attends and execute you late five minutes after you found guilty after a five-minute hearing. And so tens of thousands have probably been executed under these laws. I mean, the human rights groups roughly, and this figure's been pretty constant for the last two years. And I don't think it's changed significantly. We're talking low numbers now, but 100,000 plus have disappeared into Assad's prisons in the past decade. And of those, 8,000 to 5,000 of those have not been accounted for in one way or another.

And people get tortured to death. The torture is unbelievable. I mean, the horrible things they do. And then if you get taken to hospital because you've been tortured, you get tortured again in the hospitals. It's shocking. It's disturbing. It's the stuff of nightmares. And I know people who've been to prison for one or two days and not had more than a slap around, but just the keeling the screams of the other people has destroyed their mentalities for life. What happens at the hospital that constitutes torture? Is it literally tortured again at the hospital as another location? Yes, they smash their bone.

There's a child going on in Germany right now. They smash their bones that have broken again. They chain them, they beat them, they inject them with poisons. What's the point? I mean, is it just a matter of terrorizing everybody else into line? Well, it's worked, isn't it? He's still there, 40 years, no, 50 years. 50 years of Assad family rule, a massive uprising.

huge numbers of population took to the streets, got arms, fought the government, they're still back. And that's the point of the torture as well? I mean, to, it just seems like they've got off. Definitely, absolute fear of going into one of these prisons keeps people in line to a large degree, which is why you have to absolutely just be just mind-blowing how brave people were when they went out on the streets to repose this. You sort of wonder also about where they get such a nice, large group of torturers, but I guess that's never been a problem in any country finding people willing to do this kind of stuff. I mean, it happens in all the Middle East countries. Estimating the size of the torture force would be an interesting exercise.

I don't think anybody's actually done that. But there are groups in Europe around the world, mostly in Europe, investigating the identities of these specific tortures. And there are two guys who've been on trial in Germany now. And some of these people are showing up in Europe and then being recognized by their victims. And that's what happened to these two guys in Germany. One of them's been convicted. And there's another guy who's still awaiting sentence or verdict.

I can't remember which. And he was much more involved than the first guy. So we'll see what sentence he gets. And I'm not sure he's been convicted either. But we are waiting for the outcome of that trial. And it's very interesting. What keeps this regime afloat? aside from torture?

Well, I would say fear, Russia and Iran, probably in that order. No, fear Iran and Russia, whether which where are they in? I'm not sure. But fear would be number one. Iran's probably number two, but Iran and Russia are kind of equal there. Yes. I mean, their support has been absolutely crucial. Without it, it couldn't have happened.

But you also make it sound like Russia and Iran are at the end of their rope with Syria? No. They're not at the end of any. rope. Russia is as invested as ever, but it's made it clear. It doesn't have the capacity. It doesn't have billions of dollars. Nobody has the billions of dollars to save Syria. Nobody. Not the Gulf countries. I mean, they might in their sovereign wealth funds, but, you know, it's not happening to work. And, you know, the US couldn't do it. It's something that the World Bank, the IMF, would have to do as part of a massive international effort to spend money on on projects that

wouldn't be investment returns. I mean, private investors only put money into things that give them money. They could build an apartment block, but they'd have to sell the apartments, right? Nobody just got any money to buy apartments or not enough people to make that a viable way of rebuilding the housing stock, for example. Iran has made it clear. It has undying support for Syria. Syria is incredibly important for Iran's regional strategy. Without Syria, without Lebanon, Iran, card and Israel and hold off an attack against its nuclear facilities. People have described Syria and Lebanon as like the tip of the spear of Iran's defenses. They've got this forward projection of defense.

It's a deterrent. There are deterrence. And Iran needs Syria to supply Hezbollah, which is on the border with Syria. And also Iran is now on the border of Syria in Syria. But those routes are the routes that are providing arms and weapons to Hezbollah. And they're building facilities inside Syria, which would come into play if there is a showdown over the nuclear program. or anybody does decide to take out the regime in Iran or attack their facilities or whatever. So Syria is existential for Iran and they're never going to let go.

But they don't have money to put in like the $250 billion that the UN has sort of lately found out there would cost to reconstruct the country. So that's not going to happen. But yes, he has that undying support. On top of that, I would say, you can also say that there is genuine support of people because the Syria is really quite a secular society, and the rebels Islamized pretty quickly. There are a lot of middle-class Syrians who don't like the regime have a great deal of distaste for this torture and the behavior of it, and would like to be back in the international community and all that kind of thing, but they don't want Islamism either.

And so it's a big problem for the opposition. And it was a big problem for many sort of middle-class Syrians in deciding where to put their support. and a lot of them just decided to keep quiet and keep their hands off it. What's next for Syria? Does Assad hang on forever? That's another million dollar question. I don't believe anything's forever. I don't believe regimes that are that taught and brittle and tightly controlling can last forever.

But, you know, you look at North Korea, and that's still going strong. Maybe they can. We've been through little phases of history where we think the dictatorship is dead and democracy of the future. and now we're going back into another swing, the other way where it's peterships into the future. I have no idea what's going to happen. I do believe the economy is a huge, huge challenge for the survival of the country in its current form.

I mean, I do feel things are very unsustainable at the moment. We don't know what we'll give. It could be a rescue package from the Gulf that pops things up just enough to maybe stabilize the currency and make things survive. There could be a massive geopolitical shaker. up along any of these fault lines that you mentioned earlier in the world or anywhere that suddenly ripples into Syria and creates a whole brand new war. Who knows? I've been covering cereal more

than 10 years, but closely for 10 years since the uprising. And I don't make any more predictions. Liz Sly, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. That's all for this week, Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields and Kevin O'Dell was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, $9 a month, go to angryplanetpod.com or angryplanet.substack.com. I've got the occasional article. The big draw is two bonus episodes every month that you get for your $9 and you get commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes. Again, that's at angryplanetpod.com or at angryplanet.substack.com.

We're going to finish out this year with something I've been wanting to do for a lot of long time. I'm talking about Fat Leonard, finally. We're finally doing a Fat Leonard episode.

I'm very excited. If you're a constant listener, you've heard me talk about this story all the

time. I finally got somebody who has talked to that Leonard. He knows the whole story from their perspective.

Very excited.