Front Burner - The view from the conflict zone in Syria

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced a permanent ceasefire on the Syrian border with Turkey. But can the peace be stable? The CBC’s Margaret Evans on her experience travelling there last week.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Two weeks ago, a shocking video emerged from a region teetering on the edge of serious violence. It was a Kurdish politician, Hevrin Halaf. She was executed in northeastern Syria.

The killing came to symbolize a kind of bloodshed people feared would break out, following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. There is now a ceasefire. Donald Trump says it's a permanent one. But many are worried it's not a stable peace. The ceasefire between Turkey and Syrian Kurds expired, but was quickly replaced by a new agreement brokered by Vladimir Putin. Today on FrontBurner, the CBC's Margaret Evans. She tracked down Halaf's mother on a visit to Syria and she'll tell us what to expect in the coming weeks and months. Just a note to say

there are some disturbing details in this episode. This is FrontBurner. This is FrontBurner. Hi, Margaret. Hi, Jamie. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast again. It's a pleasure. So on Wednesday, we saw Donald Trump get up at a press conference. He announced that the president of Turkey had agreed to a permanent ceasefire in the northeastern part of Syria. This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else.

A permanent ceasefire that essentially Russia has negotiated with Turkey, but somehow the president's sort of taking a little bit of credit for that. And that he was lifting sanctions on Turkey that he had placed on the country because of its incursion into Syria. Let someone else fight over this long, bloodstained sand. And I want to get into those comments with you in a minute, but I know that they're very complicated and there's a lot for us to unpack here. So I'm hoping that we can start with how we got to this point.

I know that you were just in Rojava, the Kurdish area in northern Syria. And can you tell me in Rojava, the Kurdish area in northern Syria. And can you tell me about Rojava? Rojava was basically born out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war, which is going on nine years now. And with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, you know, fighting on other fronts, the Kurds in northeastern Syria started filling in some of those gaps. And they basically, by 2016, had set up their own kind of autonomous administration. The U.S. allies are giving assistance to the Syrian Kurds that have proved very effective in attacking ISIS in parts of northern Syria. The Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and its armed wing, the YPG, have skillfully gained control of almost the entire northern stretch

of the country. And Rojava means west in Kurdish. And that's so it's a reference to the part of what some people would call greater Kurdistan, you know, which includes Kurds living in Syria in the west, obviously, and then Iraq, parts of Iraq, Turkey and Iran. And the early idea of it was based around Marxist ideology, which is promoted by Abdullah Ercalan, who's the jailed leader of the Turkish Workers' Party, or the PKK, and it's been fighting this guerrilla war inside Turkey for decades. Since 1984, more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. The United States, the European Union, and Turkey classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.

And that's why Turkey is so concerned. It sees links between the PKK and the Syrian Kurdish militias. And that's why Turkey said it was wanting to go in to create this safe zone. The country's vice president delivered a tough message. There's a state fighting against a terrorist organization and you expect us to sit and talk with terrorists? Well, they were former allies of the Americans and the British. That's a pity. I mean, when you go into Rojava, for instance, you see big billboards and they have Ergillen on the front of those billboards. That gives you

the political dynamics around it. And what was the situation like when you were in Rojava? We basically went in twice. The first time, we just managed to get a toehold. We're just on the Syrian side of the border right now at the crossing, and what we're seeing is a steady stream of journalists and aid workers heading across the border towards northern Iraq. They know the Syrian army is coming this way and that this part of northern Syria

is about to change hands in terms of control yet again. And that was when the news had just broken that the Kurdish fighters who fight under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces, they're called, they basically had felt compelled to ask the Syrian government to come in to protect them from the Turkish incursion because the Americans had announced that they were pulling out. We went in again two days later and visited a town called Derik,

which is just in this northeastern sliver because this part of Syria is between Turkey and Iraq, 10 kilometers from the Turkish border. And people were really struggling to cope with this fast changing situation. They would use roads away from the border because it was so close to the Turkish border and there's potentially shelling. You know, our driver, we could see his rifle underneath his seat, carrying gas in case they get stopped. And there were people, you know, people who'd fled the fighting, and there were people also mourning their death. Speaking of people who have died, I know a Kurdish politician was murdered there on October 12th. Her name was Hevrin Halaf. It's believed she was killed by a Syrian rebel militia with ties to Turkey. Can you tell me about what happened to her?

Well, she was killed, it was just four days into the Turkish incursion. She was one of nine people who were thought to have been basically been executed along a stretch of highway running parallel to the Turkish border, where one of the Syrian rebel militias backed by Turkey were known to be operating. And there were some pretty horrific videos circulating, including one that seemed to show Halaf's body and the foot of someone pushing at it and calling it the corpse of a pig. And then an autopsy report released, made public, showed how she died, multiple gunshot wounds to her head,

fractures to her legs, to her arms, parts of her scalp had come off. I'm very angry. Shabal Mustafa is her cousin. Why? Why all of this happens to us? Only just because we are Kurdish? And it really drew the world's gaze, as you were saying earlier, in terms of the horror and the sectarian nature of some of the fighting. And Amnesty International launched an investigation and was critical of Turkey, saying that it had to basically bear responsibility for any atrocities

committed by militias fighting on Turkey's behalf. Right, Amnesty International. Turkey, I should say, has denied involvement. Right, Amnesty International has called this a war crime, right? That's right. I know that you talked to Halaf's mother. What did she say? Kurdish women enjoy this almost legendary status for strength. And I mean, we've all seen the images of these Kurdish fighting units as well. Known in Kurdish as the YPJ. Raqqa was the capital of ISIS.

They bought and sold Kurdish women here. And we want to tell them that the Kurdish women can protect themselves. You definitely saw some steel in her, that kind of strength. Her name was Suad Mohammed, and she talked about the way her daughter died without flinching. There was not any part of her body without bullets. Everywhere was bullets. And they even pulled out her hair, all of her hair, because of those betrayers and terrorists. They killed her not like to kill her as a human,

but her ideology. She was clearly very proud of her. She was a civil engineer. She spoke languages. And she made a point of saying she never picked up a gun because she did have another daughter who was a PKK fighter who was killed. And she said to me never picked up a gun because she did have another daughter who was a PKK fighter who was killed. And she said to me, I can understand that because she was a fighter. But Halaf was not. She was, you know, she'd created this political party that focused on reconciliation between Arabs. So this mother has now lost two daughters. That's right. The family had planned to go to the cemetery. But because there'd been an airstrike nearby the night before, they didn't.

And so they had this kind of ceremony outside the apartment where friends and family came over to do a remembrance. And, you know, it was a scene of communities coming together, obviously at a time of grief. The chant on their lips that martyrs never die. I know that with the violence, many Kurds have been leaving Syria. How is that happening and where are they going? If they can get out, they are going to northern Iraq.

And that's really their only route unless they want to go further south into Syria. But the border, the main border between Syria and northern Iraq is closed to Syrians. When we were in northern Iraq, we saw the first 200 refugees coming across the border. And they were actually paying smugglers to get across. We met a man, a father named Baha Hassan Naomi and he told us they came with the clothes on their back. $600 for each of us to get here. If it wasn't for them, we couldn't pass. One of the first things that he asked me about was could

we help him somehow get IDs? Not because they'd had to leave them behind, but because they've never had IDs living as Kurds in Syria, which is the case for many Syrian Kurds. The Turkish hit Ras al-Ain with airstrikes. We didn't have any place to go. So what is his life going to be like now? Well, I guess he'd like it if somebody could tell him that. His young wife, who is, I think, 21, said she didn't want to leave. She wanted to stay in northern Iraq because... I will stay here because I feel safe, she says.

We have more value here. They don't let anything happen to Kurds. A lot of people just full of relief, but northern Iraq is already hosting something like 250,000 mainly Kurdish refugees who've come over during the Syrian conflict. They do allow them to work probably its life in a refugee camp for the foreseeable future, especially if they don't want to go back and especially if it's so uncertain what's what's happening back in northern syria in the dragon's den a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection watch new episodes

of dragon's den free on cbc gem brought to you in part by national angel capital organization empowering canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So with this announcement on Wednesday, Donald Trump saying that there is now this permanent ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Syria. However, you would also define the word permanent in that part of the world as somewhat questionable. We all understand that. But I do believe it will be permanent. Do you think that this might stop them from having to leave in this very complicated situation? I think a lot of the people that we spoke to in the camps said they didn't want to go back

because they saw this very fast reversal of the fortunes of the Kurds. And I don't think the dream of Rojava, we started out talking about that, you know, seemed to be disappearing with them. The sense that they could keep this autonomous enclave going, just gone. The Kurdish militias and the Kurdish leadership are being forced to leave these border areas. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat down with host Russian President Vladimir Putin. After a six-hour meeting, Erdogan said Turkey, Russia, and the Syrian regime together would evict Kurdish fighters known as the YPG. YPG terrorists and their arms will be taken further than 30 kilometers from the border. Their fortifications and positions will be destroyed. You know, they really don't have the means to

fight for themselves, and they're now reliant on the Syrians. The Syrians are relying on the Russians, and the Russians are negotiating with the Turks. Right. So is that to say that this permanent ceasefire might not be so permanent after all? It's really hard to say. I mean, in a sense, the Kurds are, you know, have really been the big losers here. At the same time, they are hardy fighters who've managed to survive over the years. It's hard to know what they're going to do in terms of regrouping. But this deal that's been agreed between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is basically that Turkey gets to keep this 120 kilometer stretch of land that it started the fighting that the fighting was most intense you know at in the to begin with the Kurds have been given a few days to pull out of a much wider area along that southern border then you're going to start to see Syrian and Russian troops patrolling the border to make sure the Kurds leave. And then there would be Russian and Turkish joint patrols. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the agreement a permanent solution. In my opinion, these decisions are very important,

maybe even momentous, and will allow to resolve the situation. And these are not easy allies either, the Russians and the Turks, and certainly not the Syrians and the Turks. Meanwhile, Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan is a thief. He stole our plants and factories, our wheat produce, and he stole our oil with the help of ISIL. Now he is stealing our lands. So it's hugely complicated, and there are going to be bumps along the road, you can bet on it. It isn't really relevant to what Donald Trump is saying in the United States, aside from the fact that Turkey certainly didn't want to have economic sanctions imposed upon it.

But some critics would probably say he's trying to make the United States relevant after they've actually basically left the field of relevancy by pulling their troops out of Syria and leaving this power vacuum that others rushed in to fill. So really, the future of this region is not dependent on what the United States says. But you know, what happens with this deal made between Vladimir Putin and Erdogan? Yeah, I mean, unless they find a way to get back but, you know, what happens with this deal made between Vladimir Putin and Erdogan? Yeah, I mean, unless they find a way to get back in. I mean, Donald Trump also keeps saying that the Americans are going to keep an eye on the oil fields in northeastern Syria and protect them. And it's hard to know what that means. We've secured the oil and therefore a small number

of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil. But there are all these questions, like does Turkey get to keep that land in northern Syria indefinitely? Would the Syrian government agree to that? Is Erdogan going to start moving Syrian refugees into that area, as he said at the beginning that he wanted to do? And will the Kurds be able to hang on to any of the autonomy that they carved out during the civil war in what is, you know, looking to be a vastly reduced territory? And then, on top of that, you know, what happens to all those Islamic State prisoners?

I want to get to the Islamic State prisoners with you in a moment. But do you think there is a scenario where this Kurds are able to hold on to at least a small part of territory in northeastern Syria? It doesn't seem like they have very many cards in their hands. But, you know, they also, again, the Kurds have a long history of sometimes making deals with the government in Damascus. I think it's too soon to tell. And you just mentioned, we're not sure what's going to happen with all the ISIS fighters. You know, these are, of course, ISIS fighters that the Kurds have been holding in this area. The Kurdish forces estimate they hold 12,000 ISIS fighters in facilities in northeastern Syria. Two of those are within Turkey's target areas.

Facilities in northeastern Syria, two of those are within Turkey's target areas. And Donald Trump said today that these fighters are now essentially Turkey's responsibility, right? As a backup to the Kurds watching over them, should something happen, Turkey is there to grab them. Right. And Turkey, when it first went in, said that it would take responsibility for those camps and those fighters. take responsibility for those camps and those fighters. But if you look at the map that's being drawn, where most of the camps are further south than this 30 kilometer safe zone, exclusion zone, buffer zone, whatever you want to call it. So some of those camps are still in territory controlled by the Kurds. But you're also seeing the Syrian army come back into those areas. So does that mean that the Syrian army might get involved? You know, we have to sort of stay tuned. Right. And certainly not as simple as Donald Trump made it sound on Wednesday.

Definitely not. Okay, Margaret, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. OK, so last night, conservative Alberta Premier Jason Kenney gave an address. He called it a pre-budget message. But of course, the results of this week's federal election came up. Here's a bit of what he had to say. Simply put, in an uncertain world where we can't count on support from this federal government in Ottawa, we must be self-reliant. We must put our own house in order so that we're prepared for whatever the future may bring. Stay tuned for our episode tomorrow. We're talking to two conservatives separated by generations about the future may bring. Stay tuned for our episode tomorrow. We're talking to two conservatives separated by generations about the future of the party.

It's going to be good. I'm Jamie Poisson. This is FrontBurner. See you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.