Global News Podcast - Moscow gives Assad asylum

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Moscow has given asylum to Syria's former president, Bashar al-Assad. Also: Trump threatens to take the US out of NATO, and Zelensky says 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the conflict with Russia.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Monday the 9th December these are our main stories. Russian state news agencies have announced that Syria's deposed president Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow and has been granted political asylum. The victorious Islamist rebel leader in Syria told supporters at a historic mosque in Damascus that all Syrians could now breathe freely. In other news, Donald Trump has threatened to take the United States out of NATO if the

other allies don't pay their bills and treat America fairly. Also in this podcast... I'm very hopeful for every mother who had the chance to meet her son again, for every husband who had the chance to meet his wife again, for every kid who was born in prison and now for the first time go out to the world." A former Syrian prisoner on how it feels to see thousands of other political prisoners freed. Two weeks ago it didn't seem possible. Now Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow, swept away at breakneck speed,

and the Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jilani has addressed supporters inside a mosque in Damascus. This victory, my brothers, is a new history for the entire Islamic nation. This victory, my brothers, is a new history for the region. More about the rebels and international reaction on the way for you. First, a sense of the joy on the streets of Syria. It's almost like a dream. It's like a dream. I need someone to wake me up. What great joy for the people. There is love as if they were waiting for

a long time for us to liberate them from this dirt of a regime. But not everyone shares the jubilation such as this woman in Damascus. Unfortunately, as a woman, I'm not sure whether I will be able to continue living as I want to. I'm not sure whether I will have my freedom. I'm not so sure that corruption will end and you know, dictatorship will end. And to tell you the truth, it's the first time I'm not so sure that corruption will end and you know dictatorship will end and to tell you the truth it's the first time I'm thinking of leaving the country. My colleague Lina Sinjab who is Syrian returned home today after years outside the country. Well the whole situation I've never thought that I would live it myself after you know

losing hope of any peaceful change or political change in Syria, after me, my family had to flee and live somewhere else, suddenly things have started to change in the last 10 days, and still we couldn't believe that things might work in a peaceful way. So crossing the border for the first time without fear of a detention, without fear of the security, without fear of the government, is something I never thought I would experience myself. And coming into the country, and I have to say, it's a bit chaotic, but there hasn't been any violence, any aggression.

You know, we've seen the rebels in different locations. They've been waving hello for us. They just, like, let us through. No one stopped us. No one talked to us. Of course, there are sporadic incidents of the looting, of chaos. People are angry, people have been starved. You know, 90% of the population are under the poverty line. So they went into some government buildings, especially the presidential residency, where personally I've never been into the street in my life. So people were going. It felt for me like it's a looting picnic.

They were going in, taking whatever they can, and also taking pictures, posing to keep this moment in their memory. And everyone we've spoken to, have seen, they are celebrating, they're hopeful for a different Syria, for a better Syria, for a Syria that everyone will build together. Benas Sinchab with me from Damascus. The collapse of the Assad regime is already causing shockwaves across the Middle East. Lebanon is home to one and a half million Syrian refugees. In the last 24 hours, many of them have started to gather their belongings and head home.

As well as Lebanon, Syria shares borders with Israel, Iraq and Turkey. Iraq's spokesman said the country was closely following developments and reaffirmed the importance of not interfering in Syria's internal affairs. Iran has provided military support for the Assad regime for years and now seems to have abandoned its former ally. Iran's Revolutionary Guards took an active role in suppressing pro-democracy protests in 2011. The anger many Syrians feel about that was apparent on Sunday as the Iranian embassy in Damascus was attacked. Azadeh Moavani is a former Middle East correspondent for

Time magazine. The Russians had decided to really not back Assad to the hilt. Of course, they're extremely preoccupied in Ukraine and had checked out a little bit militarily on the Syrian front for a long time. Turkey had emerged in the aftermath of the Lebanon ceasefire with what seemed to be some sort of tacit behind the scenes agreements with other regional players to back those rebels. And so things spiraled very quickly for Tehran. A week ago, we had the foreign minister eating shawarma at a cafe in Damascus. Within just

several days of that, the Russians were pulling out their personnel. And of course, the key thing is that post the sort of Israeli strikes in Lebanon and strikes on Syrian sides of the border, in Lebanon and strikes on Syrian sides of the border. Essentially Syria as a transit point for Iran to restock Hezbollah as a sort of transit point for Iran through to the Mediterranean has ceased to be a reality. So once that's the case, why back him? What risks then does the situation in Syria create? A question from Middle East analyst Sebastian Oscher. A question from Middle East analyst Sebastian Osher. The word that we've been hearing a lot from leaders across the Middle East is chaos for concern that that is what might now occur in Syria. I mean it was unsatisfactory, it was not taking Syria anywhere positive or anywhere forward

but there was a status quo, there was a stalemate under President Assad and the fighting had essentially stopped for four years and President Assad had been welcomed back into the Arab fold. He was back at the Arab League. He was free to travel to countries where he hadn't been able to go to for years. So I think that is the risk that Jordan, that Lebanon, that Egypt are concerned about. They've sealed borders. They're concerned that jihadists, not just this group, HTS, which has a jihadist past, but the real, still hardcore jihadist group such as ISIS, which still has a presence in the remote vast desert of Syria, could have a resurgence because of this.

Israel, which – I mean ironically played think, a very big part in the fall of President Assad, the way that it decimated Hezbollah, the way that it weakened Iran, the way that it cut the supplies. But now it's facing the prospect of having potentially hostile jihadist groups on its border and has already moved to say that they will do anything that's necessary to stop that. There are obviously concerns today that Syria could end up as the next Libya or the next Afghanistan. What's the good version of how this could turn out? What's the opportunity? Well again, looking at it from the regional perspective, I think the opportunities that

they're seeing, one is a very big one about the refugees returning. Now this has been a huge weight and burden on Lebanon, on Turkey, on these countries which have had millions of Syrian refugees there and it has really affected already economies that are in a difficult state and there's been a hope, a push to try and get people to return to Syria but under President Assad, they weren't about to do that. So I think there's a hope that there will be an exodus and that will relieve some of the pressure on these countries and also from the perspective of Arab states this blow to Iran, the sense that its absolute key base in the region has now been taken away from it, I think that will be welcomed as a very positive move. So there are certainly reasons for there to be celebration

in Arab capitals as well as apprehension. Now earlier in the podcast we heard the voice of Abu Mohammed al-Jilani, the leader of the Islamist alliance which has toppled president Assad in less than a fortnight. He heads HTS which is rooted in Syria's branch of al-Qaeda and is still deemed a terror group by the UN and many western nations. For years Mr al-Jilani operated in the shadows. Now he gives interviews to the international media organisations saying he's a moderate. My colleague Barry Marston heads the BBC monitoring team that analyses jihadist media. He told me more about HTS.

If we take the leader of this group, Abu Mohammed Al Jolani specifically, he has this indelible role within the jihadist movement. You could argue that he's the figure responsible for why al-Qaeda and the Islamic State split in the first place. When in 2013 he took sides, one against the other, giving rise to bloody factional fighting, which continues to today. So he's intricately involved with that jihadist background, but in the years since, he went out of his way to distance himself and his movement, HDS, Heir Tahrir al-Sharam, from jihadism and focused on governing the area of territory that they've carved out in Idlib in northwestern Syria. And that's very much the sort of rhetoric and media material we've been seeing put out by entities around him in recent weeks, focusing on pragmatic issues like reaching out to minorities,

stressing Syria's cultural diversity, human rights, the importance of preserving institutions, diplomatic relations, this very deeply pragmatic language that you may not expect to hear from somebody that comes from that jihadist background. How have HTS managed to do in 11 days what no one else has managed in 13 years. They've picked their time incredibly well. After 2011 the reason Bashar al-Assad was able to stay in power was with support from Hezbollah, Russia and Iran. And all three of them have been largely out of the picture because of being distracted for various reasons at this moment. So Bashar al-Assad

and his forces found themselves largely alone, heavily demotivated troops impacted by corruption and the sheer exhaustion of being involved in fighting a war over so many years. So the sheer pace of events has been absolutely remarkable. And perhaps no great surprise that Assad's own military wasn't that strong without international backing. As you say, the timing though could not have been more perfect and everyone's reeling at just how quickly the paper tiger collapsed. The thing is, because the rebels may not have been expecting this outcome this fast, it's a question of whether they really have an idea how the very different factions are going to work together, any form of power sharing, what comes next. Golan himself is not a model Democrat.

He's never tried to bring in any sort of Western style democracy in Idlib. He actually faces severe criticism from people in that region for ruling in quite an autocratic way, cracking down on Islamist and jihadist groups. So it's a question of whether he's able to lean in the direction of a more enlightened form of governance that we in the West might recognize as an improvement for Syria, or whether we do see another phase of authoritarianism, or even whether this is just another phase of the civil war, because the different rebel factions that have very different backers and very different interests and outcomes are not able to agree amongst themselves.

My colleague Barry Marston of BBC Monitoring. Videos are circulating on social media of prisoners being reunited with their families after years of incarceration. Since 2011, Syrian security forces have held hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps, where international human rights organisations say torture was standard practice. Omar al-Shogre was a teenager when he was jailed in 2012. For three years he was held in some of Syria's most brutal prisons and was tortured himself. He's now in Sweden working for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based organisation which campaigns for a safe and democratic Syria. I asked him how it felt

to see prisoners being freed. I spent three years in these prisons. I know what happens inside, I know the torture, the starvation, I know the pain, I know the loneliness and also the hopelessness you feel because the world left you suffer in pain and the world done nothing about it. So now these fighters in Syria have done more than a hundred democracies in the world have done to help these people. Seeing them running out free out of the place that dehumanized them, tortured them, it's a joy that I can barely explain it.

I cried. I can tell you I cried barely explain it. I cried. I can tell you I cried so many times to this video. We have to know names of who is dead and who is not. There's so many information to gather. Syrian mothers have lost their kids to somewhere they don't know where it is. They don't know their kids are alive or dead. Now it's going to take a few days before if a prisoner managed to reach out to their families. Now the difference from now and before is when I was released, Syria was under the control of the regime so the prisoner had to escape elsewhere. But now the

prisoner get out, the political prisoner is in his home, is a country safe on the streets of Syria and that's the proudest you could be. An incredible moment for many families today. Having spent time inside these prisons yourself, Omar, just take us inside. What's it like? Imagine having the person you love the most in your life with you in yourself. And then the guards comes and forces that person to torture you and force you to torture that person that you love very much almost every other day. This is how it felt. This is how it was in reality. They forced my cousin who I loved so much to torture me and they forced me to torture him otherwise we would both be executed. And other than that you got the starvation. You got to have a potato.

And you're so starved that you could kill someone else just to eat their food and to survive. The fact that the God could come at any moment and torture and kill anyone at any moment just because he is too cold and needs to warm up. How could the world for 14 years let that happen? How could the world have let us over 139,000 people be tortured on a daily basis for the pleasure of some gods? I don't understand how the world left us alone, but I understand that we have won this. And now we can celebrate with the world to show the world our values and our strength.

You must be thinking very much today about people you are in prison with, some of whom perhaps have escaped today, some of whom have probably died in the intervening period. Most of the summer mates that I had with me, they died during my time in prison. So I have very few to wait for them to be released. And it has been 10 years since I got out of prison. Or 9 years. So I don't know. I should expect. I'm trying to expect as less as I can. But also I'm very hopeful for every mother who had the chance to meet her son again,

for every husband who had the chance to meet his wife again, for every kid who was born in prison and never seen the tree, never seen a bird, never seen a ball and now for the first time go out to the world. That was Omar Alshagri with me. Still to come in this podcast. The people of Ghana have spoken. People have voted for change and we respect that decision. Ghana's governing party concedes defeat in the country's presidential election.

We'll hear from opposition supporters. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands, where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Confirmation of President Assad's departure from Syria came from Russia. He's now in Moscow, according to Russian state media. His rule in Syria only lasted as long as it did because of Russia's interventions. Their warplanes bombed Syrian rebels into submission in cities like Aleppo. But now Russia's attention has been diverted elsewhere. For more, I spoke to our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. There's no doubt that these extraordinary events that we've seen developing, especially in the last 24 hours, are a blow to the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin had invested so much into Bashar al-Assad, right, for the last few years, financially, politically, militarily, of course, because

it was Russian air power that had helped keep Assad in power for the last nine years, and at the same time had helped Russia project an image of itself as a global power competing with the West. image of itself as a global power competing with the West. If you remember, Russia intervened in Syria in 2015. In 2014, President Obama made some comments about Russia, which really grated with the Kremlin. He said that Russia was a regional power and was acting out of weakness. The following year, I think the Kremlin resolved to show the world that it was a global power, got involved in the Syrian war, sent thousands of Russian troops to Syria

to shore up President Assad. But now he's gone, and the Middle East and the world has seen that Russia has been unable to save a key ally, partly because Moscow has been so focused on Russia's war on Ukraine, which has sapped so many resources and so much attention. So it's a difficult one, and certainly the concern for Russia now is what is going to happen to the two main Russian bases in Syria. We're talking about Khmelnyum, the air base, and Tartus, the naval base. And these are key, these have given Russia a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean.

It really doesn't want to lose those. But it's not clear at the moment whether it can reach some kind of agreement with the new Syrian leadership or whether it will have to evacuate them. So obviously it has practical consequences for the Kremlin. It's an interesting one because did they expect to be able to withdraw so much support from President Assad and not see his government fall? Yeah, I don't think the Russians saw this coming at all. They have been so focused on the war in Ukraine for the last three years that they didn't expect that such remarkable events could develop

in a matter of days. I mean, how big is the Russian contingent? We're talking about a few thousand Russian soldiers, of course Russian air power, which has been key to helping President Assad over the last few years. It's going to be really interesting to see how the state media presents this to the Russian people in the next few days. What kind of picture they paint. Steve Rosenberg with me from Moscow. Meanwhile in Washington, President Biden spoke about the fall of Bashar al-Assad just weeks before he hands over to Donald Trump. The US leader said it was a good thing that the Syrian dynasty had been forced out. At long last the Assad regime has fallen. This regime

brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice. It's a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country. It's also a moment of risk and uncertainty. As we all turn to the question of what comes next, the United States will work with our partners and the stakeholders

in Syria to help them seize an opportunity to manage the risks. It's been reported that US Central Command has carried out airstrikes on ISIS camps in Syria. The BBC's Tom Bateman is in Washington. This looks like a fairly forceful series of attacks on Islamic State militants in that part of Eastern Syria. And I think this is made clear in their statement, actually, basically as a message to them not to exploit a vacuum, to try and regroup and to form some sort of resurgence because remember, the US has around 900 troops in the eastern part of Syria. They're there with a mandate to counter

Islamic State, which doesn't have any significant sort of territorial control these days. It has parts of the desert and some other areas there, but it has a presence. And what they've said is they've bombed camps and other areas, as I say, to target IS in that particular part of Syria. Okay, back to Joe Biden's comments. I don't know whether it's fair to say he was trying to take some of the credit for bringing down the Assad regime, but there was a hint of that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think more than a hint. He was basically saying that it was the result of a successful US strategy to both back its crucial ally in the Middle East and

in Eastern Europe as in Israel and Ukraine in their relative after the first of all, of course the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then Hamas October 7th attacks on Israel that it was that support for those countries that have pushed back Russia and Iran and that is why you were seeing this sudden collapse of the Assad regime. So taking credit for their part in this but at the same time this has stunned Washington. They were not expecting their military support for Israel and Ukraine to end up basically in the collapse of half a century of Assad rule in Syria and to do so this quickly. While they are sort of joining in the embrace and the euphoria around the downfall of

Bashar al-Assad, they are more concerned frankly about what fills the gap. And so you have what is a designated foreign terrorist organization by the US, Hayat al-Sham, that has sort of led this charge on Damascus. they're very concerned about that. And you heard President Biden say, well, these groups are saying the right things now because we've heard words of moderation by HTS, but he said they will be judged by their actions, not their words. So this is being hastily penciled onto the end of the Biden legacy.

Meantime, the question we can ask about pretty much any story in the world right now, what changes next month when Donald Trump's in the White House? Yeah well Donald Trump, I mean he's put out a couple of lengthy posts basically what he says is Russia's right to get out, they've basically been humiliated, it's all Obama's fault anyway, what he calls a mess in Syria and fundamentally says it's Syria's mess not ours and we shouldn't have anything to do with it. So that's where he's at.

And he's sort of using Russia's defeat effectively in Syria as another reason he believes it should go to the negotiating table to end the war in Ukraine. Because remember he was elected, at least as far as his foreign policy was concerned, on a sort of America first isolationist foreign policy that he said he would end the war in Ukraine in a day. So he's sort of trying to turn this crisis towards that part of his policy and effectively put pressure actually both on Zelensky

and Putin to sort of come together. But what NATO members fear fundamentally is that that would involve what they see as a surrender for Ukraine. In Ukraine itself, President Vladimir Zelensky has said that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion. In the Ukrainian president's rare admission of casualty figures, he also said there'd been 370,000 cases of injuries needing treatment. Europe regional editor Danny Eberhard has more details. The last time President Zelensky gave a figure for how many of his country's

troops had been killed was in February. Then he put it at 31,000. The death toll he gave today was 12,000 higher, meaning that on average more than 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers have been dying every month since. These figures are hard to verify. Some observers have put them considerably higher. As far back as August last year, US officials were estimating close to 70,000 Ukrainian military deaths. Whatever the reality, the question remains, why did Mr Zelensky give this update now? He appears to have acted in part to clarify a post from Donald Trump on social media that said 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been, as the US President-elect put it, lost.

That could be a conflation of the figures for dead and for injuries cited by Ukraine's leader. Away from the numbers, it's worth noting too that President Zelensky spoke in his post about the prospects for eventual peace with Russia. This follows trilateral talks in Paris on Saturday with President Emmanuel Macron and Mr Trump, who says he wants a quick end to the war. Mr Zelensky stressed that any peace had to be backed by effective international guarantees for his country's security. He calls it peace through force, designed to ensure Russia could not relaunch its war at a later point. In specifying

casualties it could also be that Mr. Zelensky is trying to further remind his own people of the cost of the war in human lives. That impulse could be influenced by a recognition of the hard political realities of Mr Trump reassuming the US presidency in January. Mr Trump has again called for an immediate ceasefire and for talks to start. The Kremlin has emphasised that it's repeatedly said it was open to negotiations. But that's always been only on Russia's terms, which include Ukraine conceding large swathes of territory. The Kremlin has also dismissed Mr Trump's estimates for how many casualties Russia has endured,

which he said was 50% more than that of Ukraine. Donald Trump has threatened to take the US out of NATO if other allies don't pay their bills. He insisted NATO members had to treat America what he called fairly. Here's Jonathan Beale. The last time Donald Trump was president there were fears that he would leave the alliance. He was critical of European nations mainly who weren't spending enough on defense but we have seen him in the past few days with European leaders with President Macron in France with President Zelensky as well meeting him and there was a sense

that perhaps the relationship would be back on kill so I think there will be concerns about that kind of language they hope that that was a thing of the past. Mr. Trump also told NBC's Meet the Press he would have to deport all undocumented immigrants doubling down on his campaign pledges. Ghana's Vice President and Governing Party presidential candidate Mohamedouh Bahoumiye has conceded in Saturday's election and pledged his support for a smooth transition. He congratulated his rival, the former President John Mahama. The Electoral Commission has yet to announce official results and urge patience, saying tensions between rival supporters at

some counting centers had delayed proceedings. This report from Thomas Nardi. I'm here in Kamale, the Northern Regional Capital, which is the stronghold of the opposition. As soon as the incumbent vice president considered defeat, there were wild jubilations across the city. People of this city are very excited that the former president is back in power. And for most of them, it is a protest vote against the incumbent government. Today, it's like we are getting our independence again. I'm very excited we won this election because they said free education,

but the practicals we did in school, we paid for everything. Nana, he didn't do anything, so we are thanking God for winning this election. I can't express their joy because we really tried hard. This election was not NDC against MPP, it was Ghana against MPP and we are grateful to Ghanaians. And we work for it. Jewel in Ghanaians ending that report by Thomas Nardi. Back to our main news. After half a century of rule, the Assad regime has been toppled

at lightning speed. Millions of Syrians inside and outside of the country have been celebrating. But what future lies in store for a nation torn apart by years of bloodshed and massive displacement? Here's our security correspondent, Frank Gardner. Syria is at a crossroads, battered by years of civil war, its economy plundered by half a century of kleptocratic rule by the Assad dynasty. It now has an opportunity, perhaps only a fleeting one, to give its people the governance they deserve. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who heads HTS, the largest element of the victorious Sunni Muslim rebels, has vowed to give the country a government for all Syrians. But for the Shiites, the Christians, the Kurds and even for women this is still a worrying moment because the rebels are Islamists,

some with hardline intolerant views. There will be some in their ranks who now seek bloody revenge on their enemies, especially the Alawite clan, others who would deprive women of any part in public life as the Taliban have done in Afghanistan. HDS was originally linked to al-Qaeda and remains a prescribed terrorist group by many governments but the former chief of MI6, Sir John Sores, says it has made great efforts to distance itself from terrorist groups and that it would be, in his words, ridiculous if Britain refused

to deal with it. There is however the added risk that if the victorious rebels don't take firm control and quickly then Syria could easily revert back into chaos as happened in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner. And that's all from us for now. There will be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or on X we are

at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Jack Wilfen, the producer was Alison Davis, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thank you for listening and until next time, goodbye. Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.