Rev Left Radio - On Syria: Civil War and U.S. Imperialism

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

Rania Khalek is an independent journalist, writer, and political commentator. Khalek has written for a variety of publications, including The Nation, The Intercept, Al Jazeera, Salon, Vice, Mondoweiss, and Truthout. Khalek previously served as an associate editor for the pro-Palestinian news website The Electronic Intifada, an associate writer for AlterNet, and a regular contributor to the media watchdog "Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting". She also co-hosts the podcast "Unauthorized Disclosure". Rania joins Brett to discuss the Syrian Civil War.  Rania's website is here: https://raniakhalek.com/ Follow Rania on Twitter @raniakhalek Outro Music by MC Gaza, you can find his music here: https://www.youtube.com/user/mc1gaza/videos Support the Show: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio" Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo. You can listen and support their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/track/red-black This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, and the Omaha GDC. Check out Nebraska IWW's new website here: https://www.nebraskaiww.org

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host and comrade Brett O'Shea, and today we have on Rania Kalik to talk about Syria. Rania, for people that don't know who you are, would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about yourself? Sure. So I'm a journalist.

I write for a bunch of different outlets. I also do some video work. And I've worked, I based in the Middle East, although right now I'm visiting Washington, D.C., but I'm based in Beirut, and I mostly focus on covering the situation in the Middle East, particularly with respect to the wars in Syria and Iraq. And how long have you been a journalist? How far back does that go in your history? I've been a journalist, I guess, for like eight years now. And I wasn't always covering the Middle East. I used to focus a lot on domestic issues, especially those related to criminal. justice issues. And I used to do a lot of stuff around Israel, Palestine. I worked for the electronic intifada for a while. And yeah, now I'm more focused on being on the ground. Because I feel like there's not a lot of ground reporting taking place when it comes to the stuff

going on in the Middle East. So I feel like it's really important to be able to be there and be able to tell people what I see and talk to people who are actually on the ground. So that's where my focus is at right now. Cool. Yeah, we've had your friend Abby Martin on the show and I think both of you kind of exemplified this really dedicated investigative journalist approach of actually being on the ground, especially in areas and around issues that are horribly reported on in the Western media. And so both of you sort of shine a light on areas that the mainstream media in the West almost never shines a light on. And when they do, it's really propagandized in a lot of ways. Before we get into the questions, just kind of background on you, what got you interested

in the Middle East and in Syria specifically? Well, I mean, naturally my family's from, my family's Lebanese and Syrian. So I've kind of, you know, I have like a natural inclination towards issues related to Middle East just because the U.S. is very involved in the Middle East, obviously constantly destabilizing various countries. And I've also grown up just kind of with that

as a natural part of my life in politics, especially related to Israel, Palestine. because obviously Israel's existence in the Middle East and its behavior has threatened my own family members in the region, and I grew up with Israel bombing Lebanon. So I've just kind of naturally understood the Middle East, but with Syria, I used to be far more focused on specifically Palestine, but with Syria, the media coverage of the war in Syria

was just so outrageously distorted to the point where I actually was you know, I actually didn't really understand Syria a while back. And I was on a, you know, I spoke about it a bunch of differently than I do now because it's one of the most, I would say, heavily propagandized wars that we've ever seen. It's been a war that's really played out on social media in a really significant way. And so once Hillary Clinton was, I thought she was going to be president, as most people did, and she was saying one of the first things she would do was enforce a no flies on on Syria. So I was family in Syria, I was really concerned about what that would mean for them.

So I kind of switched gears and went and visited Syria and started focusing on that issue. And then, of course, Hillary Clinton did not win. But regardless, you know, we have seen some escalation and some really dangerous rhetoric around the situation in Syria, especially with respect to the U.S. and Russia. So, yeah, that's kind of how I ended up where I am now. What's the sort of, what sort of journalism and investigations did you do on the ground in Syria? Like, who did you talk to? How long did you stay there, et cetera? I mean, I visited several times over the past, like, I would say, a year and a half.

And mostly focused on, you know, one of the biggest issues with Syria is a lot of the information that you see reported on in the media in the West comes from people who are not, it comes from people who are like the media arms of insurgent groups. And those media arms of insurgent groups are doing their jobs. They're putting out their side of the story. The problem is you don't have any actual journalists on the ground, for the most part, in Syria. So when you're relying on people who are going to be biased and possibly giving you wrong information, you're going to be putting out information that's pretty much propaganda, and that's what you see. You see when it comes to Syria, a lot of the sources that journalists have, you'll see they're based in not in Syria, but they're based in like Beirut or Istanbul.

And most of their sources are either insurgents or, like I said, like the media arms of the insurgency. So you just don't really hear from actual Syrian people who are on the ground in Syria, especially in government areas. And the thing about Syria that people don't understand is that the vast majority of Syrian live in government-held areas. And you just, I mean, they have different views on the situation in Syria than the far fewer Syrians that live in areas that were captured by insurgent groups. And so you only get a very one-sided narrative that actually represents a very small slice of Syrians. Right. Yeah, and that's why we want to have you on. This is obviously a very contentious issue, especially on the left. It is extremely divisive among tendencies on the broad left. And so I wanted to go ahead and tackle this because I think it's an important issue. And undoubtedly, some people are going to disagree with certain aspects of this conversation. But hopefully, because of your investigative journalism on the ground, we can get good facts out there and people can critically engage with this episode. And hopefully no matter what your ultimate position on Syria is, this episode will further inform you and make you more knowledgeable on the topic as a whole. So let's go ahead and get into it.

But before we get into the details of the Civil War, can you maybe summarize the events that led up to the Syrian Civil War? Sure. So basically back in 2011, there was these sort of series of uprisings across the Middle East. But they were, I would say, different in every country. But of course, the way they were looked at from the Western context was they're all the same. What happened in Syria is there certainly was an uprising in Syria, but there wasn't one uprising. There was like, there was like different protest movements.

There were people in the more urban areas, mostly younger, liberal, progressive-minded people who wanted, you know, wanted basic reforms. I mean, Syria is an authoritarian state. Obviously, like, free speech isn't, you know, you don't have free speech the way you do in the West in Western countries. It's not, I wouldn't call it, obviously it's not a democracy. there's a lot about Syria that does need to change. Obviously, it has a flawed government, as most governments are. So you did have this strand of protests, like I said, that were mostly younger people, more in urban centers,

that were sort of protesting, you know, in favor of reforms and a more open and democratic society. But you also had another strain of protests in Syria, and these were in the more rural areas. And these, I mean, these protests were basically conservative, protest. They were right-wing protests. People demanding, and they had a religious sectarian flavor to them. And they were basically, you know, making demands, you know, about, you know, the government allowing, you know, women to wear any calves when they teach, or having, allowing

gender segregated schooling. Of course, they, you know, and they were also allowing for the release of prisoners, because Syria has a lot of prisoners locked up, especially Islamists. So that was obviously a demand as well. But you basically, I mean, just, you know, for the, for an audience that, isn't, you know, doesn't really understand the very, you know, the, like, really detailed stuff about it. What you do need to understand is there were two different protest movements. It would be the equivalent in the U.S. of, like, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement. Right? These had two different agendas. They happened around the same time. They aren't one uprising, but they did happen around the same time. That's kind of what you had in Syria.

And what ended up taking place is that, you know, the U.S. for, you know, U.S. policy has been, obviously, to overthrow this Syrian government for a very long time. because the Syrian government doesn't do as the U.S. pleases all the time. And so they use this as an opportunity to try and make that happen, to try and destabilize the country and collapse the state. And they did that by, you know, the U.S. kind of teamed up with its regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and they armed the right-wing protesters. And, you know, that's kind of, I mean, I can go on from there,

but that's kind of the basics of how all this got started. It became armed. And it was already, to a certain extent, armed and violent from the beginning, from certain elements of the more right-wing side of protesters. And people don't know about that or hear about that, but you did from the very beginning half clashes and, you know, people, you know, certain elements in the protests were, I mean, people like to talk about the Syrian uprising as it was some beautiful, peaceful utopian dream. But, you know, nothing's that, you know, nothing's that easy. Right, exactly. And there was, you know, violence from certain elements from the beginning. Of course, it doesn't in any way justify the brutality that the state inflicted,

but it is something that does need to be, you know, we need to be honest about. For sure, yeah. And we're going to get more, we have a whole question dedicated to U.S. imperialism and U.S. interests later on in this interview. But I've listened to debates that you've had on this subject. And, you know, you're all about bringing in the nuance that is so often lost in this conversation. But the first thing that your opponents, at least in the debates that I've seen, try to do is paint you as some uncritical cheerleader of Assad and the serious.

in government in an attempt to sort of undermine you and your arguments. So before we move on, do you have any qualifiers or caveats you want to make clear up front to avoid this sort of slander? What are your criticisms of the way that Assad and his government have conducted themselves over the past few years and even prior to the war? I mean, it's absurd. The Syrian government's a police state. I've never shied away from saying that. They do awful things. I mean, they do what every other government in the Middle East does because the majority of the governments in the Middle East are unfortunately and very sadly police. that torture their people, that torture dissidents, that imprison dissidents, that kill people.

I mean, the Syrian government, I could go on and on about the many criticisms I have. And, you know, even leftists in the region, this is what really bothers me. Leftists in the region who right now support the Syrian state remaining intact have historically been opponents of the Syrian government. And they have, you know, and they have nuanced views on this. And they criticize the Syrian government, but they support the state remaining intact. And that's pretty much the way that in my position on this situation is regardless of how terrible the Syrian government might be, the alternative that has existed for the past several years, which is the extremist insurgency that the U.S. and its allies armed and funded, the alternative, that alternative is far worse than what exists right now. And as, you know, yes, the Syrian government is a police state, but it's not only a police state.

The Syrian, you know, the Syrian state has educational institutions, right? The Syrian state has medical institutions that it provides, you know, it provides medical care to people. The Syrian state is more than just, you know, torture chambers, just like any other state. You know, it's not just one thing. And when you collapse the state, you have what took place in Iraq. You have what took place in Libya, which is absolute chaos and war. And all the areas where the Syrian state was collapsed with insurgents funded and armed, by the US and its allies, you had power vacuums

that were filled by ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and you had chaos and you had war. And that's what happened. And so that is why, I mean, that's the best way to view the situation in Syria. I think as somebody who cares about, you know, Syrians being safe and ending the war is having the state remain intact.

It doesn't mean necessarily having the government stay the way it is. There are do need to be changes do need to be made in Syria. But the people on the ground in Syria, Actual Syrians who want to reform their government cannot do it under the circumstances of war that exist right now. Right. Yeah, so the sort of idea that I get out of it is, you know, both, like, there are bad actors on both sides of this major conflict. But in order for the more progressive and left-wing elements of the Syrian population to push forward their, you know, more liberatory political goals, there has to be a sort of stability in the society that it would not be present if the overall state collapses.

and turns into another Libyan Iraq, then you're just going to have more people suffering, more people dying, the institutions and infrastructures of the Syrian state will be destroyed, and the people on the ground will have a worse off life because of it. So even if you don't support Assad, yeah, go ahead. And I'll add to that a couple things.

When it comes to infrastructure, I mean Syria, aside from like the political flaws in the way the state governs, Syria was one of the most self-sufficient countries in the region in terms of food. production in terms of making its own medicines. I mean, there are things about the state that you should want to preserve. And those are the kinds of things. Water infrastructure, you know, like Lebanon is not far from Syria. Lebanon's a tiny country that you can like drive to Damascus from Beirut within a couple hours, right? In Lebanon, you have almost no state. And in Lebanon,

because of that, people have to live on bottled water. You don't, I mean, in Syria, at least before the war, you didn't have that issue. So those kinds of things that those sort of daily needs that people don't think about those are the kinds of things that you want to preserve in a state that's functioning in Syria. And beyond that, I mean, the idea of, like, the Assadist smear that was often lobbed at me or anybody else who vehemently opposes, you know, U.S. intervention in Syria, this is just meant to silence people. It means nothing. I mean, I don't even know what that means. What does it mean to be an Assadist? What does Assadism mean? Am I, like, am I, like, running around holding up posters of Bashar al-Assad? It's just an absurd smear that, I mean,

I mean, it's just like calling people. I mean, I don't remember if this happened during the lead up to the war in Iraq because I was still in high school. But, I mean, were people calling anti-war protesters Saddamists? I don't know. But I do think it's important also to recognize that there are a lot of Syrians who do support for Shah al-Assad because he's their president. I mean, you don't have to agree with it, but that does exist.

Yeah. And it's not fair to just write people, especially when it comes to Syrians. I mean, it's different if you've got some weird leftists in the U.S., which is like five people on Twitter who think with Charles Assad's like a cool dude. But they're like marginal and don't matter. But I mean, I'm not, you know, like sometimes this smear is often also leveled at everybody who lives in government areas in Syria who doesn't want their government to be overthrown. And that's extremely unfair because they have to live with the consequences of that.

Yeah, it kind of echoes the charge of anti-Semitism anytime you try to criticize the Israeli state. That sort of, that sort of disingenuous lobbying of just charges that don't, it doesn't matter if they stick or not, they just try to paint you as that sort of apologist, and it's, it's ridiculous. Well, you know, I would actually, I would actually go a little bit further than that and say, and maybe this is more prominent among Arabs. I'm not sure if this, like, exists outside of circles, but like among Arab Americans, the new thing or the thing for the last couple of years has been to call anybody who opposes U.S. enforced overthrow of the Syrian government,

not just an Assadist, but an Islamophob, because, you know, the alternative to Assad would have been a takeover of the country by a collection of Salafi, jihadist factions. Wow. And so now suddenly to criticize Salafi jihadists have become something Islamophobic, and it reminds me a lot of the way criticizing Israel has become, you know, it's like anti-Semitism. Right. It's now you're an Islamophobe if you, if you don't like the idea of Salafi jihadist taking over large swaths of Syria, which sounds crazy when you say it out loud. Absolutely. Well, I know you touched on the basic formations leading up to the Syrian Civil War, and there were a lot of different groups involved

they covered a range of political positions and goals can you maybe just go a little deeper on some of the different groups that were initially in play during the uprising that led to the Civil War and who the most progressive groups and maybe even leftist revolutionary groups were initially?

Okay, so when it comes to the beginning of the uprising, you have to understand Syria is a state that has it's been a police state for a very long time there isn't a diverse array there isn't like a bunch of leftist revolutionary groups. As much as I would love for there to be in Syria, you just don't get to have that in a police state.

There have, in past, been leftist revolutionaries, but they've largely been imprisoned or not just in Syria, but across the Middle East. They don't really exist in large quantities anymore. So with the Syrian uprising, it wasn't like a bunch of, even the people who were more liberal-minded and progressive, you know, you didn't have a lot of political space in Syria to organize before.

So there weren't groups that had really, like, formed that existed to sort of be you know to sort of organize around it was more just like you know people like younger progressives in different cities were like oh let's protest because we want a better government right and it didn't really move beyond much beyond that so in that respect like I mean I would say I guess the one people with one when it comes to leftist revolution groups people point to is like the Kurds in the north the YPG um but you know that they in the you know after a while i mean they sort of started working like in a bit of a collaboration or at least cooperation with the syrian government because a bigger threat arose

which was ISIS um and then you also had a different i mean what you the majority of insurgent groups inside syria that were armed uh were salafi jihadist groups that's basically what happened not all of them there were some of them that were just kind of like islamist like groups some of the people who ended up forming their own groups were like just kind of criminals in the past who like that's what happens when the state collapses in any area you know people who profit off of underground markets take over so you had some groups run by like different gang members basically and then you know a lot of these groups just kind of did what their funders wanted them to do if they were funded by like some some rich saudi guy they would name themselves

after that rich saudi guy and like do whatever that rich saudi guy wanted them to do um and this was like i mean this was a common thing that's why it was so chaotic in syria because you didn't have like you had so like just a really a large diverse array like collection of groups that were trying to overthrow the Syrian government that weren't even really working together they almost worked against each other sometimes and oftentimes would kill each other so I don't know if that helps I mean it's just it's not the kind of maybe it's not it's not the way people like to hear it but unfortunately like across the Middle East you just don't have um large groups of leftist revolutionaries anymore that you did there was a time when you did

did, but that's largely been snuffed out and largely do, especially to U.S. foreign policy in the region. Yeah, no, I think that is extremely important. And a lot of people, you know, they want to have a pure group to root for. And so, you know, people will go out of their way to try to find any segment of the uprising that they can support on an ideological basis. And sometimes, you know, that's just not there. Now, we will get into the Rojave and Kurds later because I do agree with you that they're

the most explicitly revolutionary left-wing, you know, group in the Syrian state generally, but we'll get there eventually. But whatever the early formations were, things have obviously developed. And we often hear the term Syrian rebels in the Western media, but very rarely is it ever explained who the rebels actually are. And I know you've touched on this a little bit, but maybe we can go deeper into it. So speaking from our perspective here in 2018, who are the Syrian rebels today, which foreign governments support them? And what are their ultimate goals for Syria? well okay so the syrian rebels today have largely lost support from most outsiders like they they were dependent on foreign governments to provide them with weapons and money uh but that a lot of that

a lot of that flow of weapons and money has ended which is why they're being defeated um across of syria uh the i mean there are some rebel groups in the north that are affiliated with al qaeda that still have the support of the turkish state um but uh but i guess going through it it it where, you know, it depends, it's different almost in every part of Syria. So, like, recently let's start with Eastern Ruta, which is an area that the Syrian government recently took back from insurgents. That was under the control of a collection of groups, the largest one being Jaisal Islam. Jaisal Islam is a Salafi jihadist group that was funded, it was believed to be funded and

armed by Saudi Arabia, and it was, I mean, mostly made up of actually a lot of Syrians from Eastern Rootah, but the leader of that group Zaharan al-Lush, who was killed a couple of years ago, he is somebody that was extremely sectarian, basically called for the ethnic cleansing of Christians and Aloitans and any non-Sundis, basically from Damascus. That was their agenda to impose an Islamic state. This group was really nasty, and its rhetoric and tactics were very similar, not much different than ISIS. There was one point a couple years ago when they paraded these Alawite minority

minority civilians who they had kidnapped from nearby villages. They paraded them in the streets of Duma, the largest city in eastern Ghouta. They paraded them in the streets in cages, and they were proudly using them as human shields. They did this on video. You don't really hear about this in the Western press. But this is the alternative that the U.S. was trying to impose in Syria. This is who would have taken over in that area, in Damascus. That's who would have taken over had the Syrian government fallen.

They were the largest rebel group in that area. You also had a few other groups in Eastern Ghouta. There was like Phelak Ahmed, which was basically an offshoot of Al-Qaeda. You had a Harar al-Sham, which is another Salafi jihadist group that worked alongside al-Qaeda, and at times ISIS before Al-Qaeda and ISIS split. I mean, as you can tell, just the way I'm talking about it, it's a complicated mess. Yeah, yeah. In Aleppo, in Eastern Aleppo, before the Syrian government took East.

Aleppo back a couple of, you know, like a year and a half ago, I believe. The groups that were in charge in Eastern Aleppo were basically mostly El Nisra. That was the largest and most powerful group, which is al-Qaeda in Syria. Well, it used to be its name. They keep rebranding. Right. But at the time, it was called El Nisra. You also had a Har al-Shem.

You had Noreal-Din al-Zinke, which is another Salafi jihadist group that, you know, the U.S. actually, the CIA basically called the May moderate group and were arming them for some time, but then they eventually stopped arming them. And a little bit after that, Noor al-Zinke, some of its fighters, videotate themselves beheading a Palestinian teenage boy who had been fighting in a group alongside the government. And he did this on video. And that's kind of what made them famous. I mean, these are the groups. This, like, it's like this was the alternative to the Syrian government all these years. And then, of course, in northern Syria, you have the rise of the YPG. And we can talk about it.

a little bit more about that, like, later, but, um, but yeah, I mean, this, this is what you had in Syria. Um, you had, I used to, you know, the FSA, a lot of, basically a lot of these groups that I just listed and mentioned were, uh, different factions involved, like, that made up the FSA. Um, the FSA was just kind of like a front name for a bunch of different Salafi jihadist groups. Uh, that's the best way I can put it. There was never really, and if there ever was any secular groups they were quickly snuffed out um but at the same time it doesn't really matter because you just you can't you can't like you can't if you i don't think you know it's necessarily terrible to to have a better government take over um a country but you can't have a better government

take over when you have a collection of factions like that who are going to impose Islamic law everywhere who want to snuff out in genocide minorities who want to stone women in the streets who want basically impose a Saudi-style state in Syria. I mean, that was their end goal. Right. And yeah, you mentioned the FSA. That's the Free Syrian Army. They actually, in the latest invasion of Afrin by Turkey, they teamed up with the Turkish state to invade Afrin and slaughter innocent people in that region. Can you say a little bit more just about the Free Syrian Army, like what they are, what they are today, what they've been traditionally? I mean, they don't exist anymore. The Free Syrian Army was a name that the U.S. and it

allies, you know, applied to this collection of different armed groups that wanted to overthrow the Syrian government. It was a way for them to arm these groups. But in many cases, the Free Syrian Army was just a bunch of different, in many cases, different Al-Qaeda-linked groups that were sort of using the FSA brand name to get weapons from these countries. And the U.S., I mean, the U.S. government, people in the U.S. government were aware of this, and they didn't really care.

They had this operation room in Turkey where like these people would flow in and out of. I mean, what happened in Syria is just this, like, massive crime that no one really understands. But just to make it as simple as possible, the U.S. and its allies just basically funded a collection of Salafi jihadist groups under the Free Syrian Army name. And because of what they did in Syria, you had the rise of ISIS. Because they also at the same time just kind of looked away as these four, foreign fighters flowed into Syria across the Turkish border. And they knew it was happening. And these foreign fighters basically ended up making up the ranks of ISIS.

And at the same time, in the areas where the Syrian state was expelled, you have these groups that the U.S. had armed and its allies had armed taking over. And, you know, in many cases, the al-Qaeda and ISIS elements of these groups would start kidnapping people, kidnapping Westerners especially. And then they ended up getting ransoms for those Westerners from countries like. like Qatar. And they used that that money as like startup funding. ISIS used that money as like it was like the startup funding it needed to consolidate its forces in eastern Syria where the government had been expelled. And from there, they were able to invade Iraq. And that is why you

had ISIS taking over large swaths of Syria and Iraq because of what the U.S. and its allies did. And when you think about that, it sounds like a massive scandal and it should be. But I mean, nobody really cares, it seems. It's not really, I mean, sometimes you see it in some news reports, like reference to or mentioned to, but it's never really talked about in the serious, in the serious way it deserves to be talked about. Because what you ended up happening also was in northern Syria now in Idlib, you have the largest, which is actually basically under Turkish control at this point, but you have the largest al-Qaeda affiliate in history has gathered in Idlib.

That is because of U.S. policy in Syria. And when you consider the fact that the U.S. has supposedly been at war, with al-Qaeda since 9-11 or even before that, it's just a really stunning outcome. Yeah, that is crazy. That U.S. policy feeds this group. Yeah, that's, I mean, wow. So, and you've, this kind of feeds into the next question because you mentioned it earlier in this conversation, but you've called Syria in your writings perhaps the most heavily

propagandized civil war in history. So how has the Western media portrayed the rebels and the conflict generally and what have been some of the most egregious errors or outright misrepresentations by the media, in your opinion? Well, okay, so I guess to be fair, the Syrian government is really terrible with dealing with media. Because both sides propagandized. I mean, it is a war. The problem is that when it comes to claims made by the Syrian government, the Western press is like completely critical and scrutinizes everything and like the Syrian government cannot be believed. But when it comes to anything insurgents say, it's like that's a fact and you can't you know it has to be a fact and it's reported as fact

more importantly okay so a lot of western journalists in the beginning of the uprising even as it had become armed um they would go and they would visit these rebel held areas as they would call them and they would bond with the rebels and so they would have they would develop this bias towards the rebels because they liked them but then what ended up happening around 2012 and then even more so in 2013 is these rebels started kidnapping western journalists And it became extremely unsafe for Western journalists to even enter these territories, especially areas like Eastern Aleppo, well, very much anywhere where the rebels were, became very, very dangerous. Like you had a huge risk of being kidnapped, and as we so ultimately beheaded, because a lot of the rebel groups would sell the people they would kidnap to ISIS. And so you had Western journalists stopped going to Syria, stopped going to these at least rebel-held areas.

And so no one was on the ground anymore. You could, there was no independent journalism or Western, not even just Western journalism, just independent journalism or humanitarian, you know, workers who could tell you what was happening on the ground. It was only rebel media. And when I say rebel media, I mean, the sort of quote unquote media activists on the ground in rebel held areas whose narrative is entirely controlled by the insurgent groups in charge, which in many cases was Al Qaeda or groups affiliated with it. And so a lot of the information post-2013 that you saw in Western media, became dependent on this propaganda apparatus that the U.S. State Department, the U.K. foreign office, the Qatari's, the Saudis were funding. A lot of it was based in Ghaziantep Turkey. And it was basically like, I mean, it was a really brilliant propaganda apparatus. Like basically, you just have a one-stop shop to get all your information from on the Syrian War. If you couldn't be on the ground, you just get it from there. And so that's why after 2013, you saw a much less

critical reporting of the rebels and it just became whatever the rebels say is fact and you know i actually reported on this i have a colleague who uh was offered 17 000 a month by the uk foreign office to work for a rebel outlet in ghazi antip turkey basically writing rebel propaganda in arabic um and he's so i mean i i publish the emails and everything i mean it's really the people were being paid a lot of money to pump out propaganda and then on top of that you have what has become probably one of the most controversial aspects of this entire war, which is the white helmets, right? It's this rescue group inside Syria that, yes, it does exist inside rebel areas of Syria, but it mostly, like, operates under the umbrella of these jihadist groups. And they basically are funded entirely by Western governments, and they have a PR arm called the Syria campaign.

it's all that basically spends all this money and energy pushing for uh pushing for a no fly zone and regime change in syria and that is the ultimate purpose of this group and a lot of their videos are i mean their videos go viral they're used to i mean their videos are what donald trump sees and decides to bomb syria based off of right right um so it's been a successful operation in that sense um but you know you can't even talk about this in a nuanced and critical way in the press you're treated like you're wearing a tinfoil hat. It's really, really, really stunning. But yeah, that's why I call Syria one of the most heavily propagandized wars I've ever seen.

Because it's been entirely, because there's no people on the ground, it's been based entirely on almost like social media and YouTube videos. Yeah, and one huge aspect of that propaganda is this concept of chemical attacks. We've hear it popped up over and over again. You know, Obama's famous red line was concerned around the Syrian government using chemical weapons and Trump's bombing recently. of Syria was premised on the idea that Assad's government used chemical weapons, but when you're looking into the question of whether Assad and his government have used chemical weapons, one

finds it difficult, at least I find it difficult, to get really precise, objective information on who has used chemical weapons over the span of the war. So based on your research, how many times have chemical weapons been used roughly in the Syrian Civil War and which forces have used them? Well, it's really hard to know because like you said, it's like difficult, depends which who you're looking at some organizations have agendas there have been UN investigations and oftentimes they don't assign blame so it is really difficult to determine how many times and where and Hughes use them what we do know is this I've always found it strange like the obsessive focus on chemical weapons because the Syrian war has there's been a lot of weapons involved especially a lot

of conventional weapons and those have killed a lot more people um so I mean the the focus on chemical weapons has often struck me as strange uh but the point is is is the Syrian government did have chemical weapons capacity, but Obama claims that they got rid of all their chemical weapons. Even Obama, I mean, even Obama says, though, the international community, like they did it in cooperation with the international community after the 2013 attack that the Syrian government said claims they didn't do, and that actually an investigative story by Seymour Hirsch, you might remember, who's now, who's now has been like pushed out of the mainstream because of his reporting on Syria. But an investigative report,

before by Seymour Hirsch found that intelligence analysts in the Obama administration basically weren't sure who did it. They thought that maybe they could have been Nusra, which is Al-Qaeda's group, or they thought it could have been the rebels. And that's one of the reasons Obama never bombed Syria after his so-called red line was crossed. So I don't know. I can't tell you. I don't know. And the problem with Syria is, again, it's hard because there's not people, like, there's not people on the ground to determine what happened, although in the aftermath of this latest claim of a chemical weapons attack, you do have investigators who are able to go on their ground and collect samples in Duma, but it's really difficult to know. What I will say is this,

is this, I mean, I wouldn't, I'm not saying the Syrian government wouldn't use chemical weapons, but in the, it does, there is a striking pattern that is, I mean, it's really, it's an amazing pattern that whenever the Syrian government's about to win and take over an area, there's suddenly a chemical weapons attack. Right. That's often, like, that's often what happens, and it's a strange pattern because they really have no, they're not stupid. I mean, the Syrian government's, you know, guilty of a lot of things, but I wouldn't say they're stupid. And they have no reason to use, to launch a chemical weapons attack that would provoke intervention, you know, when they're about to take over or retake an area from rebel groups. It doesn't make any sense.

Whereas, you know, the rebels, various rebel groups do have the capacity to use chemical weapons. We do know that much. And they do have, you know, something to benefit from if there is an attack because it will provoke. international intervention. That's the only thing that can save them. Yeah. Because they're completely relying on it. Again, I don't know. All we can really do is speculate. Um, but it's just, it's really, it's really difficult to like know sometimes with Syria what's true and what's not. I wish I could have like a better solid, more solid answer than that. No, yeah. I mean, I think it's an honest answer. What I do think is most important is no matter what you hear in the press, I think it's always

important to be skeptical and to question everything, especially when it comes to to wars in the Middle East. Yeah. And because the U.S. has a nasty agenda, and they've lied in the past. Right. And, yeah, one of the main arguments that I heard after the accusations of the latest chemical attack was precisely what you said, that tactically it makes no sense. The Syrian government had the upper hand. You know, using chemical weapons would only draw in more, you know, Western imperialism, as we've seen. So tactically and strategically, logically, it was kind of incoherent why the Syrian government would do it. And then I think it's also worth noting that

that Trump's latest bombing of Syria premised on the fact or premised on the idea that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. I mean, when you watch the media, you won't understand this, but it has not been proven that a chemical attack has taken place and it has certainly not been proven who's even done it to this day. So the entire bombing was premised on something that has never been proven, even yet, even to this day. So it's just, it's really mind-numbing to see media reports about this, which just take it for

granted that yes, this happened and yes, of course, the Syrian government was the that did it. Yeah, and if you and if you question whether it was you like, you really are, I mean, you're just like not taken seriously. You're again treated like you're wearing a tinfoil hat. Despite that, I mean, and on top of that, it's, yeah, the one thing

that I've always found fascinating is that through repetition the media can make something into a truth. Right. And through, I mean, that's how it became true. It became true through repetition that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack. Whether it's been actually investigated and determined to have taken place or not, doesn't matter. You say it enough times, it's true.

Yeah. And the Syrian government, from all accounts, was totally willing to let, you know, international investigators come in and find out whether or not it took place and who did it. So as far as I know, they've cooperated with the international community wanting to have the investigation. Is that correct? Right. Yeah. Over the weekend, the OPCW actually was able to go into Duma, take samples, and leave. Okay. Cool. So we'll find out shortly, I suppose. Absolutely. So let's drill it down a little bit more into U.S. imperialism. Obviously, we've touched on it throughout this interview because it's such a crucial part of this entire conflict. maybe go a little deeper. What role has U.S. imperialism played in the Civil War and what does the U.S. ultimately want to happen in Syria? Well, the U.S. initially wanted the Syrian government to be overthrown. It's been wanting to overthrow the Syrian government for a long time. Not because, you know, the Syrian government isn't some, like, perfect leftist government

that the U.S. wants to get rid of in the traditional sense of, like, other kinds of governments the U.S. has wanted to get rid of. But the Syrian government doesn't always play ball with America. They have actually sided with the U.S. in the past, like during the Lebanese Civil War, the Syrian government actually intervene in Lebanon, like, basically in cooperation with the U.S. government to help fight the PLO. So there's been times, like, where the Syrian government has cooperated with the U.S. recently during, after September 11th, the Syrian government participated in the U.S. rendition program and allowed the U.S. to rendition people to Syria to be tortured. That said, the Syrian government also,

is a close ally of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war when the U.S. supported Iraq, which, by the way, was attacking Iran with chemical weapons. During that period, Syria stood by Iran. Syria has allowed people, you know, has allowed Hezbollah and Hamas, groups that the U.S. despises and calls terrorist groups, to basically, you know, come and live inside Syria and use it as like a haven. Syria is often used to transport weapons to these groups in some cases. So this is why Syria is bad to the U.S.

It stands in the way of U.S. and Israeli and Saudi hegemony and the region, dominance in the region. And it's been on this sort of like hit list of countries that have to go for quite some time. And so that is why Syria is bad. And that's why the U.S. wants to overthrow the government there. replace it with a government that is more applicable to U.S. interests. In the case of the U.S., they want to replace it, they want to replace it with some like Sunni

Islamist government, you know, in the sort of image of its Gulf state partners like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and what have you. And so that is the U.S. interest in Syria. And so that's what they've been trying to do all these years. I mean, the sort of the uprising gave them

the opportunity to do it. And they did, and they took that opportunity. And it was very similar, what they did in Syria was very, very similar to what the U.S. did, I would say, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the U.S. funded a collection of jihadist groups called the Mujahideen, and like to push out the Soviets. That's basically the formula they used in Syria. And they used a lot of the same actors, too. Saudi Arabia played a huge role in helping them do that in Afghanistan. In the case of Syria, they also used the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in exile for all. a long time. Uh, it's funny. The U.S., like, sometimes the U.S. loves Islamists. Sometimes they hate them. It depends which country. Um, and where. But, uh, the point is, is that,

that I mean, that's, I guess, I guess what U.S. imperial ambitions are in Syria, to replace it with a government that does what the U.S. wants. It's like another Jordan. Yeah. Um, but or, or to replace it with no government. That's another thing. I mean, the U.S. also likes to collapse governments and then they lead to, like, complete collapse, like you saw in Libya, which is now, like, has open slave markets where black migrants are like sold in public. It's really disgusting. It wasn't like that before. So that's, I mean, that's ultimately what you would have happened in Syria. The difference, I would say, with Syria, though, and the reason is that the U.S. didn't bet on the Russians getting involved. In 2015,

the Syrian government was in a really bad position. They were surrounded. Damascus was surrounded. And so the, and like you could have had a situation where the black flag was flying over Damascus had the Russians not gotten involved. But so the Russians are an ally of the Syrian government. And so Russia started bombing Syria, started bombing these various rebel factions and basically came in and saved the Syrian government from collapse. And so the U.S. didn't bet on that. There was also a tug of war inside the Obama administration because there was a recognition that if the Syrian government did fall, it would be replaced by a coalition. collection of al-Qaeda and ISIS groups, and that became a threat to U.S. national security interests, especially after ISIS started beheading Westerners.

So there was a tug of war inside the Obama administration, which is why Obama was hesitant to give more, even though this was one of the most well-funded and armed insurgencies in the history of insurgencies, Obama was hesitant to arm them more because he was afraid of what would happen if the Syrian government did completely collapse. I see. Yeah, let's talk about Turkey because we know Saudi Arabia and Israel are in cahoots with the U.S. as they've been for a long time, but Turkey plays an interesting role in all of this. So what are Turkey's interests in the region and what does Turkey want to see happen in Syria? Turkey, well, Turkey's got a couple things going on. They seem to have like an Ottoman hangover. There's no, there's like this resurgence of like fervor around the Ottoman Empire where they like they like want to reconquer these areas of the Middle East that used to be under Ottoman controls. I'm sorry? like hyper-nationalism? Yes.

I mean, it's really, it's really disturbing. But on top of that, Turkey, of course, has its own internal issues with the PKK. And obviously, the war in Syria empowered the PKK because they played, you know, they became, I mean, they fought a war. They became more experienced. And they also played a role in Iraq as well against ISIS, with fighting ISIS. And, and so that's Turkey's main concern, actually, at this point is the PKK, constantly. And, like, that's what, that's what basically motivated their operation in Afrin was to try, because they're, they don't want the YPG to exist.

They don't want the PKK to exist. They don't want, they, you know, obviously they hate Kurds. They hate Kurdish nationalism. So that's, like, Turkey's main goal at this point. But they've actually shifted quite a bit because in the past Turkey was all. all about overthrowing the Syrian government. Now they're sort of working in cooperation in a weird way where they're kind of like not bothering each other, if that makes sense.

But so Turkey's kind of switched sides. And to some degree they've switched sides. But Turkey has been one of the most, I would say, awful actors in this whole situation because it was the Turkish border, all of these like foreign fighters going into Syria through the Turkish border that allowed for ISIS to really become a thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you had foreign fighters

tens of thousands. Like, I don't think people understand the, uh, how big that, like, how much that, like, what that means. You had basically an army invade Syria, uh, through the Turkish border, an army of foreign fighters invade Syria. Tens of thousands of people from like 80 different countries around

the world coming to fight the jihad in Syria and they came in through the Turkish border. Right. And they played a disastrous role in this conflict, and Turkey knew it was taking place, and they're responsible. At this point, Turkey is, like, basically, I think, trying to annex northern Syria. Yeah, that's what looks like. I really think that's their next goal. And I don't know, it might actually be possible, but because they literally, like, they are

in control of, like, Idlib under these, under, which is basically, I mean, it's under Al-Qaeda control, but they sort of answer to the Turkish army at this point, and these different, like, FSA mercenaries. And now they've taken over Afrin. and so yeah it's awful I don't know what really like what to say about that it was really stunning to see as everybody was losing their minds and having a meltdown

over Eastern Ghouta like basically ignoring Afrin which actually caused the displacement of way more people and was like extremely extremely brutal campaign that destroyed an area of Syria that it actually remained perfectly fine throughout the conflict until Turkey destroyed it

yeah yeah we've um we have a sister podcast that I host with another comrade co-host of mine, and we've covered the Turkish assault on Afrin in depth over multiple, multiple episodes because, you know, it's not getting any attention, and it really hasn't gotten any attention. And Turkey is a NATO member, and there's lots of weird interests that come into play there. But, you know, the West has remained silent on what is an illegal invasion of Syria and Rojavan-controlled Afrin. And as you say, Turkey has basically taken over Afrin and is occupying it currently.

but that kind of hints at the question of Rojava broadly. So what are your thoughts on Rojava, on this, on the, you know, the Kurds, and what role has the Syrian government played in their relationship to the Rojava and Kurds in northern Syria? So, I mean, I'm not, I'm one of these people who I don't like to go to in depth on things I don't know much about. I have not had the opportunity to visit the, like, the YPG controlled areas in Syria. Okay. So I can't really speak to that from like an on the ground perspective. but what I can say is obviously

they played a major role in the defeat of ISIS and now they're being screwed and I would say like one of the biggest mistakes they made was continuing an alliance with the U.S. Because, I mean, what happened in Afrin I mean, the Syrian army offered to come in help

but they conditioned that on you have to basically put down your weapons and be reintegrated into the Syrian state and the YPG said no or the PKK said no. and so they've kind of like gone their separate ways and what I think should happen they actually do think I think the idea of like

sort of the autonomy that's been created in you know in the Rojava areas of Syria is really important and I think it's a good model for what should happen in other parts of Syria because local autonomy should exist in more parts of Syria but you know the problem is the involvement of the U.S. with the Kurds makes everybody else

skeptical and view them as like an enemy and instead I mean I think it ends up fracturing people I think what should happen is that that those areas should like be reintegrated into the Syrian state with more local autonomy and local control and ultimately should be used really as a model for the rest of Syria and I really at some point want to visit those areas I haven't had the opportunity to but I think the Kurds have really been

like just they're constantly given a terrible a terrible hand over and over again although the only the only place I would say that the only Kurdish areas I have visited are northern Iraq which is much much

obviously different than northern Syria but that's like a different story they have like different political parties and are kind of at war with each other and they hate the PKK in northern Iraq so yeah we had a we've we've had a whole episode like a two hour episode kind of covering all the nuances from somebody

who's who's been to the Kurdish controlled areas of northern Syria and we're worked with them. So if anybody wants to hear more about that, they can go to our back catalog and find that. One of the big critiques, as you say, of the Rojavan Kurds is their use or their sort of tentative alliance with U.S. to fight ISIS. And from the Kurds, they knew that the U.S. was never really their friend and that they would dispose of them the first second they became inconvenient. And so in the same way that the U.S. was using the Kurds. The Kurds were, you know, using U.S. air support in and to sort of help them defend against ISIS invasion jihadist invasion etc and so it was it was sort of it's one

of those things where war makes strange bedfellows they were trying to they were trying to defend themselves I don't think that was wrong it's like when you're up against ISIS is an existential threat like you kind of have to ally with whoever you can right um and that but I think this is what people on the ground say it's like it's it's the ongoing alliance with the U.S. that that like the U.S. is using is like using the Kurds to try and to continue to fracture Syria that's like the sort of and that that alliance continues

even though it's like an alliance that I mean the U.S. didn't do anything about Afrin exactly but like that alliance continues to keep like and there's also you have to understand there's a lot of Kurdish Arab antagonism that exists across the region and has for quite some time for different reasons

that we don't have to go into now but that also keeps people fractured and they like it's it's it's almost that they live in two different worlds um it really like sometimes like these different these different groups it's really like almost as if they live in two different worlds right uh but yeah that's a story for another day exactly it's i mean this is so complicated we could go down a million different paths but um i do i do kind of want to hit on a couple more um questions before we wrap up and this is sort of aimed at the future and what positions leftists should generally take so many leftists here in the west at least at least those who

acknowledge the role that jihadist groups play in the rebel factions, refuse to take a side between the Syrian rebels and the Assad government, opting instead to support the people of Syria, you know, unquote, by opposing both jihadists and the government. What are your thoughts on this position? And what is the best possible outcome, given the reality on the ground, for ordinary Syrians, in your opinion? The best possible outcome is for the U.S. to get the fuck out of Syria. Yeah. Like, and I think as leftists, we should be able to agree with that much. as for you don't mean you don't look you don't have to pick a side you're also not Syrian like if I mean you're not living there you don't have to pick a side right but you should be able to not be on the side of like US imperialism

and also it doesn't mean like you should support the state staying intact it doesn't mean supporting Assad it doesn't mean supporting Assad in his inner circle it just means supporting the the sovereignty of like the Syrian state to be able to remain a state to support the infrastructure of the state to stay in place where it needs to be like to oppose the disintegration of Syria and most importantly like what we should be able to agree on regardless of where you stand what like left faction you're in or what you think about the Syrian war is we should support an end to the war and a de-escalation of violence I think that should be that's like the most important like thing that we should all be able to agree on is de-escalation of violence and ending the war. And that might mean that the government for now stays in place.

But if that's what's best, if the ending the war is what's best for Syrians, then that is what should be supported. I believe that that's the best thing that that's best for Syrians, ending the war, having reconciliation agreements as have taken place in various parts of Syria and letting Syrians determine their own future. You know, and also like sometimes that means not like everybody, sometimes the left loves to do this thing where like, we have to listen to Syrian voices, but they always choose, you know, certain Syrian voices over others. And sometimes the loudest Syrian voices or Arab voices that you hear from are the most well-resourced ones. And they're well-resourced because they're working in favor of U.S. imperialism.

And unfortunately, a lot of – I mean, this is what's – a lot of this is fractured the left is this idea of we have to listen to Syrian voices, but like which Syrian voices? Because there's lots of Syrian voices that you never hear from because Qatar and Saudi Arabia, aren't funding their microphones. And I mean that very literally. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think it's what's, again, like, go, you know, just go back to basics. The most important thing in this conflict is to support the de-escalation of violence.

And you can actually support that no matter which side you stand by. Whether you like the government, whether you hate the government, whether you love the rebel groups, you know? De-escalation of violence is like the way to go. Absolutely. Yeah. And every step of the way, what we should, should be thinking about it is not your own ideological purity sitting in your comfy chairs in the

west, but you got to be thinking about what is ultimately best for the ordinary working people of Syria, the ordinary people on the ground there. And that, what's best for them is honestly not the collapsing of the goddamn government. And let's go into that. Because I think it's worth, as the final question, worth kind of going into that possible future. If the Syrian government collapses and completely loses this war, what are the likely consequences for Syria? and its people, in your opinion? Well, what would happen is that forces that have weapons would take over. When you don't have a government, when you have complete, like, anarchy, the people that

take over are people who have weapons and who are strong, like people who are strong and have weapons. And people turn, like, people end up turning to criminal gangs to keep them safe. You have, basically, you have indefinite civil war, where you just have people fighting over territory, you have people fighting over resources. There's, like, no order, you know, people, and in the case of Syria, you have an Islamist element attached this where you have basically just like a right to right wing

thuggish organizations that believe in like imposing an Islamic state taking over. So you would probably see, you know, women would be subjected to all kinds of laws where their rights would be curtailed. You would see minorities being ethnically cleansed, which

is actually, you'd be basically all the things that happened in the insurgent held areas of Syria where their government did collapse because the Syrian state did collapse in large swaths of Syria. And what you had as a result of that was the takeover of those areas by ISIS and Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. So that would be the ultimate outcome, which like I said, curtailing of women's rights, extreme curtailing of women's rights. And, you know, minorities subjected to ethnic cleansing or forced conversion in the case of Yazidis, forced into sexual slavery.

I mean, it's like apocalyptic. So that is not a good outcome. That's a terrible outcome. We've seen what it looks like when the Syrian state collapses And that's what it looks like Absolutely Yeah I think that's worth

Restating is You know we don't have to speculate Like we can see in the areas Where the Syrian government Have failed exactly what happens We have an empirical objective proof Of who fills that power vacuum And it is not anarchist

It is not Marxist And it's not progressives And it won't be if the entire state collapses So Especially in an area Especially in an area of the world Where you don't already have groups like that that exists

Like you do have small groups of communists and anarchists and like revolutionaries. Okay, you do have like small little pockets of that, but they're not strong. They aren't well armed and they aren't in a position to take over any governments. If those governments collapsed.

Absolutely. Like the Salafi jihadists are. That's the unfortunate reality in the Middle East. That's the reality. Exactly. Well, thank you, Rania, for coming on. I appreciate it so much. Your work is amazing. I've been following it and I'll continue to follow it. You are a voice of reason and nuance in a situation that is just steamrolled by propaganda and absurdity.

Before I let you go, can you please let listeners know where they can find you and your work? Yeah, so I've been terrible about updating my website, but I keep swearing to myself, I will. I'm going to do it in a few days. So you can find some of my work at ranya callik.com. Also, follow me on Twitter at Rania Callick,

and then also on Facebook, my Facebook page. I actually update that the most regularly with just like my own work. So thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. And programs like yours are so important because there's so few places where people can actually, like, talk in a nuanced manner about issues related to Syria. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. Let's keep in touch. Maybe we can have you back on as this conflict develops and whatever the conclusions this ultimately reaches.

We can have you back on to analyze that if you would like that. Thank you so much. I'd love to. I'm from the badahtal me and a da, he's thinking that's a-mock'n't you're a-is-daw-kid, wak'n, I've seen what a man. I'm a-mahn, I'ma'nad by-dhawned by-dae, so it's cavae, and made me from gaza and thaw-dnaud. A-hap, l'nade the kni-ranas-duk,

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