Jenny Keesden
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
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there's a little bit more to it than that right yeah absolutely and again it's it's such a big question and it's a question of how far back do you go how far do you zoom out uh because in both senses as you keep moving back from today the plot kind of thickens um and as you you know if you imagine if you're looking at the google maps of syria and then you you click the button that takes you out and out and the map gets wider and wider
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The story kind of fills itself in as well. Things make more sense when they are put in that context. And I think a good place to start, maybe, is this consistent for a long time American attitude to this whole region, not just Syria, which is to play...
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to play very carefully to your advantage and make alliances where it suits you and continue them where it suits you and not stick to them where it doesn't. And that is, yeah, one aspect of that is the resources, which goes further than just oil, is also gas, and is also the resource of the space to create a trade group, right? That's a really important question in the Middle East at the moment.
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Yeah. And it's one of the reasons that Kurdistan is such an important place politically. A lot of these lines of potential trade routes and these kind of lines of power and money, they intersect and they cross over here. And so there are all these different resources at play. And I think another thing that's important to look at is that, yeah, the... the U.S., as the U.S.
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government, as you put it, as distinct from the citizens in any way, doesn't just go into this blind and kind of react day by day. It's not like a reactive force in the world. The U.S. government is, and would proudly announce, I think, as well, the previous thing on this one point, that
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they are, no matter who the administration is and where it's politically leading at the time, a very proactive force. They have a plan where they go and they try and put it into practice.
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And famously, historically, and very intensely, a lot of that has played out in the Middle East because of the Middle East's position in the world, resources, and the role that it's played in kind of who gets to be the big dog in the world over the years and throughout history. It's become, for those various reasons, very important.
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And so, yeah, again, without many podcasts of its own, and I'm sure you are making them, so I won't try and summarize it, but I think you can't talk about America's role in Syria and the Middle East in general without mentioning Israel and the role the Israeli state plays for and with America.
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And things like, you know, we're all sort of following, and for you guys following more closely, because we're all following the current American administration and leadership and what's been coming out of there. sometimes you think like, God, is it just nuts?
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And when you look at something like, you know, the video for like the new Gaza that they're going to make, for example, Trump's Gaza, whatever that was.
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Yeah. So, I mean, it makes it sick. And then you're also not sure if it's serious or if it's mad, but I think unfortunately it's actually, yeah, it's quite an intelligent play. And what it speaks to that is relevant to what I'm saying here is this kind of long-term plan, right?
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that to annihilate a region to the best of your ability so that you can move in and develop it is a tried and tested method of many, many governments. And America's not the only one.
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But at the moment, we're at a kind of crucial moment in the Middle East when one sort of wall of forces are trying to greatly reduce the role and power of some others so that they can put their plan into place and so that they can Yeah, so they can make money. You know, it's always worth following money and where development can be made and where trade routes can be made.
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And so what happened, the timing of the regime change that we've just discussed, the timing of HDS being able to move into Damascus and take it over,
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it's no coincidence that it came after like a shift in the Israeli like genocidal war on Gaza and after what the then military action they were taking against Hezbollah in Lebanon yeah which they felt then had up to a point achieved what they wanted to achieve and then things kind of moved to Syria right yeah so I'm not saying that the new government has kind of come from has been sponsored by that at all I think there's a huge amount of tension there but
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the withdrawal of like the weakening and or withdrawal of forces like Iran and Hezbollah here played a huge role with them being able to establish themselves as a government so that is also something that you know that's not directly necessarily every step sort of kind of puppeteered by the US at all but it is a part of politics that the US has had a long historical influence on and that it backs and that it's in conversation is in the whole of the Middle East it's this kind of greater Middle East plan it's
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vision for it if you if you will and the other aspect that I think is important to talk about is the US's uh relationship with North and East Syria specifically you mentioned there like you know this like supposed friendship with we can say the like friendship with the Kurds as people will refer to it or the alliance and coalition between the SDF and the US which is
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was sort of most famous and most well-known during the fight against ISIS, when the international coalition, it's obviously spearheaded by America, was bombing and providing air support for the SDF, as they called it, the boots on the ground, the actual ground force that could go and take territory back from ISIS, which, yes, did look like a friendship, but I think from both sides,
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everyone always knew that that was a tactical alliance perhaps perhaps a strategic alliance at best we can say yeah but i think that the u.s has not got a history of operating on a basis of like friendship or of that kind of commitment to the forces it works with and a lot of history and modern recent history can attest to that um and from the side of people here
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I think it's really important to say that yeah people were angry and that you know what you heard there you were talking about interviewing people and then kind of being like what are they doing like we we fought a war with them partly on their behalf like and then they deserve yes people are angry but the more kind of politically engaged someone is sort of moving up that scale I think the less faith they ever had in the US yeah so and now you've got the US kind of muttering about withdrawing their troops from Syria right yeah
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And it's deja vu because they said this before. I was actually here, Wayne. They said this before. Back in 2019, I also happened to be in northern Syria. And it was, if I'm not wrong, it was Trump again. Yeah, it was. And they said we're withdrawing our forces from Syria. Did they actually withdraw? Not exactly, no.
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You still saw them driving around in big cars, mostly right next to the oil fields. It was almost comical, sort of like when parts... Yeah. When parts next to the oil fields. But that withdrawal was symbolic. That withdrawal was... They withdrew from bases right on the border with Turkey.
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Which lies just to the north of Syria, and as such, just next to north of East Syria, for anyone without the map immediately in their head. And they...
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announced it very very clearly and very publicly and so it was a kind of it was a green flag to say to turkey yeah come on you come yeah we're not going to stop you we're not gonna um because what you don't want to do is hit an american by accident as you gave the examples they you know they brought down the drone because it was over an american base not because it was bombing civilians nearby which dozens of other were
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And so you had that kind of symbolic withdrawal, which led to, in 2019, was one of the times that Turkey has annexed a section, essentially annexed a section of Syria, north and east Syria, under the remit of the Autonomous Administration, but nonetheless still technically Syrian territory. And in that time, it was Serekhaniye and Girespi, which people may have heard of.
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And so that, yeah, that was the green flag to Turkey to take that step. And at that time, yeah, I'll maybe share, it's a lot of, A lot of political stuff, a lot of acronyms, a lot of all this, and maybe I'll just share a wee anecdote.
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At that time, when they made the announcement they were going to leave, people organized a march to an American base. And I was here at the time, and I joined it with some of the women's organizations. It was the most amazing day. Like, I sort of went home and wrote this massive journal entity, because I'd already been here for a very long time, but my mind was still a bit blown by it.
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For one thing, it was such an example of how the social movement here works and what society is like and all the complexities. Because, yeah, a lot of people here are very wedded to the liberatory, progressive, grassroots, democratic, women's freedom, ecological movement that I'm sure you've spoken about in your programs on Rojava.
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And thousands and thousands of people completely take ownership of that and see themselves in that and are the driving force of that. Obviously, that doesn't mean every single person here is 100% sold on government at all.
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Some of them are just trying to get on with life. Some of them are, you know, I mean, if you talk about women's freedom, there's always going to be a few men who are a bit like, what does this mean for me? What do I have to give up? So it would be silly. I've encountered that. It would be silly and new topic to say that everyone's totally sold.
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However, nobody wants to get invaded by one of the largest armies in NATO.
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So you have this sort of actually even broader than usual kind of coming together, like groups from the sort of like tribal clan structures here that are still like a really political force and that don't, you know, have a kind of...
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uneasy truth and sort of slowly learning each other relationship with yeah with the movement you can say but they really came out in in force as well um as well as like the Kurdish movement as well as like lots of different ethnic groups and we marched and to be honest I didn't know we were going to an American base a lot of people didn't it was quite a confusing day because I think you didn't want to announce things too widely until they got there yeah um and we went and did this kind of yeah they like
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read out a letter symbolically i think in some of the arabic community leaders went up to the base and we the majority of people there's hundreds of hundreds of people in this crowd and they stayed back at a distance and i found out later that that is because the american soldiers said if two bigger group of people come close we will like we will open fire like that that information was given yeah um i don't know what they were scared of you know it's like like any mart here the people in the front row are always granites yeah yeah it's old ladies yeah it's
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No different on that day. I mean, they're a bit scary to be said. I don't, I think that it's a bit embarrassing, isn't it? And I reckon soldiers would be scared of them. But anyway, that stuff makes sense. But while we were there by like pure chance, a fleet of not tanks, but big armoured cars rolled in. And there was just this moment that I really clearly remember. It just kind of paused.
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And they rolled through the crowd and the crowd parted. and turned and looked and nobody teared or clapped, obviously. There was no sense of, oh, it's the Americans, right? But nobody sort of threw, you know, threw anything or threw insults or chanted anything negative either.
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There was just this stillness and this really palpable energy of this kind of sense of people looking at, you know, obviously they're just these soldiers that happen to be driving these trucks, but they really symbolized something more than that. And people were kind of looking
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sort of insisting that you look them in the eye saying like hey if anyone owes anyone you owe us after everything we fought for and everything we've done yeah 13 000 martyrs if they would call them exactly exactly yeah so many people lost in the fight against isis and so much like blood and sweat and tears given and there was just yeah this palpable sense of like at least have the decency to kind of look at us and admit what you're doing because you know what you're doing yeah
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And it really, yeah, it really felt, it was very kind of moving at the time. And I feel like it's very symbolic into politics here of how, you know, someone asked me the other day, what was it like for people to rely on America, knowing that they'd betrayed them? And I said, well, they didn't. They never relied on them.
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But, you know, there's that kind of, the expectation of at least some sense of dignity. That is a very important concept for people here, dignity and, yeah. So yeah, I always remember that. Say again, I know it's confusing. That was five and a half years ago now. And now you've got this sort of, is history repeating itself?
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They're talking about, well, the troops, I think it's important to understand what that means. What that means is they're talking about potentially giving a green flag for more military aggression. And I think they kind of haven't decided yet if they're really going to do it. And there's a lot of things in, in the balance. And in terms of, I'll just say one more, one more thing.
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And it's out, I think it's a bit long. In terms of like the plan for Syria and America's role, like this is my opinion. I can't say for sure that this is the, the definite reality, but my understanding of the situation is, is that once again, people here in this movement are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.
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And the rock and the hard place now looks like you've got the new government that set itself up in Damascus, HBS, and their goal, if they can windle it and get the outside and international support, is to build your sort of socially, at least if not politically, the model's going to look a bit like Afghanistan and the Taliban, right?
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like from the signs of changes they've made to the constitution, incidents of like violent sectarianism and feminicide have been rising, attacks they've already made on women's rights, like very rapidly, and things that have been put in, like the president now legally has to be a Muslim, all of this stuff. That's sort of their plan.
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Hi there. Yeah, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
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But on the other hand, I think if you kind of let the American government lose on Syria to build up its plan, At the moment, I think they are seeing an opportunity to use this kind of formula from Iraq in 2020.
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And I think they want to create this sort of very open to capital markets, which creates kind of space in which the north and east area with majority, though not entirely Kurdish, can sort of play this role that the Kurdistan region of Iraq has played.
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Yeah, of course. Yeah, great. I'm glad you asked about that because in some senses, you know, there is some horrible stuff in there, but this is the beautiful bit. This is the great bit, the bit that we should be talking about at the moment. So, yeah, the Tishin Dam is a big hydroelectric facility that is on the Euphrates River.
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If you look at Amapiseria, Euphrates is kind of in the middle at the top. And that is... The region, roughly, where this offensive that we spoke about of the Turkish-funded militias, which has come from the west across to the east, at times closer and further away from the river and currently a few kilometres away, that's where that offensive has been stopped by the SDF.
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and cannot progress any further, despite intensive air support from Turkey. And they're sort of increasingly putting pressure on that, but it hasn't got anywhere. But it's close, right? You know, it's not too far away and people are following the news.
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And what's right on the other side, if you get across the river there, there's the dam and then there's a bridge further to the north, the Kerakozak Bridge, that's similarly kind of crucial. And if you get across the river, you're not far away at all from the city of Kobani. which I'm sure most of your lessons will have heard of, is this massively important symbol of anti-fascist resistance.
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It was one of the ignition points of the revolution for the social movement here, and it was really important in the fight against ISIS. And I think it's safe to say that Turkey via the SNA had its eye on Kobani again, and that this is in fact an attack on Kobani, which has been kind of held back. And so the dam is important symbolically as this like strategic river crossing.
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It's this kind of no pass around, like they will not pass moment. It's also important logistically, like for the society here, because it's a hydroelectric facility. It supplies electricity, helps with the supply of water for various reasons for thousands and thousands of people. It's now out of action.
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It might go without saying, but when you're in the middle of an active war zone, you can't keep running a place like that. So that is directly attacking and impacting the society and normal communities here. And so, yeah, it's no wonder that those normal communities and that society always feel very, very implicated and are kind of ready to... to stand up and defend themselves.
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It's not as... Yeah, the military assault is not kept separate from the society here. The society is also under attack. Yeah. Indirectly. Attacks on infrastructure such as that, and directly by, like, drone strikes on many, many civilian targets, unfortunately. Yeah.
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In recent times, that has increased, particularly in villages surrounding Bani, and we've seen, like, kids also hospitalised and killed as a part of that. So on the 8th of January...
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What began was that what they call a convoy, like a big truck of different vehicles, got together and arranged and organized from different towns across northern Syria to go to Kishin Dam as this very big symbol, this very clear, important physical location and also very symbolic thing where war has also been fought before.
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There's also in previous campaigns against ISIS, for example, there was fighting in the region. So People feel like, you know, their sons and daughters have fought for this river crossing before. It's still, you know, it's there in the historical memory as well.
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And people went and since then, which is almost exactly two months, as we're recording this, we're right around the two months anniversary month. And there's been a constant presence there, a protest on the dam. And that's got several different kind of aspects to it. It is mostly to raise the voices and raise awareness and make visible what's happening.
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And yeah, if it's hard to understand why like hundreds of people would go from their homes to somewhere that is closer to the active fighting to somewhere that's in a very unstable region, like, Yeah, first of all, you have to understand that nowhere in north of East Syria is actually safe. Right.
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Like, in Kamaz of the city where I am, there's been residential buildings, bombs dropped on them from drones, like, within the last couple of months as well. It's not like... Yeah. And there's this, yeah, sense of safety wherever you are.
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The difference is a sense of doing something about it and of standing together and coming together in these, like, amazingly brave and amazingly creative ways that only the communities of North East Syria can manage. So...
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Yes, unfortunately, during these two months, there have consistently been airstrikes on the dam, and I don't have the exact statistics, and you wouldn't necessarily get an honest answer about how many of them have come directly from Turkey and how many have come from SNA drones.
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But the SNA drones are paid for by the Turkish state anyway, so at the end of the day... Yeah, morally, how much difference does it make?
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And they have attacked the civil protests there, and up until now, I believe 25 civilians have been killed, and many more than that hospitalised. But despite this, and in the shadow of this, with the most beautiful defiance, that protest has continued. And what the videos that maybe don't get shared as much, or shared enough that people might not have seen, are also all these images
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you know, which are very, I can attest are very real because I went there myself a few weeks ago, which is everybody getting out and dancing at the slightest opportunity or slightest excuse or lack of an excuse. And the most amazing art that's been made, like paintings of the people who've been killed or as I would say here, fallen martyr in these two months.
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There's been theatre, like theatre performed using the bits of the bombed out cars that were bombed just a few days before as props to kind of like tell the story of what's been happening. Like the most like creative things, also statements for the press.
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all your different organizations show up so like the organized youth show up as the youth and obviously the women's organizations as women saying like you know this is our revolution this is our community and we know what it looks like when it gets occupied we're not just going to stand by and see it happen again it's our land it's our water and it's our kids is the refrain that kind of gets repeated over and over again and of course they're there in solidarity as well with the with the SDF themselves with the military force it would be it would be crazy if they weren't yeah
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Because, yeah, they are also embedded in their communities. No, they're not extracted from the society the way that most kind of state armies are. So, yeah, the situation at Tehran is still ongoing. And when I was there, it really was the most amazing experience. There were bombings while I was there.
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And tragically, one of the people I got to know there, who was a journalist, his name was Egid Roj, just less than two weeks after I got back, I found out that he'd also been killed in another drone strike. So it was, yeah.
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it's very very um just kind of it doesn't it doesn't stop the aggression doesn't stop but nonetheless people kind of coming together to resist it doesn't stop either and once i've been there it seemed a lot less crazy or hard to imagine that people would come together around it because you see like the immense power that it has and you see that how everyone here has lost someone though like the vast majority of people here have lost members of their family you said yourself 13 000
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fallen in the fight against isis alone right um and since then like war one way or another has been going on so people know what loss means already they've already lost but they're not gonna let that make them step back they're gonna do their fallen loved ones justice and continue to stand up in their name and yeah it's a it's a very sort of big thing but it's really powerful when you see it in in person and in all its kind of humanity and and humor and joy despite the situation
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Yeah, sure. No, so thanks for that. Yeah, I've also been getting a lot of questions about Otan's letter and I'm really glad to hear that you guys are going to do a programme on it because... Western media wants to report it in this way that's very snazzy and there's like bolts of the blue and something crazy's happening.
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Yes, so if they are interested in following the updates and so on that I've been doing, I've got Instagram and TikTok channels, which are both at jkeysdon, I'm assuming you can stick that written form somewhere.
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And Telegram channel as well, if people find it easier to sort of get, yeah, that's just the most condensed way to kind of download information videos or whatever, which you can find under the same name and there's also links to it on the Instagram TikTok.
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And on there we've got a wee link tree that has some suggestions for if people want to support like ways to donate, say, to the Kurdish Red Present and stuff like that. And then
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specifically yeah i mean there is a lot that people can do and whatever it is it all starts with getting more i wouldn't say informed i would say getting more connected right so getting informed is a part of that but not just in the sense of information learning like it's also connecting with like the feeling of things here and why it's become so important to so many people across the world not just people from here yeah and the more we learn about that the more we'll start to see like
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how we can be a friend to the movement here and where how our role can fit um and i know that there are specifically in america a couple of organizations um is it that debbie bookchin's been really prominent in organizing one of them yeah emergency committee for rojava emergency committee for rojava that's the one uh yeah and you had emergency in there somewhere that's definitely worth looking up and following a lot of um
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work that they do and you also got like think tanks like the Kurdish Peace Institute that do kind of lobbying and so yeah there are some there is some stuff uh from coming from the United States as well but I think yeah the more people get a chance to kind of learn about stuff here and see the connection and be able to see and find themselves in it and I think that's got a lot to do with what you were just speaking about there you put so well I wouldn't extend it much more but
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Really, unfortunately, it has to actually be spoken about in a kind of more long-term and intelligent way that sets the context and like, yeah, puts that and makes things a bit more clear because it is something with a background and it's connected to a lot of things.
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Yeah, like people here, it's really, there's always war happening and always war kind of filing on top of you, but that's never what it's about. The question is always what are you fighting for and what are you fighting to defend? And what would you be doing if there was no war? Everyone here will always say if there was no war, we'd still have enough work to do.
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with all the really like, what's that word? Ambitious, like social transformation that people here are really committed to. There's enough going on and it's very big. And as you put it, it's very beautiful and very joyful.
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And so that's, yeah, that's the bit that I encourage people to try and learn more about because that's the bit that makes you stay and makes people like me stick around for years, finding out more and more and making friends and getting closer and closer to the communities here.
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And of course, that whole political process that Ojan's recent statement is a part of is going to affect the situation here in North and East Syria. because the situation here a lot of the time depends on the actions of the Turkish state and on expansionism and aggression from there. And so as the political situation changes, it will affect that.
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What it is not is like a call or a statement that means that the SDF has to lay down their arms and say, this is for several reasons absolutely not what it is. The main one of those being that the SDF is not and never has been the BAA. And that's something that they've tried many times over the years to make very clear, but unfortunately has not always been heard and acknowledged.
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And so whatever this statement means, and you guys will go into that in your program, whatever it means for the PKK, for the situation in North Kurdistan, it's a different situation here.
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And so the SDF is in a moment of like a big question and a big change, but it's much more to do with what's been happening in Syria politically and to do with the government and the interim government that installed themselves here and the regime changed. and of course the ongoing war and situation of invasion that they're facing.
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So there's a lot of big questions for the SDF, but I think it's important right now that we don't kind of confuse and misunderstand with this sort of parallel process that's going on.
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Yeah, so obviously what's happened to North East Syria and North East Syria and to the SDF is very connected to the whole overall Syria process. And you're right, when you hear the reporting on it, I think lots of parts of it can get erased. And kind of depending who's talking and what their angle is or whatever, there are a lot of things left out, not just the Kurds in North East Syria, but...
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other minority ethnic groups or like women organizing across Syria, like all of these things. It's a very complex situation, which I won't pretend I can completely lay out and summarize for everyone in five minutes. But yeah, what you did have was the,
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culminates in the end of a period and a massive change when as you say there was a regime change there was a change of government and that happened with this like offensive sweeping down from idlib to damascus succeeding in taking over the government in damascus from the assad family which was the end of a 61 year reign which caused absolute jubilation, it's safe to say, all across Syria.
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And that includes where I am in, not just me, Syria, because anyway, just, yeah, people were very happy and celebrating, but also there were cities here. When you look at the map and you see this, like, semi-autonomous region, what you had to understand was that there were actually, within the cities, there were neighbourhoods and sections that were still under the Assad government.
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It wasn't as simple as, like, the whole city is in the autonomous administration. So here as well, there were still statues of Assad and people took to the streets and tore them down.
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And really close to actually where I'm recording this today, there's a roundabout where they took down the statue of Assad and it's been replaced by pictures of the martyrs, so people who have fallen fighting for the autonomy of the region here and fighting for their political system. So, you know, it's very, very beautiful. People celebrated.
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And we're happy with a qualifier, with a very big qualifier. You know, you saw the jails opened as well and the flags went off. But yeah, it was a real moment of jubilation and celebration. But unfortunately...
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the force which eventually succeeded in toppling Assad and installing itself as the now, as they're saying, the interim or transitional government of Syria, we can say it was not one of the many progressive, democratic, alternative forces that originally, in the uprisings, weakened the Assad government back in 2011. Since then, things have changed. And this isn't a podcast directly about that.
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I'm sure you guys speak about it as well at other times. But instead, what you have is HTS, who are a kind of conglomerate militia of these different militia groups. There's another acronym for you there as well, James, I think.
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Pointing people to resources is... is always very useful. They're a kind of mixed up amalgamation of different militias who are operating in Syria. And what's crucial to say about them is that their political background and perspective, a lot of people in these organizations are like,
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Really, really similar, unfortunately, and all too familiar to the people here who fought against ISIS, the Islamic State, because they're coming from similar backgrounds. And also to Al-Qaeda and the organizations who were kind of the Syrian branches of Al-Qaeda. I've played a really direct role in founding HTS.
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And they want to now sort of put on a new face, put on a suit, go out and shake the world's hand and become world statesmen and become the government, which unfortunately it looks like all of our governments are all too willing to very quickly accept.
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And we'll get in a minute, we can talk a bit specifically about the role that, and almost your listeners are in the States and that the American government has been playing here, but yeah. Yeah, so there's a big qualifier on how much people are celebrating because of the very dodgy history and the real threat that HCS's politics holds, unfortunately, particularly for ethnic minorities and women.
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And they're establishing their power and it's by no means a kind of non-violent or peaceful process. And there's a lot of tensions flaring up and a lot of problems. However... Yes, it is the case that in a lot of Syria, the majority of Syria, outright like warfare on the ground has pronounced stop because this one group has taken power. And so we're in a different moment.
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We're in a different kind of process. So what's different up here? What's different up in the north and east and what's not being discussed as much? And the point that I'm often trying to make when I'm trying to write articles and doing interviews at the moment is that like, Actually, the war in the whole of Syria has not completely stopped.
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Mostly, yes, we can say in most regions, but significantly here in north and east Syria, it's not just that there is still classes or flare-ups between different groups, like there might be in other regions. There is a full-scale invasion, a ground invasion with air support that has also been going on. And that was timed. Where does that come from? What is that? What does that look like?
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This is another group, another three-letter acronym for you. But the important thing to understand is that this offensive was tying to coincide with the HCS takeover. HCS also has a lot of links with the Turkish state. And I personally would not go so far as to say that that government is a Turkish public government or that the relationship is that direct. But there is a relationship there.
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And what you saw when they kind of successfully went on the offensive was that at the same time,
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other armed groups which operate are kind of loosely affiliated and mostly operating on a mercenary sub paid basis rather than being kind of ideologically driven or whatever yeah but are affiliated under the name the sna the syrian national army which is even more confusing because they're not and were never the national army of syria yeah yeah um what they are is yeah these um
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Paid militias, which, yeah, we can describe, you might describe as jihadist gangs, mercenaries, et cetera, et cetera. And it kind of depends. It's like a mix of different forces. What's very important there is the very close relationship that they have with the Turkish state.
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Essentially, the Turkish government has made the choice that it wants to continue its aggression and its expansionism on Northern Syria. And rather than immediately sending their own army, they instead pay and fund and direct and support.
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these militias, who are also operating for their own benefit, yes, but the relationship between them, their actions right now in the Turkish state is much more direct.
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So at the same time as you have this sweep to the south that caused the regime change in Syria, heading to the east, so to originally the region of Sheba, followed by the city of Minbij and the region around there, you have this onslaught from the SA. And that is what the SDF, who you originally mentioned, are currently up against. And that's the situation that we're in, and it's
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It's still ongoing. It's very much not stopped. It's still very much like hot engagement and hot fighting that is happening.