It Could Happen Here - What Next for Syria?

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

James and Robert discuss the downfall of the Assad regime, the future for Syria, and what we can all learn from Syria. Sources: Defendrojava.org https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tJgepOyOt9cjXRjLE4kHdOhoCesJx-l_S9hJ2foQxnI/edit?tab=t.0 https://youtu.be/kuj8zPLY_4E?si=D2SVT1KBQzXwrxEUSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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including shockingly, in the last week, something we did not expect two weeks ago, the fall of the Assad regime. Which our official stance as a network is that, fuck him, this is pretty good, but a lot of people feel differently. And to talk with me about that, another guy who's always angry about Syria, and also has been to Syria, James. And you know, just as a note, I think a lot of the people podcasting about this right now are talking about a place they've never been, although James and

I have not been to Idlib. So, you know, we're going to be fairly focused on our experiences in the Kurdish regions, but at least we're not just bullshitting about a place that we've read about on the internet. Yeah. Claiming a deep on the ground understanding of a place from Reddit. Yes. That is not us.

Yeah. We, we, uh, I briefly looked at regime held Syria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Over from an, uh, commishal where there is, is kind of the governance capital of Rojava, but is also a big chunk of it was held by the Assad regime. So you just periodically like see that fucker's face on the wall as you were crossing the street. It's a, it's good times.

But my, uh, my fixer would come around like noon for whatever reason, when I was in Rojava and like, I don't, I hate to sitting in the hotel, so I'd go out for walks around the market. Yeah. Not advised by the old safety people, but. No, one of the sketchier cities I've been in. Yeah. Because of, because of the presence of regime troops. Yes

Yes, everything else was lovely. Yeah, people are lovely I'd be walking down the street and like I'd be looking around see is anything interesting to go and see and then That you can literally take one wrong turn down the street and walk into to regime Syria as you covered in in the women's war Like I was walking down one street. This man walked up to me my Kurdish is not very good I tried to say hello told him my name and stuff. And then he starts getting more agitated and he just starts repeating a higher and higher volume, Assad bad man. Yeah, Assad bad man, Assad bad man, stay away bro, stay away. He's like, you're going to fucking die.

Way to be a fucking Haval. Yeah, yeah. Gaelic spas to that guy. Yeah, bas, Gaelic spas to that guy. Yeah, Bashi Bashi. Yeah, it was a very strange situation. It is no longer a strange situation because in the last week, the Assad regime has crumbled. Statues of him have been torn down all over the country, which we love to see. That's another of our stances of the network is fuck a statue. Yes, yeah, fuck most statues.

Most statues. There are probably some cool ones. Just the lady hitting the Nazi with a handbag in Sweden. That's a good statue. But yeah, most statues. Most statues of dudes in suits. Don't love them. No, very few dudes in suits I want to see a statue of. Yeah, can't think of any right now. Yeah, yeah, it's not coming to me. Yeah, I'm sure it will.

So these statues have been torn down because the Assad regime has basically crumbled. It failed to really put up any meaningful resistance to this advance by different rebel groups, right, by HTS, by SNA, by the Southern Front as well. And despite, I guess even what I would have said two weeks ago, right, even after they lost Aleppo, I assumed that they would regroup in Hama, Homs, and they did not. They completely failed to do so. Their Russian backers more or less abandoned them, focused on getting their stuff and their

people, those who survived out of the country. And as a result, there is no more Assad regime, right? Assad fled the country at some point. It was initially speculated that Assad had fled on an aircraft on Saturday night as rebels were entering Damascus. That seems to be untrue or perhaps it was true, but there's speculation that aircraft had crashed or been shut down. Certainly it does not seem to be. Assad now seems to be. I think, look, I made the call about two days before the regime fell that I felt he was out of the country based on some reporting, including reporting from the Syrian regime that he'd gone to Iran first.

I think he left days before it fell. I don't think he's, yeah, he's got enough instinct for self-preservation that I think he got the fuck out of there. Yeah, he didn't want to be found in a hole in the ground, like Saddam Hussein, right? Like he, or end up like Gaddafi, I guess. So he left, it's quite possible that he was doing a sort of final, please, please help me tour of Russia, Iran, which turned, turned into his eventual exile in breaking news. Robert, I don't know. Uh, I don't know if you've seen this telegram post and obviously we, we can't

confirm it cause we, we don't have a direct line to the Assad regime, but allegedly he is planning on setting up a specialized hospital in the field of ophthalmology in Russia, Abkhazia and Dubai. Yeah. Great. Great place for him to be working. Yeah. Wonderful. Cool stuff.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Not at the Hague where he belongs. Yeah. Anyway, he's gone and we have seen in response, like some of the worst social media posting that I've seen, and I don't want this to be like Twitter review. I think that obviously that's pointless and

impure out, but I want to address, I guess, this kind of really disappointing response. I've seen from a lot of people on the left that, oh yeah, well, either, I mean, you have the, like the gray zone tendency, right? That the Assad was great, actually, in the protection of human rights in the region. And then like the Syria was socialism incarnate, which is obviously nonsense. Right? Like this is a person who, as we have seen in the last week, whose regime prisons were holding thousands of people killed tens of thousands of people, tortured people to death. killed tens of thousands of people, tortured people to death. In some cases in Sednaya prison, which is a big prison in Damascus, or near Damascus I should say, it's towards the coast. It looks as if there were children in that prison who were possibly born in that prison and may have never been out of that prison, which is like one of the most horrible things

I've ever had to think about, you know, like a little child, four or five years old, never having seen the sky. It's just, it's heartbreaking. Like a lot of the things we are going to find, the things we're going to hear about in the next few weeks are heartbreaking. And anybody who's prepared to apologize for that or prepared to say that that was good, I think you really need to question if they're someone who's aligned with you. But in addition to that tendency, there's one that sort of holds that in Syria, like what will come next is worse. What will come

next or we don't know, of course we don't know what will come next. None of us can see the future, but the what will come next will make us sad, look like it was a preferable option. And like, I feel that we need to address that because I think it's one of the long legacies of authoritarian socialist. How do I say this? Like the authoritarian socialist media project. And that kind of colliding with the Iraq war anti-war movement. Yes.

You know, all the whole hands off Syria thing that groups like the PSL, the party for socialism and liberation were doing when the rebels started this offensive being like, we've got to stop these US backed rebels from taking Syria for the empire. And it's like, man, the fuck it. It's not the US that was primarily backing the rebels that did most of the fighting.

Like these guys are Turkish backed, you know Yeah, yeah the extent that that even matters right like the that like this is not a the cia did not orchestrate all of this The guys the cia were really trying to back in syria. Basically all died like yeah, they've gone Yeah, okay Some of the weapons sure that you that the u.s supplied in timbers Some of the weapons sure that you that the US supplied and Timber, Sycamore are probably still in the hands of HDS Yes, yes some of them but like even that's not the bulk of the weaponry that those fuckers know The entire weaponry of the Syrian Arab Army is also in the hands of the HDS Which will move on to actually because maybe we should address that now before we address responses actually

Yeah, when we talk about international involvement in Syria, right? We talk about the United States who has supported the SDF not as a project, and this is important, they don't support the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria as a democratic project. What they support is the SDF as a partner force in the fight against ISIS. And that's been very clear when they have failed to defend the AANES against genocidal violence, ethnic cleansing and Afrin. What we're seeing again now in the Tal Rafaat area, I'll use that terminology because if you want to look it up on Google Maps, that's easier

to find. The violence that we've seen repeatedly from the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army or Turkish Free Syrian Army as it's, right? The United States hasn't defended the people of the ANES against that, and it won't because that's not what it's there to do. And as much as we would like it to, I don't think that that's in the nature of the US mission in Syria, and I don't think it's in the nature of the US as a state,

to support a project which is seeking to build democracy without the state, it's not in the nature of the US as a state either to support a project which is seeking to build democracy without the state. It's not in the nature of the state. We stumbled backwards accidentally into exactly once supporting the good guys in the conflict, you know, specifically in the conflict with ISIS. Yeah, like a broken clock. And we immediately, ever since we have been trying as hard as we can to pull back and, you back and betray them to their deaths. Like that is the story of US support of Rojava. Yeah, it's not.

This is not a US proxy state, as some people are trying to tell you. This is not a CIA revolution, as some people are trying to tell you indeed. No, part of what gives fuel for that is there are a number of photos of US troops really vibing with the YPG and YPJ, and they're vibing with them. And you and I could both say this having been with those people They're nice. Yeah, they're fun to be around. They're chill folks They have good music and they like to dodge generally cool people. Yes Yeah, I enjoy that company. I have vibed with the YPG

You know like it's hard not to see a bunch of young women who like left ISIS captivity and immediately said, give me a gun. I'm going to learn how to use it and be like, yeah, that's pretty cool. Good for you. Yeah. It's, it's one of the cooler things that's happened to the Middle East in the past century. Yeah.

And like the United States does not have a plan for what has happened in the last two weeks and it appears to be trying to think on the hoof right now. Joe Biden's foreign policy has been dog shit and it doesn't look like he's going to pull a 180 now. We should not expect the United States to save Rojava. We should do everything we can to get the United States to continue supporting the people who gave more than 10,000 of their children in the battle against ISIS. The US didn't want to send ground troops, right?

Obama didn't want to have another ground war, neither did Trump. And so they got people from the SDF to do the dying and a lot of the killing where they maintained an aerial presence was a light ground footprint. We shouldn't expect the US to show up for the people who showed up for it. That's not in its nature. The only state that had a plan for what happened in the last two weeks appears to have been Israel, disappointingly. Russia and Iran seem to have largely scrambled, extracted their state assets.

Russia got some of its people out, they took some of their aircraft out. Iran, likewise, the US seems to be kind of scrambling. I'm sure there are still some like, ODAs, some special forces guys embedded with the SDF. I'm sure that in the areas where ISIS has risen up, because in some areas where the regime has pulled back, there has been an increasing presence of ISIS sleeper cells trying to sort of once again control territory and attack the SDF. In those areas, I'm sure that there are US special forces like directing airstrikes, but I don't think the US is going to come and save Rishab,

but the only country that had a plan was Israel. And what Israel's plan was, was to invade Syria in the Golan Heights, right, to increase their area of control, and then to bomb almost all of the aircraft. And perhaps, I don't know if it also includes air defense systems, but from what the IDF is saying today, they have bombed all of the Syrian Air Force's aircraft that fallen into rebel hands. This includes ammunition for the aircraft. It includes the ammunition dump at Kamishlo airport. About half an hour before Robert and I started recording here on Monday, I saw a video from a friend in Kamyshlo of the ammunition dump at the

airport, which had previously belonged to the regime now belongs to the AANES exploding after it had been hit by an IDFS. So what they're trying to do, I guess, is deny any of those weapons to people who they perceive as a threat to their interests. Yep. And like, there's been, I don't know if you're seeing this also, Robert, by a lot of like Israeli accounts being like, oh, we stand with the Kurds, Israel, and the Kurds are one.

And first of all, I want to warn you, I want to warn you that we have an advertising break coming, Robert, is what I want to warn you about. Oh, well, speaking of, well, actually not speaking of the IDF, thankfully, but speaking about maybe the California State Highway Patrol, here's some ads. We want to speak out. We want to raise awareness and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn and I'm an investigative journalist. When a group of models from the UK wanted my help, I went on a journey deep into the heart of the adult entertainment industry.

I really wanted to be a Playboy model. Lingerie, topless. I said, yes, please. Because at the centre of this murky world is an alleged predator. You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior? He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated.

Together, we're going to expose him and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shape-shifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne, Tales from the Shadows, as part of my cultural podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul and I'm Jordan or Joe Ho and we are the Black Fat Film Podcast, a podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross, and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

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We're back. Yeah, firstly, I think when you're seeing analysis about Syria, anyone who talks about things in terms of these monolithic blocks, these Israeli accounts are often agree will support the Kurds. I would be, sometimes I'll maybe use that to refer to AALES or the SDF, but I really try not to because it's a multi-ethnic project, right? Like the areas that we'll talk about in a minute where the SDF is being attacked, those areas, the largest component of the SDF is Arab forces, right? And that is the case in the SDF as a whole, actually. The majority of the SDF is now Arab, not Kurdish.

I would be very skeptical of the expertise of anyone who refers to things in these monolithic absolutes, right? The Sunnis, the Shias, the Alawites, the Kurds. There are a lot of different groups in Syria, and those groups are comprised of individuals, and those individuals, shockingly, have different and distinct goals and experiences and desires. There are absolutely Alawites who will have remained loyal to Assad.

There are others who demonstrably did not, as we've seen in the last week. And so I would be skeptical of anyone who tries to paint things in those terms. And I would be skeptical to return to what we were talking about earlier, Robert, of people who tell you that, like, we should expect the one I see most is Syria to turn into Lebanon, right? And like you and I have been talking about this before we recorded, but that's not a useful example in my mind of what we're likely to see in Syria, right? we're likely to see in Syria, right? Mm-hmm. And the reason for that is that like in Lebanon, yes, there was a there was a like a US air component as there is in Syria, that's true. But I don't understand why we would look at the example of Lebanon, a place thousands of miles away, when we have at least two examples of governance in Syria, right? People who have been governing, in one case for more than

a decade, significant parts of Syria. Like they have a government project. In the case of the AANES, I don't think it's fair to call it a state project, right? They would tell you that they're trying to build democracy without the state, which is something that which might not be popular with states, evidently, which doesn't let them the support of many states as we've seen. But we have, and with HDS and Jelani and the Salvation Government, right, we have these two governance projects. They're extremely different, right? The Salvation Government under HDS is people have been arrested for playing music at their

own weddings. It is neither democratic nor particularly liberatory. And then we have the AANES, which I would argue is the only democracy in the Middle East. Yeah. Certainly the only democracy where people of different ethnicities and genders matter the same amount. Yeah, certainly the only like multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East that's functional. Yeah.

You know, you're just straining the definition of democracy if you're constraining it by ethnicity, right? Right. So I think you can make a good case for it being the only democracy in the Middle East. I Saw this really atrocious BBC interview this morning, right? I'm trying to network some networks now have reporters on the ground in Damascus And I've been trying to watch those to see sort of see sort of what's going on It can be very hard to just get your news from Telegram Like I would also caution people who are perhaps new to this, who are finding these Telegram channels,

to take everything you read on there with a pinch of salt. You'll see a lot of disinformation there. One of the BBC had an expert on, he was like, oh, every time we see people pulling down statues of dictators, I'm a bit concerned. And like, I have to think about how to express this. It seems to me deeply Islamophobic or bigoted or racist. I don't quite know the right term to say, oh, the people of this country and the places in the last 10, 20 years where we've seen people pulling down statues of dictators have largely been in the Middle East, right? To say that, oh, these people are incapable of self-governance.

These people are incapable of living in peace with one another. But like, they're not. We've seen that in in Rojava, and I don't. But I think that there is not an appetite for more killing and more dying. Certainly from what I've seen and what I've heard. No, exhaustion is a factor here. You're like, you really cannot emphasize enough how long, I mean, HTS and the SNA have been at this and how fucking tired, particularly like HTS has to be. Like this has been more than a decade of constant terror and violence.

So I do think that that's going to be a factor in like what happens next. I should hope it will be. Yeah. I mean, some things I don't know how to interpret, right? HTS has asked the regime police and authorities in cities to stay on. Some of that is probably good, right? The people who ensure that the water gets pumped. I hope that they stay pumping the water.

The people who were the police, the Assad regime, Syrian Arab Republic. I don't want those people to stay on. I want those people to fuck off and I want those people to be held accountable for the crimes they committed. But it doesn't point to sort of wild sectarian violence. We don't have the situation we had in Iraq, right? We have a US occupation which sits inside these bases and it only leaves CBIGLI to kill people, right? From the perspective of the people living in Iraq, that's where the US occupation looked like for the most part, right? It's guys in big military vehicles who kill civilians by mistake. We don't have that here. There's not that resentment, generational resentment that allowed the Islamic State to grow there. Now, the Islamic State did

grow through capturing a lot of state institutions, which is why HTS has done, but I don't see that same resentment and I don't see that same resentment and I don't see that same desire for sort of redemptive violence that we saw there. I might be wrong, right? There might be more intercommunal violence. I have seen some videos of what look like summary executions in Damascus today. That's very concerning. Yeah. But also, I mean, look, there's some people who need to be summarily executed. Yeah, if you've got to shoot someone. Fuck it. Yeah.

You're looking at the photos of just like thousands of shoes and decomposed bodies dissolved with acid at Sednaya prison. Yeah. Like you're liberating those places. You catch anyone who was working there. I'm not going to say that that's a bad thing to do. I might do the same thing in their situ in their circumstances. Yeah, I can't blame someone. I can understand someone doing that.

What are you going to do? Yeah, I can understand that in the next few days, there will probably be more of that violence because we are literally in some cases opening the lid on some of the worst crimes against humanity of this century. Yes, yes. And they are going to be catching there are a lot of Mokbrat, you know, secret police guys who didn't get out, who were throwing on,

we've got videos of them leaving the palace, throwing on civilian clothes. Yep. And I'm not going to be shocked if a lot of the justice process of that is ugly. Now, I do suspect that Joe Lonnie is going to at least grab a chunk of those guys and do trials because he is really looking for state legitimacy, you know?

And that's one way you get it. Yeah, that's his project now. But that's not going to be how all these guys go down. No, some of these guys are going to die. And yeah, they're just going to get fucking got. Yeah, yeah. And they got a lot of people, they kind of had it coming to them. I'm not particularly concerned about that.

I'm more broadly concerned with like, what are you doing on the left if you see people in the streets, you see people tearing down statues of dictators, you see people celebrating the end of a regime that oppressed them for decades, and you immediately go to, oh, this is bad. Why do you even bother if we don't believe that people can govern themselves? If we don't believe that the people in the street are normally the people who are right, and if we don't believe that the downfall of tyrannical regimes is a good thing.

Yeah, what do you believe, you know? If you're just torturing it to be like, well, no, you and I both read that there was a post earlier today with someone being like these leftists, purity politics, you know, to be angry that Assad kept a lid on radical Islam and ISIS and just didn't do it super cleanly. And it's, man, he was fucking gassing children.

Like, where are you here? What is wrong with you? Come on, man. Yeah, this is a person who dropped chlorine gas on blocks of flats with little children in them, right? Like, fuck this guy, it's good that he's gone I wish he was dead mm-hmm I'm sad that he gets to go and be an ophthalmologist like he of all people needs to be held accountable for his crimes Yeah, yeah, some could have we give a song on Telerion kind of situation right?

Yeah, who's the the Armenian who shot a member of the the Turkish government in Berlin? Yeah, we could have something like that go down. God willing. Yeah, yeah. You never know. I guess people... He's in Russia now. He's in Russia. Someone will find him in his high-end eye clinic one day. Yeah, he's probably going to be going back and forth to Dubai. There's some Syrians who wound up in Dubai. Somebody might stab him. Yeah. Yeah, we can hope. But I want to take one more break talking of stabbing.

Maybe we will get an advert for knives, you know? Yeah. We've never had a knife advert, have we? No, I don't know that we have, and I would sell the hell out of knives. Mm-hmm, yeah. Almost any knives, even crappy gas station knives. Like, if you make the ones that look like an oil slick, get in touch with the advertising department at iHeartMedia. Mm-hmm.

We'll pimp them. We want to speak out. We want to raise awareness and we want this to stop. Wow. Very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn and I'm an investigative journalist. When a group of models from the UK wanted my help, I went on a journey deep into the heart of the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a playboy, my dog.

Lingerie, topless. I said, yes, please. Because at the center of this murky world is an alleged predator. You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior? He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread

than I had anticipated. Together, we're going to expose him and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shape-shifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. No. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturna, Tales from the Shadows, as part of my cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho. And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Ooh, chat! This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison,

Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross, and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Alpha Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, girl. Ooh, I know that's right. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso

as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of

generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better off-liners are unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually

do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. All right, we're back. The last thing I want to talk about, Robert, is how the Rebels won.

Because there was not a lot of fighting after the collapse of Aleppo. But before there was fighting and in part how that fighting went, I think led to the downfall of the morale of the Syrian Arab army. Right. So there are some things here that both Robert and I are somewhat nerdy about about conflicts, right? Like it is something even when we're not attending wars, we like to read about them. And you and I both take a great interest in history. And I think we'd be unwise to not look at this and learn from it, especially with HTS, who massively professionalized since the ceasefire in 2020. I think professionalized is probably the right word. Like that command, that technology, that the way they operated looked a lot more like a modern military

than it did, you know, the militias. Like I'm sure you and I both remember the early Syrian civil war for people who are a bit younger than us, like some of the most incredible improvised weapons that I've seen. Oh yeah. There, there was literally at one point they had an Ottoman era black powder cannon on the back of a flatbed that they were using to hit regime positions.

That they had literally taken out of the museum in Aleppo to use. They had taken it out of the museum. Fucking amazing stuff. Like the only, I thought the top of like that sort of thing was when fucking insurg inserts in Afghanistan would use 17th-century Giselles to shoot at US troops, but The Ottoman cannon is really a was that's a flex. Yeah. Yeah, what's the huge flex?

They are they also what you know, they fired propane cylinders out of huge tubes these improvised mortars they call hell cannons like Really incredible and like it speaks to the ingenuity of people and their desire not to be oppressed right? of huge tubes, these improvised mortars they call hell cannons, like really incredible. And like it speaks to the ingenuity of people and their desire not to be oppressed, right, their desire to fight against state tyranny. But when we compare that to what we saw with HTS in 2024, a world of change, right? In particular, I think it was very interesting that they captured armored vehicles, and then they were able to combine armor and infantry very effectively, which is not easy to do, right?

That is eluded even some professional militaries. They also very effectively used drones, both drones to drop bombs and drones to adjust their artillery and mortar fire, which I think is something that again, like that modern militaries do, but it's not easy to do, right? And it's not like HCS could do massive exercises in the lead up to this operation. Like they, they seem to have professionalized very quickly. Another area that they were, you can see that they've learned a lot from the conflicts in Ukraine and perhaps in Myanmar too, was their use of FPV drones. A first person view drone, how do you describe it? It's like your eyes are on the front of the drone.

Is that a good description, Robert? Yeah. It's like you're flying. Yeah. And there are videos of whole classrooms of HTS, I guess, soldiers, militants, whatever you want to call them, practicing flying drones or using the controllers to play like a computer game where you have to like go through checkpoints and follow a route and things. And they seem to have developed like a training course that then gave them this drone brigade,

which they used incredibly effectively. They had these massive first-person view drones that were almost like a sort of a sats cruise missile. And it was, I think, one of those that penetrated a some kind of command headquarters in Aleppo in the early days of the battle there, killed several important officers and commanders and helped to then spread that panic, which they rode all the way to Damascus, right? So like this use of drones was extremely consequential. The other thing that they used, and which we've seen the SDF use a lot, is these pulsar thermal optics. So a thermal optic sees heat, right? I guess would be the easiest way to describe it. And it maps heat in a visual fashion for the user. And in this case,

they put them on their rifles and they're able to see other people at night. Our friend Carl who we had on last week, week before maybe, Carl made a really good video about thermal versus night vision on his in-range TV channel. I'll link it in the notes because I think it's worth people checking out if they're not familiar with this technology at all. The optics he used were not the optics they're using but these thermal optics, you've seen them a lot with the SDF, especially in a free end, like they'll do these night missions, right?

And when you look at the recording from the thermal optic, it looks like people are glowing, because they are the hottest things in that area. And it makes it very easy to target people. And HDS used these a lot when they were attacking Aleppo, right? These thermal optics that they mounted on their rifles and that allowed them to pretty much... The United States used to talk about owning the night, right? Because it had night vision when no one else does.

Night vision has proliferated a long way now and that means that some of the ways that they used to use night vision, they can't anymore. Like for instance, they used to send out lasers that were only visible under night vision to aim weapons. If your adversary has night vision as well, you've now created a giant line that goes right back to you if you're using a laser aiming device. So you can't do that. But these thermal optics, especially when they're fighting against the Syrian Arab army who, I mean, these conscripts are massively demoralized, right? They're underpaid, they're underfed. Did you meet any, when you were in Rojava,

did you meet any people who defected? Yes, yes, I'd met a number of people who had, and some who had also had to flee from Aleppo and whatnot because they had been on rebels fighting the Assad regime and some had wound up in the SDF, some were just civilians living in the area. There was also a number of folks who commuted like to and from regime held territory just because like if you were someone that wasn't particularly wanted, you could

do that. Yeah. It was a very confusing situation for a lot of people. Yeah, extremely. And I think when you meet the people who have been regime soldiers and come across, often they're like, they seem to be happy being waiters or working in the market in Rojava because their pay was so bad and their lives were so miserable as conscripts that they'd rather just come and work any job they can get in AANES. I think when you've got those guys going up against well-trained people from HTS with these thermal optics, with these using drones, that communications were solid. You can tell from their appearance that a lot of these

guys are professionalized. They're almost indistinguishable from US troops. I think you and I had both responded to this tweet about some YouTube guy was shocked that people were wearing helmets and body armor, which that has been the aesthetic of violence at least in places where the US has operated for I don't know half a decade would you say like that the sort of US Special Forces look. Yeah, I mean, and that's just the norm for dressing. If you're fighting in a war anywhere on the planet now, like whether you're the Russian Army or some militia in Syria, it's plate carrier, usually

like some sort of fast helmet. You've got a belt with sidearm mag pouches and then usually either an AKM or some sort of AR style weapon. Everybody dresses that way. Everybody looks very similar now because it's just the most kind of, I mean, number one, there's a lot of that gear lying around and it's cheap and number two like it works it's a loadout that works yeah it is very practical yeah what they're doing I think number three as well like we should not understate the desire to

look like your avatar and call of duty yes yes it's also looks cool it looks like yeah being in a movie and that is a that matters a lot to the kind of young men who start fighting in wars. Yeah, yeah. People I think, if you've not been, you won't realize how young a lot of these people are. This incredible professionism, incredible professionism, I'm overstating it, but this dramatic change in the appearance and conduct of these rebels, particularly HDS, occurred over about three or four years from the ceasefire in 2020 to this offensive in 2024.

And I think it gives us an insight into the way that war is changing, right? That access to information is easier than it ever has been. And access to a lot of these technologies has proliferated massively. Now, because we've seen in Myanmar, right, drones proliferate. People 3D print little night vision goggles in Myanmar. I spoke to Meowk about it about a year and a half ago. People remember Meowk from our Myanmar series about 3D printing little night vision goggles that use the camera from the

security cameras that can kind of see at night. They use those and then a tiny LCD screen. Of course drones are everywhere now, right? Things like plate carriers, even you see rebels in Myanmar wearing them, buying them from AliExpress. Like all of the technology, all of the tactics are also much easier to find on the internet. You know, Robert and I have both spoken to people who've said they go on YouTube to learn about like military tactics and small arms even and you know, how to use different weapon

systems when they capture them. I think it's a real change in the way that conflict is conducted and it's one that we will probably continue to see as like, you know, the world isn't getting any more peaceful. Nope. And with a lot of, you know, Russia and Iran took a massive L in Syria. That doesn't mean that they're not gone as sort of global actors. We will continue to see particularly Russia obviously fighting in Ukraine. And I think it's worth looking at what happened in Syria so that we can understand what we're going to see in other parts of the world.

Yep. One of the ways I like to think about it that is crucial for people to understand is that Syria has largely been the laboratory in which the 21st century was cooked up. Like all of our futures have to some extent been built in Syria, both like this is where we get a lot of the fuel behind the right wing surge that has been occurring over the last few years started because of the refugee crisis, you know, but also a lot of the tactics and weapons shit that like Israel is doing right now in Gaza, like Syria was the lab to a significant extent for how authoritarian regimes would crack down. And it was also the impetus behind a lot of the most significant things that

have been happening over the last decade and change. So, and it might still be already Germany and the Netherlands have stopped processing asylum applications from Syria, which is, which is concerning. Yep. But yeah, I think it's worth continuing to keep an eye on. I will continue to post about it. We will continue to inform you about it here.

We will continue to bring on people who have more expertise and insight than we do. So yeah, we hope you'll keep an eye on it. And I just want to end by saying that like the democratic project in Rojava is under a great deal of threat currently more than it has been for perhaps a decade. Yep. They do not have an ally in the United States. They do not, as far as we know, have an ally in Israel. And from what we've seen, it's one thing what Israel says, it's another thing what Israel

does and what Israel has been doing today is bombing ammunition that they already have in the AANES. And that means that it's more important than ever that you do what you can to support them. If you go to the emergency committee for Rojava, you can find them online, you find them on all different kinds of social media. They have a toolkit for supporting Rojava right now. I would urge you if you care about that project, if you care about building democracy without the state, if you care about building a place where women and men are equal and the revolution

was led by women. It's not a revolution that like includes women, it's revolution by women, for women. I would encourage you to do what you can to support them. All right. Yep. That's all. If What Happened Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. And this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a playerboy, my doll.

He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated. We're an army in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, it's Jon, also known as Dr. John Paul.

And I'm Jordan or Joho. And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Ooh, chat! This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angela Carrasque, and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Film Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast girl.

Ooh, I know that's right. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships

and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron,, or wherever you get your podcasts. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

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