Guerrilla History - Subverting Syria: Dark Histories of US Empire w/ Patrick Higgins

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

This episode is a release of our sister program The Adnan Husain Show. Adnan discusses a crucial history of US subversion of Syria's sovereignty even before the conclusion of WW2 starting with interference and covert operations by the OSS precursor to the CIA and then through the entire Cold War with Dr. Patrick Higgins, a Middle East historian, co-editor of Liberated Texts and member of the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective. His article "Gunning for Damascus: The US War on the Syrian Arab Republic" is mandatory reading and the state of the field on this dark history. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19436149.2023.2199487?scroll=top&needAccess=true#abstractart Support the show on Patreon if you can (and get early access to episodes)!  www.patreon.com/adnanhusain  Or make a one-time donation to the show and Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/adnanhusain Like, subscribe, share!  Also available in video on YouTube:  https://youtube.com/@adnanhusainshow X: @adnanahusain Substack: adnanahusain.substack.com  www.adnanhusain.org

Mism Allah, Rahman, and Raheem. Salam, hello, welcome to you all to the program. I'm Adnan Hussein, historian of the medieval Mediterranean and Islamaqate world. And I have a wonderful episode for you today that, hopefully we'll also go out on guerrilla history podcast. I'm a co-host of that podcast. Henry unfortunately can't be with us today, but we will have this on both the audio feeds

for the Adnan Hussein show and Gorilla History, as well as, of course, on video on the YouTube channel for the Adnan Hussein show. But before I introduce the topic and my guest today, I just wanted to say, of course, you know, if you listen to this channel, that I used to do a podcast called The Mudgellis, which was sponsored by the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project at Queen's University, where I teach, but in October of last year, 2024, when I was prevented from being able to record Francesca Albanese's lecture, we had invited her. I had her permission, the organizers' permissions to do so. the university administration prevented me from recording it. And at that point, I decided that it was important and necessary in order to preserve the kinds of conversations we're going to be having now with scholars, with activists, with historians about the very serious and important issues that we're just dealing with in the world without censorship or pressure being put on us that I had to start this channel. So I just would like you to like this video. subscribe to the channel, share it to your friends. We're going to be having analysis by a scholarly expert that you're not going to hear on a lot of, you know, mainstream platforms, even many platforms on the alternative left media.

So I really want you to get this out there. And of course, if you can support us for the production costs and other things, you're welcome to do so. Patreon.com slash Adnan Hussain. And, of course, guerrilla history, it's patreon.com slash guerrilla history. So you can support us on those things. But the main, an important thing is that this knowledge be available freely and to the public. So please do share it. Okay, well, why do we need to have this episode in particular?

Well, I mean, as those who have been following the genocide and changes geopolitically, taking place in West Asia as a consequence of and connected to Israel's genocidal assault upon Gaza, they would be very well aware that in December of 2024, the Syrian government was overthrown in very short order by a motley group of, led principally by an organization called HTS. What's actually? It's like Harkat Tahrir Sham. Yeah.

So, you know, HTSH, Hercat Tahrir Sham. And of course, we're going to talk a lot more about, you know, these groups and what happened as a consequence. But it put the kind of question of Syria back in the forefront of thinking about regional analysis. And there's been a lot of misinformation. It's been an issue that has divided many people in the pro-Palestine solidarity movement. And so I've had other episodes where we've discussed some of this. But now I think it's really important to have some serious scholarly analysis and attention

and particularly historical context and analysis. So for that reason, we've brought on a previous guest to guerrilla history, but the first time guest to the Adnan Hussein show component. And that is Patrick Higgins, who is. He received his PhD from University of Houston's Center for Arab Studies. He is a co-editor of a wonderful website called Liberated Texts. All of you should go and check that out and be a regular reader on that website. And he's also a member of a new organization that is doing very exciting work that we hope will have an impact. That is the anti-imperialist scholars collective. Patrick, it's so great to have you on. Thank you for joining. Thank you for having me,

Ina. I appreciate it. Well, it's good to talk with you particularly about this, because as I mentioned in sort of my introductory remarks here, I think historical analysis would be beneficial in trying to situate and contextualize what's been happening. And, of course, there have been so many events and things changing that it's hard to keep abreast of it. And, of course, we don't have the full picture for everything. But you in particular published a very important and interesting article that I want to recommend to listeners that we're going to discuss a little bit called Gunning for Damascus. And I guess the rest of the title was the U.S. War Against the Syrian Arab Republic. And it was published in 2023 in Middle East Critique, a wonderful journal that I also recommend to everyone.

It's free and available. It's open source. And in this, you dealt with a lot of the issues that had come out and the narratives that had come out in trying. to characterize or portray the so-called Syrian civil war and put it in a deeper kind of context and to suggest that there was a longer history of U.S. interference and intervention and hostility to, you know, the Syrian Arab Republic. And so I wondered if maybe you could take us through what you think are some of the most important outcomes and lessons of that. that history that might be useful when we start talking about more contemporary events in Syria. But, you know, where was you, you know, a lot of people think that it's, you know,

it's really a question of what happened in 2011, you know, and forward. What would you say about where we need to locate a longer practice of interference with and hostility towards Syria in U.S. policy. Yeah, thank you for that question. Thank you for bringing up that article, which I think was a stage of an ongoing work of progress of my interest in Syria. And I had entered that subject matter. Initially, you know, for my dissertation, I had set out to study Palestine and Palestinian liberation. And what I increasingly found was that an understanding the history of 20th century West Asia, understanding the history of national liberation movements there.

Palestine provides a significant entry point to that history because this is the main site of continuing direct conflict between imperialism and national liberation, say Arab national liberation within which I would situate Palestine. So that provides one entry point, but what I increasingly found was through these overlaps of Palestinian and Syrian history, that Syria, if you enter this history through Syria, it tells a very important story insofar as, well, I'd say the main difference between the situation of Palestine and Syria is that Syria was able to secure for periods. of time, a relatively, an emphasis, of course, on relatively sovereign base within West Asia,

whereas the Palestinian liberation movement has largely gone without a state. So I wanted to, you know, I thought it was important to look at the overlaps and then compare and contrast these histories as well. And what I found was, you know, of course, there's this saying that Syria is the beating heart of Arabism. And this is in part due to the geographic location of Syria and West Asia as the great connector of various liberation movements that had developed in the 20th century that were trying to connect their activities after this region through the Sykes-Bucco Agreement. This is in 1916, where in the French and the British colonialists severed these lands and erected borders that previously had not existed, and this presented a problem for the cause

of Arab national liberation having to achieve unification. So all of these efforts that proceeded in the 20th century, which I addressed somewhat in that article, had to proceed through Syria. Now, to go to the part of the question where the, where do we try? trace the beginnings of interference, well, I situate that the history of imperialist attempts to overturn Syrian sovereignty within the U.S. led world system just because the main power today is the United States imperialism. And so I start my history in that piece at 1945, which I think is something that yields new insights into what exactly has been going on here. And I draw out, I think, two things, the elements of revolution and then not dialectically linked on

the other side, the elements of counter-revolution. Now, dealing with the latter counter-revolutions, the United States had an interest, and this is something that I found when I started to go through old documents from the late 1940s that the first few leaders after in Syria after Syria declared independence from French colonialism in 1946 had been threatened in various ways by the US or the US talked about them in a way that essentially saying they have to be dealt with because they had established a, first of all, a republic. So this automatically contrast it from the monarchies that existed in the region. And through the republic, I think stronger sentiments of Arab nationalism had prevailed in a way that it didn't in Jordan.

And so when they created this relatively sovereign base, they were able to support early. early on, the Palestinian, let's say the Arab Liberation Army, which was a volunteer-run guerrilla force that was trying to stop the Zionist takeover in conquest of neighboring Palestine. So the United States had been, many of its officials had been saying behind the scenes, look, they're this meddling force operating out of Syria. Syria is allowing their territory to be used in this way. way and something needs to be done about this to bring this to a conclusion. And even subsequently, for instance, the CIA helped engineer this coup in 1949 against the

president that was hosting this Arab Liberation Army. And even after that point, subsequent coups that take place, you see the United States take an attitude that, well, we don't want to provide them, even though. we've sort of gotten what we wanted, to some extent, we don't really want to provide them with any kind of serious weaponry because we're concerned that they might use this weaponry against Israel. And so you already had, I'd say, very intense U.S. investment in Israel that goes before, it starts even before the foundation of the state of Israel formally in May of 1948, where a lot of the engineers of U.S. policy, figures like James McDonald, Bartley Crum,

you could look these people up. Some of them had direct involvement with the Zionist movement, that is raising awareness for the Zionist cause to establish the state of Israel. So that's on the side of counter-revolution, the origins of that, as far as far as it relates to the U.S. involvement. And then on the side of revolution, what I found interesting, important about Syria and continue to find important, is that the Ba'ath Party, when it comes to power, it becomes influential before it formally comes to power in 1963. The Ba'ath Party had led a revolution that was, that I would call a revolution as I understand the term. And I would contrast it very much from the Tecfiri-fronted takeover of Syria we're witnessing right now, for which I think the word counter-revolution is actually more apt.

And to put it in general terms, what I mean is some of the main policies that the Syrian Arab Republic had committed itself to prior to, December of 2024 when we saw this this overthrow had been the result not of just this or that leaders kind of they're they're very narrow referring here to Assad very narrow calculations but actually had been embedded within the state structure from successive waves of revolution so that begins first of all with the independence movement of 1946, but then subsequently of the Ba'ath Party's policies that begin in the 1960s, where their philosophy was they begin from the standpoint of nationalists. So if you look at some of the founding figures like Zach Yarsuzzi or Michel Aflach, people like this,

the founding philosophers of the Ba'ath Party, they had strong criticisms of some socialist movements that had existed of the Soviet Union, so on and so forth, because of things like dialectical materialism, they held a place for spirituality, and also because of their emphasis specifically on nationalism. But what you begin to see if you follow the process, process of the development of the Ba'ath party in the 1960s is, first of all, I'll just give your audience a brief timeline here. In 1958, the Ba'ath party had, well, they previously voted for an attempt to have a merger between Syria and Nasser's Egypt. And this is going to be the stepping stone to broader Arab unification, which is, I look at as a regional form of internationalism, okay, to bring together the resources of all these Arab states and centrally planted. That only lasts until about 1961, when there's a rightist coup in September of that year that is dissatisfied. You know, there are different factions dissatisfied with this union for different reasons.

Some of them because of socialist reform. So there's this bourgeois angst against it. And then some of them actually from the left where they think that Nasser was not granting enough autonomy for Syria to make its own developmental, to have input into its own developmental decisions. Okay. So this coup was one from the right. Fast forward to 1963. You have in February of that, year, a Ba'athist coup that takes place in Iraq. And after that, this, because it was the left wing of the party that took over, you have a month later, March 8th in 1963, a left faction of the Ba'ath party is able to gain ground in Syria with a coup there. Okay. Subsequently from there, In 1966 of February of that year, there is another coup that takes place from further to the left within the Ba'ath party. And if you follow the documents of the party at this time, you see a gradual, I want to say, approach towards an internationalist, and I would even argue, materialist position. So there's a couple of documents I think people could find in English that I would recommend people look at. First of all, there is the party Congress statement of 1963.

In 1964, you can find a provisional Syrian constitution. And then in 1965, there is another party Congress statement that's put out. And if you look at the language of these documents, you'll see that there's a powerful commitment to Palestine where they say this is actually going to be the most important liberation of Palestine is going to be the most important priority of the party. There's a commitment to socialism that is very explicit. And their argument is even though they come out of nationalism, that in order to actually fulfill the aims of national liberation, they must be socialist because their experience of capitalism was that all of the enterprises are owned by foreign companies. So there's no way to actually decide our own development unless the state nationalizes these main holdings. There is a commitment then to Article 30 of the 1963 or is 1964 constitution that people look up.

It's essentially what you would describe as land to the tiller. the kind of land reforms you would see in places like China, Korea, and Vietnam. And there's talk about making links with Africa and pan-Africanist movement and doing so through Islam to say that we have this connection to these countries, strong, robust criticisms of apartheid South Africa, which they compare to Israel. And so my argument is even after subsequent waves of, we could call it, you know, setbacks and so on and so forth, but I want to emphasize some of the way that this is, this history is viewed. For instance, when Assad in 1970, in November of that year, declares this emergency session where he carries out a coup against the left of the party that had been in command since 1966. Some of this is, okay, another guy comes in and he sort of pulls back these revolutionary impulses of the Syrian project. I argue that that is somewhat of a simplification for a couple reasons, that the structural reasons for those rollbacks that take place was really impelled by the 1967 war. And that it was seen like the left wing of the party was discredited because they had prioritized being becoming part of the Palestinian people's war in places like Jordan.

And it was also because of that there was a turn in strategy. So it's not like these commitments all of a sudden evaporated from the Syrian project. there was this different strategy which we may disagree with in many ways I do find things to disagree with, but it's not like these commitments to Palestine all of a sudden evaporated. They pursued different paths for it. And so these are some of the main points that I was trying to make in that article. Yeah, okay, that's very helpful to have that survey because I think what you've emphasized in this account is that an independent sovereigns, Syria was seen as a problem for U.S. imperial designs and priorities in the region because,

one, it was explicitly opposing the Zionist project and presented a potential military or security threat to the Zionist state of Israel. And two, because the independent sovereign Syria had through the particular social and political orientations of the forces that had secured its sovereignty against French colonialism in the mandate period and in the post-war period remained committed despite various changes that might take place with different regimes coming in, maintained a commitment to a certain. level, not only that first goal, but the second goal of, you know, development, independent development on behalf of the people, you know, of the region. And, you know, with some various

progressive commitments, those may have varied to some extent here and there. But by and large, this remains a pretty stable kind of orientation of the Syrian state. So that's kind of the background that, you know, I think the rest of the article, you go into some great detail, in fact, actually about what some of the policies of the U.S. were and how they did interfere at various times through covert and more overt, you know, methods. But basically, it was seen as opposition. that Syria was a problem for the U.S. sort of program for the region, particularly during the Cold War, and particularly because Syria became increasingly aligned with Second World as something you didn't

necessarily go into, but obviously they were quite willing to receive technical support and investment from, you know, the Soviet Union and other allies within, you know, the kind of communist block and so on. that put them very much in what was sometimes called the Arab Cold War in opposition to other regimes that had been established in the post-colonial period that were more Western-oriented and friendly, principally these monarchies. And so you had mentioned that Syria was a republic, that's something that distinguished it like, you know, the Ba'ath Revolution in Iraq, you know, against Hashemite, you know, kingdom, like, you know, the Free Officers Revolution, Egypt, you know, against, you know, the royalist, you know, administration that had been sponsored by the British. And so there is a kind of. of way in which Syria is kind of structurally outside of the U.S. orbit, and that's a problem that U.S. policy addresses itself too. So that's extremely helpful. What I'm wondering is if we come to sort of the more kind of contemporary period and look at the context for what's happening in the region, you know, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, how would you characterize, you know, what the key kinds of developments are? Of course, we're skipping over a lot. There's been, you know,

the initiation of the global war on terror. I mean, I think you may want to, you know, mention something about that because that's, of course, part of the important background for which groups end up being sponsored, you know, and so forth, these jihadi, Takfiri groups, which is often seen as, you know, that the global war on terror, you know, was somehow out of alignment with, with that process because it was targeting supposedly, you know, these sorts of groups and which also

tended to make people believe and imagine that these were, couldn't be, you know, supported by the United States, right? A lot of people thought, well, these are, you know, kind of forces that are not aligned with the United States. So maybe it is worth sort of talking a little bit about Syria's position in, you know, the kind of global war on terror in the 2000s. But I guess the main, you know, the main point is, is that how do you think the so-called Arab Spring and the readjustments and alignments that take place across the region there need to be analyzed in order to put into context, you know, what happens and what takes place in Syria, maybe less about what takes place.

but more about how it's received and propagandized, you know, in the kind of Western media globally. I think, so there's this period of time, let's say, between the 1970s and the 1990s, wherein the resistance movement, the nature and character of it throughout West Asia is to Zionism and to, which is part of U.S. control of the region, it starts to change, it's in flux, that is the position of the Soviet Union as it begins to weaken globally as well as regionally, the explicit character of that left-wing revolution is sometimes challenged and within anti-imperialist circles. So what I find important about Syria in that general picture, so let's just put for example, Syria develops a conflict with its next door neighbor, Iraq, even though they both have Ba'athist governments for reasons that I won't get into right now, they develop very severe conflict, these two factions of the party. Syria, however, because of these structural commitments, let's say to the Palestinian cause within its state structure, and just to say what I mean by that, there's a relationship between the socialist development in Syria and this commitment to the Palestinian cause. These things aren't two separate categories. The path of development informs this commitment. And what I mean by that is,

say when you have agricultural collectives in the countryside, as well as these labor unions that existed within the state in Syria, and then you also have something, a structure called the Progressive National Front, which included, you know, Communist Party, so on and so forth. Now, the criticism about this kind of governing structure of Assad is that, well, he was bringing in the left, the wind. so as to sort of co-op them. And there's an element of truth to that, but at the same time, that means that there's still a left-wing present within the state, even if it might not be as far left if some of these parties were in command, right? So if you have these sort of structures that exist in the state, that allows for a certain kind of input from the population that I don't think is very, has many analogues, say,

in U.S. capitalism. So the existence of an agricultural cooperative that meets regularly with representatives from the Ba'ath Party, they can go and talk about what's on their mind. And there is the existence of a kind of social pact that would exist within those meetings, even though I think those, as I talk about in that article, the social pact starts to break down in the 1990s. So there I draw a link between the sentiment of the general population on Palestine and why the government maintains this position. So to go back to what I was saying regionally about the development in the changes

of the resistance movement regionally, is that even when these changes start to take place, the Syrian state participates in new ways for maintaining the existence of a resistance network to Zionism. So in 1979, the Syrian Arab Republic makes a decision that is somewhat controversial at the time because it's foregoing Arabist orthodoxy to start to develop friendly relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. They're basically saying, okay, there's this common interest in anti-Zionism will develop these relations. And so what this means is after 1991,

where Syria ends up being impacted in devastating ways by the overthrow and dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Syrian state still is able to find new ways to support various networks of resistance. So this gives rise to what is known today as the axis of resistance. And it combines in some ways the material and also there's training that goes on and so on and so forth to support anti-Zionist militia in places like southern Lebanon and places like Palestine. and it bridges actually the old secular nationalist projects of resistance with the new Islamic resistance that you would find in those places. And so what this actually does is it keeps a anti-Zionist resistance structure alive at a time where even because of the fall of the overthrow of the Soviet Union, even the Palestinian national movement is making significant. concessions through things like Oslo in 1993. So it keeps it alive.

And I think that was very important. And it's signaled to the United States that we need to make new, in order to maintain the grip on the region, we need to make new investments in destroying this new structure that's kind of rising out of the ashes of the old Soviet Union or the Soviet Union's umbrella within West Asia. So these structures were on the target list of the United States government from the get-go after September of 2001, that sometimes when U.S. officials say what their intention is, you just should, they're actually, sometimes they're engaged in deception, but

sometimes they make it clear what they intend to do. And I would, you know, compare that right now when Trump goes out and says, I intend to ethnically cleanse or we intend to get rid of the population of Gaza. And then some people will months later figure out what they're trying to do in Gaza. Well, this guy actually said it out loud, right? So similarly, after September of 2001, The United States, including the Bush administration when he was espousing rhetoric about a so-called access of evil, was talking openly about the need to target Syria as part of the list of states that they were going after. And we can see now that the Arab nationalist republics that took an anti-Zionist policy have all been targeted. As far as the republics, there's this exceptional case of Egypt, but if you leave that aside,

Yemen was a Marxist government for a long time, and that was targeted in various ways. We see Libya in 2011, you know, in Iraq before that in 2003, and then eventually comes back around to Syria. So they said this was their intention, and this is what we're actually seeing play out. It's not a coincidence that these are the states and societies that are on fire. And what I often say about this is that in any given society, you are going to find people discontent with the prevailing system, with the prevailing government and so on and so forth. And Syria had its own particular movement that from the beginning of the establishment of Ba'ath Party power and Syria had been vehemently opposed to it.

and would uh elements of which would overthrow that government if they could but the the key point there is if they could right which means that you need money you need uh weapons and other forms in organization in general in order to actualize um let's say an attempt to carry out an armed overthrow of a government and so after 2011 you start to see the flow of those arms through U.S. covert programs. And I want to emphasize about that. Some people have argued against my position making a couple of points. They'll say, well, it's a simplification and not a very sophisticated view of U.S. imperialism

to just say that, oh, the CIA took out the Syrian government. To which I would respond with a couple of things. First of all, the CIA, we know it's successfully taken out governments in the past. So it's not like it's incapable of this. But in the case of Syria, it's a lot more than that. They contributed what we know beyond the black budgets. This was reported in the New York Times that there was, and this is some years ago, a quote-to-quote billion-dollar covert program, Operation Timber Sycamore,

dedicated to supporting these, as they were vaguely called in the press, these rebel militia against the Syrian Arab Republic. So you have the CIA involved with probably its heaviest investment in a covert, in a sustained covert campaign since Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Operation Cyclone. Okay. So it's not a minor investment that the CIA was making. On top of that, there were other U.S. agencies that eventually get involved in the dismemberment of the Syrian state. There was a state department program. There was the Pentagon had its own program. So all of these, and then even private contractors after the U.S. direct occupation of Syria starts to take place in 2017, there are contractors that start to get involved. But then even on top of that, you have to add the personnel and material.

Tireel operating out of Turkey, out of Jordan to the south, and also a number of the monarchies in the Gulf, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. In some ways, they even had their own competition going to support their various rebel groups that they particularly endorsed in the war. So all you have to think in terms of that, all of that combined for a sustained campaign from 2011 to 2024 led to a war of draining, essentially, against the Syrian state. And then, you know, another thing that criticism I received, you know, when I started to look into this is, well, there are a lot of these internal social problems that existed within Syria, within how the Syrian Arab Republic was, was governing the country.

And so, you know, this is, I think it's down to the question of agency, of the people who were involved or flocking towards these militia groups, some of which I acknowledge, yes, we're Syrian. Not all of them, but some. And so the argument is that by emphasizing this covert program, I am saying that those social dynamics, internal to Syria are epiphenominal. And I would argue in return, I actually take the internal dynamics and the problems and failures of the Syrian government during these years very seriously. But here's the key point. The intelligence agencies were the organizing force for these elements that form the rebel groups to develop some kind of cohesion. That is, if not for, the umbrella that they provided in all these various forms, which extends even to propaganda.

I mean, the existence of this sectarian ideology was not just something that just arose, quote, unquote, organically. Sectarianism was actually a commodity sold on a capitalist market. What I mean is, after 1991, when Syria has to start bringing in outside investors to the country, you know, one of the major markets of a country is going to be media, right? What kind of media stations are being broadcast somewhere, right? That's an active outside investment, and it's not something that didn't exist prior to 1991. So when people start to watch, you know, these Salafi channels beaming into the country from Egypt

or from the Gulf and these private companies, that is something that's a result, again, of a capitalist market. So that's I try to take the discussion back to these things. It's like, well, these forces just don't, you know, people use organic versus inorganic and this kind of debate. Well, everything's structured to some extent by this, the economic system in which it's embedded. Now, to return to another element of your question, I think that part of what you're saying is people think, well, the United States was claimed that it was declaring this. war against al-Qaeda or other organizations similar to that, why, how could it be that was also providing weapons to these forces? Well, it's not the first time in history that they did that. You know, I remember some people in the 2010s were arguing, yes, that happened in Afghanistan through Operation Cyclone, but the United States learned its lesson from blowback. And I think that that actually the United States sees this as a very, this, that is the sectarian current

as a very useful destabilization force. And when we're seeing that and play out in some ways, because people will bring up instances of conflict or violence with the United States, carries out an attack on ISIS location or something else. Well, The United States has used these groups successfully to shatter the Syrian state, which is directly connected to the fabric of Syrian society, as I was describing. And it also, you know, as we see continued sectarian attacks, makes it very easy for the country to exist as Israel's plaything.

You know, every time that one of these Tecfiri groups goes to attack you know, Alois in Latakia or goes to Sweda for to attack the Druze, this is another segments of the population that cannot therefore be mobilized in a

common front against Israel. So it makes it very easy for Israel to exercise de facto sovereignty over Syrian land. And every time there's another land grabbed by Israel, every 100 kilometers that is taken away from Syria, or even just one

kilometer, that is now land that weakens the position vis-a-vis Israel of Syria, vis-a-vis the future, because that's land that could have been used for, I don't know, directing water resources in the way that they see fit for their own development, or land that they could have used for training cadres against Israel, so on and so forth. Land is very operative. So I would say that the United States, to its actual overall plan for the region, does not see these groups as a serious threat because once they begin to govern, because of this sectarian streak, it's almost as if they're constitutionally incapable of uniting the resources and peoples of this society against U.S. power. Yeah, I think that's, I mean,

and we are anticipating some things that are very relevant to talk about in the more content. temporary and recent context, but those are, it seems to me that there is a couple of things going on here that I'm so glad you discussed. One, of course, is the 90s and 2000s, two things, one, you know, the pressure that the Syrian state was under as a result of no longer having certain kinds of support. from the Soviet Union, and as a result, it had to seek new solutions for trying to maintain some sense of sovereignty and economic health. But it is, you know, also it has been under sanctions of various kinds throughout that period. And then, of course, those were only increased

in, you know, more recent times, which have suffocated the possibilities for, you know, indigenous Syrian economic development, right? So that's been completely hampered. And all because it didn't do several things. One, it didn't normalize with, you know, with Israel. It didn't end its support for Palestinian resistance factions that you talked about were able, were kept alive in some sense during the Oslo period by being able to organize and exist and receive some material support and organizational capacity in Syria, you know, and to bridge between, you know, the older tradition of these resistance movements and groups and organizations into, you know, forging connections with, you know, what emerged with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and so on. So that was like one thing that since it didn't

do that, it was going to be, continue to be isolated under pressure and have sanctions against them, but also because they maintained some kind of, you know, closer diplomatic relationship with Iran and therefore were providing some kind of connection between Iran and southern Lebanese resistance forces, particularly Hezbollah. So these things, you know, kind of made it a target, kept it under this kind of pressure. And there was this kind of like, you know, weakening, as you're pointing out of the, you know, its position in the global economy, you know, ended up weakening some of those social structures that had kept those relationships that you were saying between popular social forces and the government, right? So that was certainly going to weaken

and induce, along with the media and propaganda, liberalizing the media and propaganda in the region and beaming in all of this, you know, kind of ideology that sectarianize. Now, that's the other component that I think is very important that you mentioned, which is that the logics of sectarianism fit very well in the kind of neoliberal capitalist kind of destroying of structures of solidarity and support. And so it ends up, you know, weakening what you might say, the kind of collective project and makes it easier to manipulate. And so that has manifested itself, of course, in the situation where sectarian division in Syria as a result of the Takfiri, jihadi, kind of extreme Sunni, you know, orientation

of the government and the targeting of Druze, Alois, Christians, and, you know, any any group that falls outside of this is actually serves kind of the imperial interests in the region, you know, partly in the way that it kind of justifies intervention. Oh, my God, there's a, you know, there's a, there's a extremist, persecutory, barbaric government happens to be doing a lot of things that we supported it to do in the initial phases, but it also justifies, you know, you know, Israel claiming like, well, look, we've got these terrorists right on our border. And so we have to find proxies. We have to bombard them.

We can't, you know, it's impossible to imagine a Syria under HTS that would have a major military capability or air defense capability. And so they took the opportunity to, you know, destroy those capacities. in December 2004 with all of the bombing. So I think you're absolutely right that there is a kind of vicious circle, you know, that either Syria is under a government that's pro-Western and been controlled and subordinated to the Zio-American Project or it's chaotic and incapable, really, of governing and provides all the justification that's needed for dismembering it, for fragmenting it or for intervening against it and so on.

So these are the kind of, like these aren't either or choices. They both help serve the imperial project in the region. I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that. But just something I would, I think you're absolutely right. And I think one thing that I would add is it's actually remarkable to me. I don't think, if you're right, that it serves as a pretext, right? To say, we're protecting the Druze, this is what Israel is claims before it, you know, carries out this or that strike or attempts this or that land grab. But I think what's remarkable about it is how little effort Israel even really is putting into selling it.

I mean, I don't know if too many people really believe that. In fact, the only quarters where I come across this idea is legitimate are these sectarian. and quarters are claiming the Druze are all pawns of Israel and Zionism. Historically, by the way, that's not true. Yes, there are brus in Israel who serve in the IDF and so on and so forth. But if you look at the history of the occupied Golan, you know, in 1981, when the Israeli Knesset made a decision there to annex this territory, by and large, since then, they haven't been able to really bring a majority of Druze and commit to. to Israeli citizenship, even though the options there.

And actually, there are stories of, because there were Drew's families that were separated in that area. There's stories of Syrian Druze going to the, let's see, the high points, the summits in the area that try to yell out to their relatives to be heard. So the occupation there is not seen favorably by Drew's population.

So the only people I see really selling the story that Israel's really there to protect the Druze population, are those quarters who are trying to make it seem as if the Druze are Israeli puppets, which I think is an unbelievable claim given the history of the sectarian militia's collaboration with the intelligence, these various intelligence agencies over the past decade and plus. One thing I would add to it is the, you know, Ahmed al-Shara, who's the head of HTS, he's put himself in a position to be in a dependent position here. Let's say we don't want to speculate on what's going on in his head, okay? And he, regardless of whatever he's thinking, that if he decides right now to pursue some different path, which is not, you know, again, he comes from,

HTS. He comes from this ideological world. He's not somebody who understands or who believes in rather national liberation as I was describing in the 20th century. But leaving that aside, his options are limited by this dependent position into which he's put himself. And you might argue, well, okay, after any revolution, because that's using that term as a device here, after any overthrow of a government, let's say, there's going to be a period of instability. But the question is, what is the ideology of the forces that have gained power

in the state? That is, you know, are they comparable to say the Bolsheviks in 1917 who saw a need to create a union of republics who have the rights given in the Constitution this right to self-determination, which was actually a means to try to bring these smaller nations into an overall fabric to create something bigger, which was what the Soviet Union is, how it gets out of this perilous situation. It found itself in the 1910s and 1920s. No, you have an ideology in power that is actually more comparable to the whites in 1917 and afterwards. The whites being, you know, pogromists and so on. these are programs that they're carrying out and you know i've watched a good amount of footage

unfortunately i mean it's very distressing and um but i feel as a researcher it's somewhat necessary to get an idea of what we're dealing with so um it's depressing it's dejecting to see this but um you know a lot of the the groups uh that are being operationalized uh by the state through the state in Soweda are, you'll see in a lot of the footage, some of them will throw on the bandana or wear the patch of ISIS. So we're thinking to ourselves, where did these, this belief system that was now armed throughout the 2010s, where did it go? Well, it regathered and reorganized in Idlib, then launched that Blitz Creek attack in December of 2024. And now the many of the people who were part of those movements, including, you know, if you remember the group that beheaded a Palestinian child some years ago that had received support from the State Department, you know, they were part of the...

Nuditin Zanghi Brigade, yes. That's right. They were part of this coalition that HTS was bringing back together in Idlib. So these people didn't go away. And now that they actually have the resources of what's left of the Syrian state backing them. Yes, I mean, I think that touches upon a number of key points, I think, as well. I mean, we saw, for example, from the outset that Abu Mohammed al-Jolani now rebranded Ahmad al-Shara, who knows what has. his real name is, but, you know, he made these statements on officials in the government, which, of course, the interim government that's completely unelected but has now been kind of

recognized in some sense more broadly by other countries, both in the region and, of course, in the West, you know, have made statements about how they didn't intend, you know, to be in direct confrontation with Israel during this period, even though Israeli forces expanded their occupation of territory in the Golan, you know, Golan Heights and beyond and even declared that all the sort of territory south of Damascus's suburbs was a demilitarized zone. despite the bombing and attacks of all the kind of infrastructure and particularly military infrastructure and resources, including the, you know, naval, you know, facilities in Latakia, Latakia, and so on. Despite all of that, they said, well, we don't have a problem, you know, with Israel. We can come to some agreement with them. We share an enemy, i.e., this trumps all of the, you know, know, other kind of questions or problems in Iran, essentially, is what they were arguing. So there was a purely sectarianized sort of policy here that put Syria in a completely

subordinate position to Israeli military and security dictates and that they would find their place within it. And so they're clearly totally subordinate to that. And, you know, this has, of course, been, you know, I think a crucial point. And of course, many apologists for the so-called revolution have said, well, of course, Earth's early stages, they can't be, you know, kind of expected to take on like this incredibly powerful military after just taking over the country. But what we've seen is that that kind of policy has been continuing to its logical conclusions, which is trying to bargain away everything that had prevented Syria from having normal relations with the rest of the world because of U.S. sanctions to bargain away everything that had prevented

that, which was that you have to give up, you know, any connection with Iran and no support for Hezbollah. The first thing that it seems that this government managed to accomplish, apart from, you know, harassing, attacking, massacring, killing, and burning, you know, areas, you know, where there were Alois or Christians, et cetera, was that they liquidated all of the Palestinian resistance organizations. So the first thing, and that was one of the other things that they were supposed to, you know, the Syrian state was always being asked to give up their support for and material support for Palestinian resistance factions.

So, you know, geopolitically, it's sort of clear, you know, what it's orientation. And I think like you, I don't think that any of the propagandas, actually working, you know, quite so, so well. But there are some other kind of components that I wanted to talk about in this context. You know, one is the position of these other regional kind of actors and sponsors as well and what you make of this. Because Syria, of course, as a consequence of that decade of devastation and sanctions and everything has been under U.S. in parts of the country, there has been kind of the Syrian Democratic forces, as they've been called, that are operating in the Dezor sort of area and are based on, you know, YPG or various

Kurdish militias and groups. And so there's, you know, and these have their different sponsors. And you already alluded to that many of the different armed factions that were, you know, combat, the Syrian army and fighting to overthrow the government were supported by different sort of Gulf state monarchies and so on. I'm wondering, you know, how you see this situation, obviously the key patrons were, you know, the state, you know, Turkey as like direct sort of patrons of the Idlib, you know, governorate and the groups there. But now there's like a lot of talk about how this has brought like, you know, Turkey and Israel into, you know, potential conflict. There's talk about, you know, the March agreement that was made, you know, to enroll the Syrian Democratic forces into the Syrian, new Syrian kind of army and various other, you know, kinds of concessions in this kind of agreement.

I'm wondering how you see, you know, what's been happening in Syria and the prospects for maintaining any kind of integrated Syrian sovereignty. I'll note like just recently there's been news reports about a proposed David corridor to link, you know, Swayda and the sort of southern areas around the Golan to those exactly those areas near Dadas or where the, you know, Syrian Democratic forces. forces, you know, have had kind of some kind of autonomy and so on. And Turkey, of course, has objected strenuously to this, claiming that, you know, this is terrible for serious sovereignty. I mean, you know, the ironies here are just unbelievable. But I'm wondering, you know, you know, how would you, how would you characterize the last several months, you know, since the 24, December 2024 overthrow of the previous government, from this kind of regional perspective. What's changed as a result of this in terms of regional alignments and their

interventions in Syrian politics? Well, you putting a fine point on the issue of Turkey is important because, in my own writings and approach. I've emphasized the United States and Israel the most. But if you look at it from the perspective of the Ba'ath Party historically, for instance, they viewed Turkey as one of the major threats to Syrian sovereignty and Syrian unity from the beginning. Because in 1939, you know, Turkey had taken over Scandaroon in the north of the country. And it was in that territory that one of the founders of the Ba'ath Party mentioned them earlier, Arsouzi, that he was a Ba'ath Party organizer in that territory. And this informed his sense of Arab nationalist consciousness.

Now, many of these groups, you know, the SDF, you mentioned, east of the country, Are ideologically, they're many ways opposed to the program of the various Tecfiri groups. But they do find themselves in a similar kind of structural issue. And so far as a lot of their umbrella protection after 2015, it depended on the United States, which had come to, you know, first launched a major bombing campaign, and then sent its Marines into the country to take over the oil fields in the areas that you mentioned. And this was something that was done strategically because they knew if they took over these

oil fields, they would be able to blackmail the Syrian government and say, well, you're not going to get back the source of internal revenue until you sever your ties with the various Palestinian resistant groups as well as Hezbollah. So what we are witnessing, I think, in some sense, is a, say, carve-up, more or less, that you have these three separate areas. And I don't think, I mean, I try to not, you know, I try to be careful or measured with predictions and so on, so forth. But the United States military presence there is in the east where the SDF is based, is there to protect the interests of American companies that are now going to enter Syria.

And there are various Turkish companies that are entering Syria through the north. And then I'm sure, you know, Israel, of course, is working towards some sort of normalization where. they get direct investment as well in opening up companies. So I think that is what I think people should pay attention to is because when, even though Syria had been from 1991 through 2025, its territorial sovereignty had been significantly compromised. And it's socialism So prior that existed prior to 1991, have been significantly compromised. There were still, you know, these public services, public programs that existed. Now, what was left of that is essentially been shattered and is going to be purchased,

auctioned off to companies from those three countries. So if you want to understand the policy, look, follow those companies. And even earlier, I was looking at some of the American companies that now, because they're in the country's energy-rich, oil-rich, oil and gas-rich areas of Syria are going to be tasked with managing the energy plan for Syria. And actually, these companies exist right outside my door. I mean, one of them is Baker Hughes, which is based out of Houston, Texas. The other is Hunt Energy, which is based in Dallas, Texas. So, and this is something that is, you know, I've direct experience with because the energy companies in tech is an unregulated market, as it will be over in Syria.

And since there's no price caps from the state, which by the way, was a major part of the Syrian constitution. I was citing earlier is that, you know, price fixing was an important part of nationalization in that constitution. That does not exist with Texas energy companies is that, you know, it all of a sudden gets a few degrees hot, hotter outside, and there's no limit to what your bill's going to look like. So these are now the companies that are going to be managing Syria's energy policy. It's not coming internally from Syria itself. I saw my friend and comrade Louis Alde had sent me something earlier about the Turkish and Qatari companies that are involved. And actually, it looks like they're shell companies. I mean, this is something I just

started looking into. But as far as the construction works going on around the country, as well as in the airport, for example, shell companies without history, which is, I'm familiar with that just living in Texas, how that works. When you're in a wild west of the capitalist market, all of a sudden, I mean, you should see during COVID some of these shell companies that had been started up that they started sending to schools to do testing. And, you know, so I remember at one school, they had gathered people's like spit sample to see who had COVID. And then because they were throwing it in garbage bags. They drove off. And the mucus from all the samples had gotten mixed together. So it was all for not. So I just give that, I know it's a little off track,

but I give that example to give a vivid idea of what a shell company actually looks like and the kind of services that you can expect. So yes, there is a carve up in the companies from these three countries, United States, which is in the East, Israel, which is, which is occupying the south and Turkey, which is occupying the north, are going to be competing for different pieces of the Syrian state that will be picked apart into smaller and smaller segments of a market for more profit. So more of these companies can pick up, you know, some aspect of a major service. Yeah, so that's like the political economic foundations for,

at a political and cultural level fragmentation of the country around sort of regional, you know, differences and distinctions, a Kurdish northeast, you know, a kind of northwestern coastal, you know, al-Awi zone, you know, Druze and Arab tribes, you know, in the south. And so, you know, that will just mirror what you're talking about are these kind of arenas for, exploitation in the reconstruction. And so I think what we've talked about here is the way in which the imperial design in the region privileges, military spending, pitting, you know,

kind of making security, this kind of key point. And then having war, destruction, chaos, and then profiting from, you know, as you say, the carve up and the reconstruction as much as the buildup and the cycle of kind of of chaos and devastation is in fact actually a kind of pattern of its de-development and then so-called redevelopment, you know, of the region with its political economic consequences for reshaping, you know, for reshaping the region. So I really want to thank you very much for all of this analysis

and encourage you in your ongoing kind of research and investigation of this kind of process of the corporate exploitation and the economic kind of future of Syria and how this coordinates with what we've been talking about here in this long, you know, longer historical context and framework of the situation of Syria. Where can people keep track of your work or, you know, stay in touch with you on social media or anything you want to share and promote in addition, of course, that we will all be looking out for more studies on, on the Syrian situation, what would you like to promote to people? In addition to the article that you recommended Gunning for Damascus,

on Syria in particular, the most recent things that I put out, recommend people go to Ed Magazine to see a Q&A that I did with Louis All Day about Syria, where I talk about some of these issues in detail. And also on the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective website, I have a new article there that is not solely about Syria, but places Syria into recent regional context since October 7, 2023. That article is called Acts of Return, How the Aloxa Flood shattered the U.S. fantasy of full-spectrum dominance. So acts of return, anti-imperialist scholars collective. And so you could read some more analysis that, again, this is an ongoing process.

And one last comment I'll just make about the Syrian issue, that this is an unresolved remnant still. It's not an issue where for many, not just for Syria itself, but for the Palestine Solidarity Movement in the United States, for global forces of the left. It's not like Assad's gone and all of a sudden the issue was resolved. We've entered a new phase. And in this phase, the issue of anti-sectarianism is going to be the development of anti-sectarian organized force is going to be essential in Syria because what happens in Syria to a significant degree historically has dictated what is possible in Palestine. And what we're seeing now is almost, if we understand that there's a program of extermination in Gaza against a population of the global proletariat that has been deemed, quote unquote, surplus to the global economy, what we're seeing in Syria is some segments of, let's see, the lower classes, even though they're largely lump in, exterminating other segments in the coast of the Takia.

in Soweda. And that is something that my comrade Obi Denar was pointing out when I was talking to him earlier is the depressing prospect of witnessing a new kind of enactment, a new manifestation of extermination of the proletariat as a source of profit. And this is why I think Syria remains of paramount significance. Thank you so much for mentioning that. And I think it's You know, I fully endorse the point that there has to be active resistance to the sectarianization of politics in the region and for Syria, Syria's to have a future for its people. That is one that they would look forward to rather than the sort of chaotic healthscape of sectarian division and chaos that is being sponsored for, as you point out, the advancing exploitation. eradication of the surplus populations. And this is the whole thing, is that what we've seen in Gaza is the making of the Palestinian. It's a demonstration sort of effect. We've heard, even Gustavo Petro,

you know, president of Colombia at the Hague Convention, make a very important speech where he declared, you know, that what we're seeing in Gaza is what the ultra-rich have planned, you know, for those who want to resist on behalf of humanity, is that those populations will be liquidated. And if we except what's happening in Palestine, which is this ethno-states kind of narrow definition of who has political rights, who's a citizen, even who's human, then this kind of, this logic is going to reproduce itself and is reproducing itself throughout the region. So I thank you so much for identifying that as one of the key stakes that are involved in the Syria situation. Because as we know, a lot of people in the pro-Palestine movement who would recognize that

analysis when we talk about Zionism and its genocidal attack on Palestinians, nonetheless, can sometimes get confused about what's really at stake and what the alignment of forces are when it comes to other regional theaters because they've accepted some of the logic of, you know, sectarianization. And so that's, I think, you know, very important. And I thank you, again, so much for the work that you're doing. And we will link to the Ebb magazine article, also something that you should be subscribing to and supporting people, a wonderful kind of resource, and also to your recent and wonderful piece in the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective website. We will put links to those in the description so that people can keep reading and stay connected with the

important analysis that you're offering. So again, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you so much at that time. And for listeners and watchers of the video you know we'll be back with many more kinds of discussions like this for political and public education so stay tuned like subscribe and share subscribe to the channel share