Angry Planet - The Brewing Conflict in Syria's Refugee Camps

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Do you like independent journalism? Do you like learning about conflict from the best in the business. Well Jake Hanrahan is one of the best in the business and he’s the mind behind Popular Front—a podcast, a website, a documentary series, and a home to independent journalism. Popular Front goes places other journalists don’t go and asks questions other journalist don’t ask.Jake Hanrahan is here with us today to tell us about his recent trip to Rojava, and a new campaign he’s launched on Indiegogo to raise money to keep reporting from the frontlines. If you like this conversation with Jake, you have to check out his podcast Popular Front. He’s also got a great new mini-doc where he goes on patrol in Raqqa and sees what it takes to guard against Islamic State sleeper cells. That’s on youtube.com/popularfrontIf you can, I urge you to go to popularfront.co/10k and donate what you can. You can also pledge monthly support at Patreon.com/popularfrontYou 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. You know, I said to her, like, look, don't chat shit. Like, you would get us beheaded, right? Like, if these walls weren't here, if you weren't in L. Hall. And, you know, she went from at the start saying, like, oh, no, I'm not like that.

And then she just went, yeah, probably I would, yeah. You're listening to War College. a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt. Do you like independent journalism? Do you like learning about conflict from the best in the business?

Well, Jake Hanrahan is one of the best in the business, and he's the mind behind Popular Front, a podcast, a website, a documentary series, and a home to independent journalism. Popular Front goes places other journalists don't go and ask questions other journalists don't ask. Jake Hanrahan is here with us today to tell us about his recent trip to Rojava and a new campaign he's launched on Indieg to raise money to keep reporting from the front lines.

If you like this conversation with Jake, you have to check out his podcast Popular Front. He's also got a new mini-doc where he goes on patrol in Raqa and sees what it takes to guard against Islamic State sleeper cells. That's on YouTube.com forward slash Popular Front. If you can, I urge you to go to Popularfront.com, forward slash 10K and donate what you can. You can also pledge monthly support at patreon.com forward slash popular front. Jake, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks very much. Where did you go? What did you see? Where did you spend the bulk of your time? Yeah, man. So I just got back, what, two weeks ago from northeast Syria, also known as Rajava, you know, the area that the Kurdish militia YPG hold. Also, we went down into Raka as well.

and to Al Hall Camp where all the ISIS, so-called brides are being held. So yeah, man, it was good. We kind of went from east to west in Rajava, basically covered the whole place, went to almost every canton, I think. So it was a good trip. We were there for about two weeks. What other, both of you, what other journalists did you see while you were there? Jake, I know you went with somebody else. Kevin, I know you met up with a couple of journalists, but were there a lot of Americans?

Were there a lot of Europeans? What was kind of the makeup? I didn't really meet any others thinking about it, to be honest. No, it was just me. I went with Robert Evans, a host of Behind the Bastards podcast. He was doing, you know, he raised this money. He's going to do something there and said to me like, look, do you want to come? And I said, yeah, man, cool.

So, you know, I went and helped him out and also, you know, did some stuff for Popular Front. But no, I can't really think of anyone. I didn't see anyone else there, man, to be honest. I mean, there's no front line as it is. You know, there's no static front line now. So I think a lot of the reporters have gone back. Oh no, Tala. You know, I met some, I didn't meet.

I saw some people. There were some vice people I saw them. Oh, yeah, shit. And I bumped into Quentin Somerville as well from BBC, which was cool. And I like, I like him a lot. And a really good photojournalist from The Guardian called Achilles. But other than that, like, it wasn't, there wasn't like everywhere you went. There was people, you know what I'm saying?

That was like one night having some food. I really only ran into them at the hotel that I was staying at. I didn't run into anybody out in the field ever while I was out there. There's some other experiences that maybe I should keep to myself because I would say some mean things about some other journalists who'll do that off the air. Yes, I've done enough of that. All right, well, it feels like these wars have been going on so long now that the only people that are going are, the freelancers and the independence, the people that will, you know, raise the money themselves and then go out and come back and pitch stories. Like, I can't think of any outlets over here

that are really sending people. Do you guys think that that's true as covering these conflicts changed in the past five, ten years? Definitely. I've been trying to go to Rajava for so long and to get anyone to send you, you know, they kind of have their rounds of people that they sent and that was it. And to be honest, a lot of people were just doing the same shit, you know. So wanted to do a few other things but it was just a struggle man and it's like you know it's understandable in a way because syria it's expensive to get there and it's fucking dangerous you know what i mean it's it's not exactly like it's not it's not it's not your regular trip so it costs companies more um so now like ironically when i was with vice i can never get them to get me there

and now that i'm independent popular front you know with the first year of popular front and we got to syria so you know it's it's funny how things work out like that did you do a crowdfunding campaign specifically for Syria? No, it wasn't me. It was, so Robert did the crowdfunding. He, he wanted to do a few things with it. And as part of it, he wanted to go to Rajava and do like a podcast series, which, you know, he's working on at the minute. Now we got all the material. And he wanted to make it mostly about the women's movement, I think, and like, and also the political buildup of Rajava, like what is the reality versus the kind of mythos, which, you know, a lot of American leftists think it's some kind of utopia or you get like weird

communists who think it's some kind of fucking imperialist USA thing. So I think his idea was let's go there and find out exactly how the political system works on the ground as opposed to just covering front line and the fight on ISIS. You know, I mean, we didn't do much on ISIS at all. I think we spent one day doing ISIS stuff, not doing ISIS stuff, but reporting on ISIS situations. It's interesting that because I want to just. agree that I think a lot of the people who are going there are doing the same thing. I assume that a lot of the ISO stuff that you guys did was probably at El Hall, which is,

that's right. I ended up not going to El Hall because everybody was going to El Hall and I didn't see what I would be adding to the conversation. But I am curious to know what you saw there and what you guys are going to end up doing with that. Yeah, I was kind of the same. We nearly didn't get the access just because, well, it wasn't that we didn't get the access. was that, you know, the talks with Turkey in the US about the safe zone had just finished. So, like, no one was answering their phone. So I, but I honestly, I was like, eh, we don't go to Al Hall, whatever.

It doesn't really bother me. But then, you know, we had this incredible fixer and she fixed it for the last, but the, like, one day before we left, she managed to get it sorted. So we were drove down to Al Hall and we went in there. And, you know, it was interesting. We spoke to two ISIS women from the Canada. Arabian. One was from Trinidad. There's quite a lot of Trinidad, you know, people left. But then there was one woman from Barbados. She was the only person from the whole of Barbados to leave to join ISIS. So it's quite interesting. We spoke to them for about an hour. And to be honest, like,

I feel like what we got was very interesting because it was a frank conversation. You know, I was, I don't know, I think the way I interview and the way Robert interviews, it kind of worked well. It was like, you know, I said to her like, look, don't, don't chat shit. Like, you would get us beheaded, right? like if these walls weren't here, if you weren't in L. Hall. And, you know, she went from at the start saying, like, oh, no, I'm not like that. And then she just went, yeah, probably I would. Yeah. You know, so it was like, it was weird to see them go from pretending to full jihad by the end of the interview, you know. So, I mean, I guess we didn't get anything that no one else has, but I don't know.

You know, for me, it was a good, it was good for my research anyway, you know. What motivates these women to fly across the world and join ISIS? Well, they said it was their husbands, obviously. Oh, our husbands brainwashed us into it, blah, blah. Well, they're even brainwashed us. They're still, like, fully into ISIS. But, you know, they were just like, oh, our husbands joined ISIS and said we have to go. So we had to go.

You know, that kind of really awful level of subservience, which was in their kind of extremist version of Islam that they're following. And they just said, like, we kind of had to do it, you know. Okay, so these are both women that they weren't recruited online, but we're already married and just traveled with. their husbands. Yeah, like when her brother was fully into jihad in Trinidad, like in Trinidad, there's actually quite a big, quite hardcore, militant Islam culture. There was even, I think, like a failed Islamic coup in the 80s or the 70s or something, which is crazy to think that happens in Trinidad, but it does. And then there is, so the woman from Barbados married this one woman's brother, and she was a Christian, and she married this brother, like met him in uni or something.

I think she said and just converted to Islam, married the brother and just took off and then rang her mum when she was in Syria. Like, I'm in Syria. I'm not coming back. Like, it was just, you know,

as a Christian, the mother just couldn't believe it. Yeah, it was weird, man. It was very weird to kind of hear that. I've interviewed ISIS before, like in 2015, and it was like a media guy from Nineveh

and he was just like, yeah, like, we'll rule the world one day, you know, all that shit. So it was interesting to meet some women that joined afterwards

and were like realizing how, I think they knew that they were, they were like very much in trouble. Like, they kept asking, like, what they're going to do with this? Do you think they're going to send this to Iraq and stuff? But, yeah, it was, I don't know, it was, I didn't feel sorry for them at all. Like, they were fucking horrible. And they were saying, like, oh, it's the fault of the.

So, so, like, we spoke, you know, and these are black women. And I said to them, like, you know, they're defending slavery, the Yazidi women. They were like, they liked it. They liked being enslaved. And I was like, how can you say that? Like, you're a black woman considering all the fucking. mad shit the black people have been through, you know, in history with slavery. And you're just, you're just condoning slavery of Yazidis now. And she was like, oh, it's different. It doesn't

matter, you know. And it was just like, that level of brainwashing is just, well, not even brainwashing. Like, that level of evil is just unusual, I think, you know. One of the recent episodes of Popular Front, episode 50, is inside the camp for ISIS brides. Do you tell us a little bit about that episode and what this camp is like? Yeah, sure. So it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, so the, so the, so the, interview with the ISIS Brides is a bonus episode on our Patreon. But the free episode was with our fixer. Habat, Abbas, which is, she's just incredible journalist filmmaker in Rajava.

You know, very, very passionate about the revolution in Rajava, but not ideological, not like brainwashed, you know, not part of the movement. She's her own independent, you know, journalist. She's great. So on the way back from Al Hall, we, you know, I did an interview with her in the back of the car. and she kind of, she's been working there a lot because she does, she works for the UN, UNHCR as well. And she was telling us about the level of violence in the camp.

You know, when we were walking around there, we had to have two armed guards because three of the Aseiz, the internal security forces that are guarding Al Hall have been stabbed in the last couple months. One guy, like, the fuck knows how he survived. Like it went right through his back, right past his heart and luckily survived. So yeah, you got all these ISIS brides there. They've all got a Nicarb on. They're not allowed to take photos of them without the Nicarb.

So basically the SDF have no fucking idea who is in the camp. And you get these NGO workers who turn up for a couple of hours and talk shit. Like I overheard an NGO woman saying that, oh, I've got no internet on my fast link because I let all the kids use the internet in the camp. Like, okay, if the kids are using the internet, the women are using the internet. And that same week I was there, a story broke by a really good guy on Twitter called Kaki. He found out that the ISIS brides had been sending out messages on telegram from the camp saying, like, you know, they've raised a thousand pounds in a couple days. They're trying to get ISIS to come and liberate them.

They're working out ways to get weapons. It's just fucked, man. Like, it's crazy what's going on there. And I don't know, man. It's just like the international community that helped them, you know, and defeat ISIS. are now just kind of ignoring them. It's crazy. I mean, they've killed people in the camp.

Like, there was one woman, some ISIS woman, like the kid wanted to, she was like, I'm not wearing the carb anymore. So they murdered, like, the grandma murdered her granddaughter. Ugh, it's just, it's unbelievable levels of madness going on in there. And I have, it's a powder keg. I have no idea how the SDF are going to contain this, you know. And they won't execute anyone, you know. They're very much like, oh, we're not going to kill anyone.

and they're just trying to help them and just, man, they've got limited resources. It's really like, it's a bomb waiting to go off. What's the population of the camp? 73,000 people are in the camp. What's the path for these women? Like, what do you do with them? It sounds like many of them are still ideologically driven and still want to, they still believe in the Islamic State.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So the joke is now that it's the Islamic state of Al Hall, you know, it's just, it's ISIS. They believe that as well, you know what? If you look on the telegram channels, they're like, this is the resistance of the caliphate is live and well, you know, in Al-Haul and the sisters are doing it and all that shit. You know, there's even footage of them about a month ago, a month or two ago where all the kids raise an ISIS flag and all the women are like cheering and saying al-Awak-bah, you know, they raise it in their camp. They're filming it on their phone. Um, when I was there, the, the, the, I say, you should just confiscated an ISIS flag and a gun made by a kid, like a makeshift gun, you know, like a toy gun. But the gun was fucking unreal. They'd even manage, it would, it looked real, not real, but, you know, it was, it was clearly a gun. And they'd even manage to put sights into the gun with string. So they'd, you know, like what I mean? Like, they're going into some real detail. Um, and in the camp, it's, like, the conditions are actually pretty good. I've been to a lot of refugee camps. Um, and that's, what,

one of the top 10 I've been in probably like for conditions. The market, you know, they were saying to us that there are foods and stuff you get at the market that you don't get in commissionally, you know, the city that's, you know, the big city. So it's, it's not like the worst conditions, but it's just a mess, you know, it's, the problem is you have normal refugees from Iraq living amongst the ISIS brides. There's, there's fuck what they can do, you know, and they're just having to live with them. They were there before, but now these ISIS women are there. And, you know, what can you do? The only separation that I saw was the international ISIS women are in a different part, you know, and we went in there briefly, and it's so weird.

You see all these, like, random, like, European white kids running around and kids from the Caucasus and all of this, just, like, living in the camp. And, man, it's, there's some there as well, like, kids that I think quite clearly were fighting, like, literally were fighting in Baguze. There was one kid he had, like, a bullet wound on his arm. and just the way he was, he was not a normal child, you know, and he was, he was like, I don't know, but he felt, it felt to me like he was a militant, you know, I've spent a lot of time with a lot of militants and this was like an eight-year-old kid who looked like he knew

how to fire a gun, look like he'd seen war as opposed to just seeing the executions, you know, it was, I don't know, it was crazy. There are still a lot of people in that camp who are not ISIS people who were stuck there with them. That's right, yeah. Are the SDF working to do something about that to get these people away from one of another? Not really. No, I mean, there's not really much they can do, to be honest, like, other than, to be honest, they should probably put up a fence and just fence them off, but

it would have to be a big fucking fence, you know? And I don't know, how would they get to the market then? You know, the market's right in the middle. And also, like, it's not a prison camp. Like, you know, you have to understand. I didn't really understand this until I went, which is why I'm glad I went. It's not a prison camp. It's a refugee camp, even for the ISIS brides, you know. They would argue otherwise, of course. course, but they're not living like they're in prison, you know, they go where they want, they go in between the tents, they can visit one tent, they can go to another tent, you know, they can scheme, they can plot, they can, you know, they can kind of do what they want in

their tents really, you know, they've got phones, it's mad, you know, and they're throwing fucking stones at everybody and screaming at people and setting fire to tents with very little reprisals because from what I understand, I mean, of course the SDF are going to say one thing and the NGOs will say another, but from what I witness myself, it feels that. a little bit like the NGOs turn up for a couple hours and say, you can't do this, you have to do this and this. And then the SDF are kind of left to, you know, there 24-7. You know, I mean, one woman when we spoke to that she didn't, this wasn't her chatting

shit either. Like, she didn't want to be on the record. She didn't want to be named. Um, no photos. Like, she was in charge of some of the security there. And she had been attacked and had like petrol poured on her by one of the ISIS women's kids. And she got bitten by them.

Like she even showed us. she put up her shirt and she had all these fucking deep like brutal looking bite wounds all up her arm you know like they're just getting attacked man and even NGOs are telling them like no you shouldn't be walking around with rifles it's bad like you're fucking mad like this is the front line this is a front line you know in my opinion that's the way it should be treated it's ISIS women it's not ISIS brides they're not just husbands they're legitimate members of ISIS we've already seen three stabbings like I said they've murdered people themselves in the camp they have a fucking his bar. Like they have a women, ISIS, wandering around beating other women if they don't

wear their nikabs properly and stuff like this, you know, it's, oh, it's mad, mate. It's crazy what's being allowed to go on there. What's the population difference between the two groups? I don't know, man. I couldn't tell you. They did mention, but it says a couple, like, I think mostly it's ISIS women now, but I think it's quite even, but don't quote me on that. I'm not 100%. Are they converting people? That's a good question. And There was one, there was someone, so one of the guards' wives were like there in the camp, helping the other side, they were telling us like the other, you know, like the non-ISIS refugees. And like one of the women, one of the ISIS women in the Nicarb and she's one of the Hisbar women came up to her and was like,

you can't be in the market, you don't have a hijab on, like, get the fuck out of here, you know? it's like how are they doing that you know they've taken their own little kind of fiefdom for themselves now it's it's a real mess so if they're doing that to like the guards wives i you know i i wouldn't imagine that it's it's impossible to think that they're um you know also trying to convert uh refugees and the NGOs and the SDF seem like they've just kind of thrown their hands up well the NGOs are there you know and they turn up for a couple of hours every day and they You know, they're doing work, but I think there's this kind of, from what I understand, they're not real, at least, they don't seem to understand that, like, these are prisoners.

You know, this is ISIS. They're kind of like, oh, these poor people are stuck here. We have to help. Like, you have to improve this and that. Like, these are prisoners, you know, like, they are not fucking the same as the refugees. And of course, you look after them and of course you make sure their children are all okay and whatever, but I don't know, man. It seems to me like they're trying to give the SDF rules that,

they don't really have to live by because they're not there 24-7. The SDF are doing what they can, but they're fucked. You know, they don't have enough resources to deal with it. My opinion, they, all the children should be taken. You know, like the children are living there. It's fucked. But I think all the children should be taken into care and de-radicalized. And, you know, the women need to go back to their respective countries.

I think it's absurd. Like, England now has just said, like, oh, we're not dealing with it. Like, fuck them. Like, we've renounced citizenship. And, like, it's a very jingo-wistic thing over here for people I have no idea about Syria to be like, yeah, don't let them back. And it's like I get that, like, they're fucking evil, but like we can't just leave them. We can't leave who are, you know, the government's allies, you know.

England's a part of the international coalition to stop ISIS. You can't just then go fuck them, leave them out there, you know, it's insane. And if you are going to leave them out there, build a fucking huge prison, you know, and send some troops there to look after it. Otherwise, I don't know. How do they expect, like, look, SDF, YPG, they're still technically a militia. And you're leaving them in charge of the camp of the last remaining active kind of captured members of ISIS. That's fucked.

All right. Well, this also speaks to, you know, one of the reasons that y'all were out there is this kind of wider view of women's political power in the region, right? And that's one aspect of it are these ISIS women. But there's also the YPJ, right? So what is the YPJ? Yeah, sure. So the YPJ, the women's protection units is the female wing of the YPG, which is the, you know, the people's protection units, the armed wing of the Kurdish movement in northeast Syria. The YPG makes up most of the SDF, the SDF being the Syrian Democratic forces. You know, the coalition kind of set that up to include all the other people, you know, their allies to fight and take ISIS.

So the YPJ are the female units. And we spent some time with the YPJ. We went to one of their new academies in Ayn Issa, which was cool because it had only just opened. Like they didn't want any press to go. But again, we had this amazing fixer. And she turned the no to a yes. So we went there and they were just setting up. And like 90% of the women there were Arabs.

And I think this is important to stress because there's been a lot of D.C. Hawks recently talking about how like, oh, the YPG don't trust the Arabs. And it's like, it's just like, man, you have to spend more than two minutes there. But you will see how untrue that is. Like, for example, in Aynisa, all of these women were Arabs. I'd lived under ISIS in Manbage. For example, there was one woman that she was an Arab woman, and she told us that she was arrested in Manbage when she was living there under ISIS

because she had a white belt with her Nicarb. And they took three men, they took her into prison and whipped her 1,500 times. And she said, the reason they had three of them was because they were getting so tired from whipping her so hard, you know. And as soon as, you know, ISIS was living. liberated, sorry, Mambidge was liberated from ISIS thanks to the SDF and the, you know, the coalition. She was like, okay, fuck this and she went and joined the YPJ. Now she's the spokeswoman for the YPJ in Mambidge.

Like, I mean, if that doesn't tell you that there's trust in Arabs from the YPG, like, I don't really know what to say. Yes, in Derezor, there's a problem. And certainly there are people that will be like, fuck them, we don't like them or whatever. Like, that's normal life, you know, unless you're a woke idiot. like, you know, you have to understand this war and nasty things get said. But, yeah, the YPJ are doing now this kind of outreach. It feels like to kind of say, all the Arab women, like, look, come and join us.

You don't have to be a Kurd, like, just join us. And, you know, you can liberate yourself and you can be this, you know, you could be a free woman, which is an incredible achievement, you know, whether you like YPG or not. I don't think you can deny that, you know, that that is an incredible thing to do in such an anti-woman region, which, you know, I don't care what you say, it is. You know, women were treated awfully in all the parts by the Kurds as well. You know, it's not like it wasn't the Kurds as well, but it's like with this new ideology they have. I think the one good thing about it is that women are allowed a place in society, you know,

and it doesn't have to be the kitchen. Everywhere we went in Rajava, there were women manning checkpoints, women in institutions, it's not like for show. It's not like, you know, in the KRG on the Iraqi side where they get a load of women in uniform, take some pictures and say they have a women's unit that never reached the front. front, you know, like, it's real, you know, and it's, it's quite impressive to see, actually. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not like Western feminism as well. Like, they're kind of, they don't like that.

They say to you, like, you know, men are our brothers. Like, we love them, you know, like, men have fought and died for this same thing, you know, they're part of the same units. They even have mixed units. So they were like, look, we don't hate men, we love men. We just want to be the same. Like, we want equal opportunities. So it's, it's really fascinating to see firsthand, man.

And, and certainly there are a lot of problems and it's not going to work out the way they want it. but it's nice to see them making the effort, you know. What are some of the problems? Like, what kind of pushback are we seeing? I imagine it's not a super popular thing in every area of the region. Yeah, exactly. Like, so, for example, we were in, I think, Talabiyadh, and, you know, we spoke to some Arab shopkeeper who was like, I don't like this. The women shouldn't be armed, like, blah, blah, you know, they just don't, that kind of, like, chauvinistic attitude is around.

They didn't want to see it. There was one guy who was pissed off. You know, he was like, I don't like the Kurdish. administration not allowing polygamy you know that's obviously like something that's quite an old thing um and also there's a lot of problem within the kurdish community as well like even within the ypg itself will be you know they they respect the ypj and whatever but you can see that there are like old cadros who don't particularly like that the women have this power now you know and then there's also women that will get power that forget that this isn't just about power this is about

you know the liberation of women and they seem to act the same you know they'll get power and then they act like a man would with the power. So it's, you know what I'm saying? There's definitely problems there. It's not this kind of rosy situation that they like to make out, that anybody likes to make out. But certainly, I would say it definitely is working. And I think what will be, if Rajav is allowed to continue,

the next generation will be where it really makes the difference, you know, like ironing out a few generations on with letting these women, you know, like even with the youth, you see it. You know, we spoke to some youth. And they're like, you know, what do you think? you know, for example, we went into an assaish base, you know, completely unannounced. It wasn't fucking set up. And there's like women and men, like, you know, teenagers, early 20s, whatever, all hanging out in uniform.

Women girls got hijab on. One girl's Arab. One guy is Syriac. You know, it's a very mixed. And when you ask them, like, how do you feel about this kind of new thing where everybody's mixing? They were just like, what? Like, it's normal. Like, it's fine for us.

We live under this now. Like, you know, you got to remember, this is the seventh year of the revolution. So for them, they're like, they grew up with it. away now, you know, and that's good, I think, to see that it's normal. Even on one checkpoint, we spoke to this, like, really old guy. He was like, not really old, but, you know, he was like 60. He was manning a checkpoint with two women, one woman in a hijab, one woman without, and we said, how do you feel about that, you know? And he was like, I think it's great. He was like, I didn't grow up with this, but I like it. You know, it's different and it's good. Like, why don't,

why shouldn't we have this? You know, and we asked him, like, well, have you had the ideological training from the YPJ because a lot of people say, oh, well, they're brainwashing people. And he was like, nah, like, you know, he asked. him a few specific times and he was like, I don't know what that is. All I know is this, the rules here. You want to have the women here. Like, you have to respect them and I'm happy with that, you know, so I don't know. It was, it was, I really liked that about, you know, I thought it was really nice to see how real that is. Yeah, it's there, you know. You just lighted on something interesting that I think that we don't talk about a whole lot.

The ideological training of some of these Kurdish groups. Because I know we had, you know, probably less now, but especially during the early days of the, of the war, we'd have, you know, American guys going over there that wanted to kill ISIS and would join up with these groups. And you kind of had the two different types. You had your, your red-blooded American idiots and your piss-pig granddad's. Yeah, like irony bros. Exactly. Are there still a lot of them around and how are they taking to the, to the ideological training?

And what do you know about that training? Well, there's also another facet of the volunteers, international volunteers as well. Ones that are like non-ideological. Hang on. Excuse me. My God, I'm dying. Excuse me.

So you get like the commies, like the hardcore communists will join, even though like the democratic confederalist, you know, the idea, this is the name of the ideology. Running Rajah said in like this, I think the fucking 90s, they were like, we're not, we're not communists anymore. we need to move away from this. But anyway, you know, you've got the communist there. Certainly there are elements of that.

But, and then you get anarchists that go, that get there and realize, right, this isn't, you know, an anarchist state. How could you have anarchy, you know, in a wartime situation? You know, I don't, you know, I'm not saying anything bad about anarchism, but it just can't really work within a military leadership like that. You can't build it at the same time, you know, there has to be hierarchies to stop people getting killed, basically, and have an effective war strategy, I think. and then you get the other ones who the ones that I actually probably get on with the most

are the ones that are kind of, I wouldn't say non-ideological, but they look at it, they go, right, ISIS is there, you know, a lot of them will say this, they consider them like the Nazis of our generation, you know, brutal fascist guys and they just go there and they just want to fight. They're not apogee, you know, they're not into PKK, but they like what the YPG are doing and they go, right, we just want to fight and help these people. So those are the ones that are like still mostly left as far as I'm aware, you know, ones that are not communist, they're not, you know, they're not right wing, certainly, but they're like the ideas of the YPG and they want to fight this kind of fascist threat that they see. So they're the ones that are left mostly, but then there are a lot of like hardcore commies actually as well. I've heard of kind of causing problems because, you know, obviously they would, you know. And the ideological training, I don't know how many of them listen to it. Like, I know they get a kind of, kind of crash course on it. But a lot of. of it is based on the teachings of Murray Buchchin, specifically his later kind of ideas.

And for a hardcore Stalinist to go there and think, like, yeah, this is the place for me after learning the ideological training of, you know, Murray Buchchin and like, obviously the PKK leader, Odhilan is heavily, heavily, you know, he's everywhere there. I don't know, it's weird. I don't know how they reconcile that, you know? How does a militant, tanky, communist feel happy to be in Rajava? where they don't want that level of authoritarianism. But fuck knows, man.

But certainly there is, you know, there has been authoritarianism within the movement. But I think now with the Rajavra project, they've definitely deviated. But one thing I did notice is you get Cadros, so you get like people that are clearly from the mountains. You know, you're talking like 40 and 50-year-old men and women that are commanders.

And when you talk to them, it's like, what did you do before this? And they're like, oh, I was away somewhere. You know, like they've been in the mountains. And I think there, some of them are struggling with the new ideas. know, even they are, I think. Kevin, you met some volunteers, right? Yeah, I would say that I think Jake's appraisal of who was there and what they were doing

is pretty spot on. I think one thing I would add to it is that definitely now that ISIS is out of the way, though, or not completely out of the way, but there isn't so much for these guys to be doing. Some of them are wondering what they're still doing there and how to be useful. and I think I I think a lot of them are figuring out what their next step is and if they're going back

one of the guys I talked to was thinking about going back to America and getting his master's degree yeah a lot of people have left a lot of people are leaving man there's very few internationals left I think the ones that are left are the ones that like don't have much to go home to you know or have become so ideological they kind of want to join the movement

properly you know yeah the guy that I talked to he, I mean, he sounded like he was pretty set on going home, but one of the things that he talked about was he was, he was up in Camislo, or Camisle, whatever we want to call it. He would, he had apparently been talking to some of them about setting up, like, an after-school program or a youth program for some of the kids around there since there isn't so much for them to do. So he was kind of bringing that experience from being back home into that. That's great. It's interesting to hear that. Yeah, I know it is, but it doesn't sound like he's going to do it.

It sounds like he's going to probably leave. But it's interesting definitely to look at these guys who, and not just guys, women too, who volunteered to go out there to see what their role in this is going forward and what role that is. There seems to be like, I don't know why, like the kind of liberal or conservative, like both sides, you know, liberal journalism, conservative journalists, the default seems to be, well, how, you know, fuck them guys, like these idiots. And it's like, well, there's loads of really, really good people actually out there.

and, you know, like, there's a lot of idiots. You know, I, for a long time, had a lot of arguments with volunteers because they, I just thought half them were there just for their Instagram feeds, to be honest, a lot of them were, or for adventure, but there are actually like a lot of good people that you don't even hear about that have been there for a long time and are doing schemes like this. You know, I know that there's one guy that's helping with the ecological side of things, which they rapidly need to kind of fix because it's not on top, you know. But again, you know, it's a place at war.

Things come in when they're ready. but yeah, there's a lot of good people that went out there, man. A lot of people saw it as kind of like, oh, this is our Spain, you know, this is our Barcelona or Catalonia or whatever. You know, it's interesting. But, you know, it's an addictive place. I can understand why a lot of them want to stay as well. What are some of the ecological problems?

It's just not like, you know, it's in their constitution. And certainly, like, I think Kurds as a people anyway, no matter where they are, they're very into like nature and stuff. know, perhaps from just where they've, you know, grown up in the mountains often and their terrains. But certainly in Rojava, like, they're very much want to do the ecological side, but it's just not really happening that much, you know, like, not that I can tell anyway. There are, like, we went to an organic, you know, farm, I guess, a co-op where these women were doing, growing their own vegetables and stuff, which was cool, you know.

But then, like, two minutes down the road, there's an oil field, you know. So it's like, okay, well, which is fine. oil's got to be, you know, they've got to do all this and whatever, but there's a lot of, a lot to be learned, I think, from the ecological side of things. All right. So what do you see as the future of Rajava and what are the things that could get in the way of that future? I think the biggest obstacle is their neighbors, you know, like left, right, center everywhere, hates them really, you know, like, you know, Turkey's on the border, obviously that's the biggest threat right now. Iran, they don't like them, you know, and the

regime as well you know the regime will i mean right now the the sdf or the ypg rather were trying to make like a deal with iran because sorry with the regime because like america's kind of abandoned them with the kind of troop pulling out situation and you know in trying to try to get this insane uh safe zone you know safe zone i don't don't sound very safe to me um but yeah they're trying to get that going so they're kind of trying to do a deal with the regime it's far too late now they put a lot too much trust in the US, I think. But the, you know, the thing is everyone hates the regime there. Like, it's the, the thing is they want to make a kind of deal with them because it's

all they can really do now. But you go there, man, and I'm sure you found this yourself as well. Like, you listen to people in Camiselo, particularly who will tell you, like, they don't talk about ISIS. They're like, oh, yeah, fuck them. Like, we're, you know, we had a family member die or whatever, but they're mostly, they're like, fuck the regime. We don't want to go back to that.

Like, we don't want that, you know. And most people don't want the regime. regime. I think that's a unifying thing between the Arabs and the Kurds just don't want the regime back. But, you know, they want an autonomous region, which I think is clear that if they have that, it will last maybe a few years, but it's going to get gobbled up eventually by the regime. So, look, I remember Speaker 2nd her back one night, and she was great. And she kind of said something that was sad, but it made sense. She said, look, if we get killed, like, if all of this goes, we did it. We did do it. It was here once, you know? And I kind of understood what she meant,

Like that meant a lot the fact that they did it And she was like, look, this will go down in history And maybe one day it will come back, you know So it was fucked up to think that But, I don't know I don't think it looks good personally I'm kind of pessimistic, I don't think it looks good One thing they are doing is building tunnels everywhere

And it's no secret like if it's fucking out in the open Everywhere you drive, they're building these deep, deep tunnels 8 meters deep, you know So they can't get hit with an airstrike apparently So I think it will end up like a mad situation Where they're kind of, I don't know They're in the tunnels Kevin, you just wrote an article about some of this, right?

It did. And one thing I think that I'm glad to hear Jake bring this up because I think it, we've been talking a lot about Turkey, particularly because of the latest threatened invasion. But one thing that really does get overlooked is their relationship with the regime, actually, which I think is not well understood. It's a very complicated thing. Certainly at the beginning of the Civil War. The YPG actually did not fight the regime that much.

They did fight the regime. They tried to kind of stay out of each other's way because both of them were fighting these kind of Turkish-backed militant groups, though that also was something that was kind of a difficulty between other factions of the Free Syrian Army and the YPG. And a lot of members of the Syrian opposition kind of for a while viewed the YPG as regime stooges. But whatever that might have been, that's pretty. over now. These two groups are not really getting along. And as he said, there are these efforts to kind of come to an agreement. The SDF is kind of trying to do that with the regime, but I don't think the regime is

particularly interested in dealing, mostly because they're not, they've shown a history of not being particularly interested in dealing with other people. They like people to submit. And with the possibility of the coalition withdrawing, And I mean, now that's all up in the air. But something that was interesting was when I was in Raqa. One of the top security people there told me on the record that more of the bombings that they're dealing with have been caused by the regime than by ISIS. The regime is really trying to turn up the temperature in some of these areas and really trying to weaken the authorities out there. And it's just something that I think is not getting enough attention.

yeah definitely i mean at the start of the war as well it was a weird one because like the regime kind of left right so there a lot of them in rojab like great like cool like now we now we can rise up um but now it's like you see it particularly in commissionally whatever you want to say you see it where like half the fucking town is split in two you know there's um it's bizarre man like you know Kevin you would have seen it right we used to look down an alleyway and there's like barrels and regime flags and then you go to the roundabout and there's a huge bust of Haphaz's big head and then there's like a sad painted on the wall. It's creepy as fuck, man.

It's horrible. So then like, you know, they're literally living side by side and like, I mean, I think it's like once a year or once every two years. They end up clashing at some point, you know, like there's gunfire. It's uneasy, man. I think commercially gives you an idea of how the, the, it's like a microcosm, but it does give you an idea of the actual real relationship between them, you know, like, okay, we're YPG here and your regime there.

But you don't look at us and we don't look at you. you come here, you're getting shot. You know, it's just like, it's one of them ones, man. It's very uneasy. And I think that, look, the regime doesn't have to do a deal with the YPG now. You know, it's like they've got Russia. They're basically winning the war, unfortunately, and the kind of FSA is over, you know, it's been killed. It's sad as it is, it's been killed, you know, you've got, you know, so-called FSA in Afrin, which everybody knows is not FSA. I think it's an insult to the kind of heroic effort of the FSA to even call them that now. And then you've got jihadis and it.

Nidlib and it's just a mess, you know, and it's like regime doesn't really have to negotiate. They can just go like, look, if we want, we'll just send Russia in and or use whatever and we'll just bomb the fuck out of you guys, you know, so I don't know. It's a real, it's a real uneasy one. I don't think this can last for much longer as it is, you know. All right. So what are you working on right now? So just moving ahead with Popular Front.

And we're doing, by the time this goes out, there will be a crowdfunding kind of campaign. So I'm doing an Indiegogo campaign because popular front is, you know, 100% grassroots independent journalism. We don't even have adverts really, you know, like dual pods tried to sponsor us recently. And I was like, fuck you, fuck Philip Morris, which is kind of a childish way to be something. But I want to keep it straight up like grassroots anti-corporatism because I feel like the kind of influence of big money into media into journalism has fucked it, you know. And I don't want to be answering to any kind of corporate vampire types. So we have the Patreon. Patreon.com slash popular front where we do like bonus episodes. We do all sorts of stuff there.

It's like a subscription, I think, to be honest, you get more popular front. But being this kind of anti-corporist, anti-hyper capitalist attitude has really fuck me because I'm broke, you know, and we're trying to do more, but it's hard to do things. You know, we do things on a shoestring. Like, you know, already we've done documentaries in Northern Ireland, Greece, Ukraine and Syria now with very, very little money. But we do need a little bit more to move forward, I feel like, take to the next stage. We need better equipment. We need to be able to pay a few people because right now I'm doing almost all of it. It's killing me and it's slowing things down. So to move things forward, I'm trying to raise 10 grand. And, you know, by the time this goes out, it will be at

Popularfront.com slash 10K and all the details will be there. And I say to everybody, look, if you can put your hands in your pockets and you like what we're doing, do it. If you can't, doesn't, like, do not feel obliged. Please, like, if you're broke, just share it, show people, you know, get people interested. So yeah, man, it's all moving forward. And I just want to say as well, thank you guys very much because you helped us out at the very start and it's been a massive help. And since then, like, things are really firing. You know, it's good. Oh, it's a great show and everyone should definitely listen to it. And that site again is popularfront.com forward slash 10K. Yeah, 10K, an imaginative link, you know, but I thought it would be easy for people to get it.

And, you know, there's no bones about it. We need 10K. We're not offering much, to be honest. We offer a load of, you know, extras on the Patreon for the subscription anyway. You know, you will get, you'll see things before anybody else. Sure. But like, basically, we're just saying, look, if you like what we're doing, we're trying to think, hey, we've got to move forward. If we can, cool. If not, it doesn't matter.

Like, things, popular funds not dying or anything like that. It's going to carry on. But right now, you know, I want to kind of move it forward faster. And I think, you know, that money, it's a lot. But I think it will help us a lot, you know. Jake Hanarhan, thank you so much for coming on to war call. and telling us about your recent trip. Thanks, mate. Always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

That's it for this week, War College listeners. I hope you liked it. Again, go to patreon.com for slash popularfront and popularfront.com and Popularfront.com forward slash 10K to help Jake keep making amazing stories like this. War College continues to be ad-supported, though that may change in the near future. War College is me, Matthew Galt, Galt, and Kevin Nodell. It was created by myself and Jason Fields, who is not. Now writing about politics in this climate.

Oh, thank you. We'll be back next week with Robert Evans to talk about his new book, The War on Everyone. After that, the discussion of the way the Internet is changing war and protest for the worse. And we're still working on that Metal Gear solid thing. Stay safe. Until that.