Vladimir von Wilgenburg
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Okay, hi everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. Today, we're very lucky to be joined by Vladimir von Wilhenburg, who's an underground journalist who covers Syria and Kurdistan. He's written two books, including one on the alliance between the SDF and the coalition. Is that a fair introduction, Vladimir?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. There has obviously been a massive increase in a massive change in the conflict in Syria in the last week or so, just under a week. And I think the information that's available to people is often very bad, very delayed or one side or other putting out propaganda things, which
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
mischaracterized the situation on the ground especially with regard to the syrian national army who we're going to talk about would you mind giving us a sort of very brief explanation of what has happened since last wednesday when hts who we'll have to explain later launched their operation against aleppo
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
they now control all of Idlib province so in the past the Syrian government they controlled some parts of Idlib but now they control the HDS they control all of Idlib yeah so I think if we start by looking I think most people who listen to this will be familiar with the SDF with the autonomous administration in northeast Syria and with the Rojava revolution and they'll be wondering kind of the question I get mostly is like how does this impact that
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
That's what people are asking. So with that in mind, I think we should explain perhaps, we've talked before in this show about Operation Peace Spring, Euphrates Shield, these Turkish incursions into previously SDF controlled areas and the genocidal violence that accompanied that or ethnic cleansing, however you want to phrase it.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Can you explain what's happened in the areas where the SNA have advanced and what that's meant for the Kurdish people who live there, or in some cases are still there?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, you meet like in northeast Syria, you meet sometimes like either former regime soldiers or people who have left regime areas and like they've made their lives there. Yeah. So now we have the situation, right? Well, yeah, we have these two little islands. We'll just call them YPG for the ease of, to not introduce another acronym, right? Of like Kurdish armed folks in Aleppo.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
To complicate this further, and people will probably have seen this, so I want to explain it. In Deir ez-Zor, we have a different situation, right? We have the SDF attacking Iranian-backed militias and the regime. Do you feel comfortable explaining what's going on in Deir ez-Zor and why that's a different calculus?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, okay, so that leaves us with, I guess, ANES getting a little bit larger in the south and then smaller in the west.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah. That gives us a pretty good summary of the situation, I think. So let's talk about HTS a bit, because I think you're going to see one of two things, right? When we talk about the SNA and HTS, a lot of outlets will just collapse them under the same descriptor. They will just say Syrian rebels. And I think people will think of the original largely secular uprising in Syria in 2011.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
And if they have not been paying attention, They'll realize that ISIS has been and gone, but they'll think, oh, these must be the same guys. These are not the same guys. Well, some of them may be the same guys who are originally part, like Jelani was originally sent there by Baghdadi way back to be part of ISIS. But these are not the secular rebels who originally rose up in Syria.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
And so can you explain, like HTS has this very interesting kind of legitimacy project, right? Like it's trying to build a pseudo state and present like a kind of gentler jihadism. I don't know how to say it, but can you explain a little bit of this transformation of HDS and what you make of it?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, there's a $10 million bounty on Jilani still, right? They just never took it away from, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, I think that's the crucial difference, right? At least for the US, like that makes them kind of more amenable than ISIS or even Al-Qaeda is that, yeah, they have this nationally contained jihadi vision.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
yeah everyone wants um i think ukraine has really reinforced this they want war to be like colors on a map and a front line and the front line moves and that's you know and that's just not how like oftentimes those little lines on a map will be in reality it's people driving around and pick up trucks with dishkas in the back wondering where the other guys are and what's going on you know it's not like ukraine where you have trenches and people firing at each other from trench lines to gradually move and uh
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
As much as it would be easy to have modelists, we just don't in Syria.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, the British media is terrible for that. They'll go to northeast Syria and then not talk about northeast Syria. And our whole just exists as kind of a bubble outside of context in that reporting.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, and a very, very difficult one for civilians. And certainly with the changing government in the U.S., It seems unlikely that we will be reaching out to help those displaced civilians in the near future.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
And certainly we've seen a lot of Kurdish people who have been displaced either by Turkish aggression or who there's a whole other situation with Kurdish areas in Turkey at the moment and their elections and such, which we don't have time to go into. But many of them have come to the US and I've interviewed lots of them for this show. So I think people will be familiar with that.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Vladimir, I think that's probably about all we have time for. But I wanted to offer you a chance. You have very good tweets. You have a very good understanding of the whole situation. Your articles do an excellent job of making it understandable. So where can people find your writing and follow you?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, that's great. Is there anything else you'd like to maybe suggest that people follow? I think it could be really easy to get a lot of propaganda when it comes to Syria. So is there anything you'd suggest that people kind of get their news from?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Yeah, everyone's biased to a degree. You will see dead people a lot if you go following Telegram channels of the Syrian Civil War. So if that's not something you'd like to see, that's probably not a platform to be on. Big Dev, thank you so much for your time. I know it's late with you. We'll let you get to sleep.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
We do appreciate you joining us and hopefully people will follow you on Twitter and get good information about what's happening.