Shownotes Transcript
- A lot of it's based off of that charisma of Shara in many ways. And people worry that if for whatever reason he was assassinated, that could totally derail everything because there isn't really somebody that could replace him to keep
Welcome to Stop the World, the ASPE podcast. I'm David Rowe. And I'm Olivia Nelson. And today we're talking about Syria. We decided last week that after the huge developments in December with the fall of the Assad dynasty after more than half a century, it was time for an update. And we're going to talk about Syria.
That's right, so we found the perfect person and that's Aaron Zelen, the Gloria and Ken Levy Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He's the founder of Jihadology website and the author of the book Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad. He's been writing extensively about Syria for years while it wasn't in the headlines, including about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Sharah who toppled Assad and is now interim Syrian leader.
Syria has dropped off a lot of people's radars while the focus has been on Ukraine and elsewhere. In a sense this was good news because it had been relatively stable under al-Sharar, but that stability is precarious and life for the vast majority of Syrians extremely tough as Zarin explains.
And since we recorded this episode late last week, Syria has been well and truly back in the headlines with international agencies saying that hundreds and perhaps thousands have been killed, many of them civilians, in the coastal regions of the country. Yeah, according to news reports, loyalists of the Assad family from the Alawite sect have clashed with government security forces and there have been summary killings of civilians by both sides.
that's emerged since we had this conversation but as Aaron explains the political and security situation in Syria is complex and fraught and there's a long way to go. Thankfully Aaron unpacks a lot of this for us. That includes the enigma of Ahmed al-Sharah and how he's constructed his power, the state of the political transition and basic governance, life for ordinary Syrians, the question of justice for victims of the former regime and Syria's relations with the rest of the region and the world.
Aaron knows this area better than almost anyone around so I found this a very informative conversation. So let's hear from Aaron.
I'm here with Aaron Zelen. Aaron, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. So obviously people's attention has been focused very much on Europe, on Ukraine, on the United States. Recently, you're one of the dedicated researchers who's been looking at the Middle East, in particular Syria, and you even wrote a book about HTS.
So you are one of the best people I could possibly think of to speak to on this at the moment. But it's just been a fascinating period in Syria. And I do think that Ahmed al-Shara, the new interim leader of Syria, is truly one of the more fascinating characters to have come out of international affairs in recent times. And there have been a lot of them.
Al-Sharra is frequently called pragmatic, which is a label that's neither entirely praised nor pejorative, but it seems to be the common descriptor that's used for him. He's trying to be everything to everyone. I mean, I confess that when he took power in December last year, I thought straight away he has future nightmare written all over him. That might have been unfair. It might still turn out to be the case. But
I saw a future emerging sort of less as a fundamentalist than potentially as a sort of regional strongman down the track who becomes increasingly ruthless and antagonistic towards, well, ruthless at home and antagonistic towards neighbours, sort of more of a Saddam Hussein than a Sayyid Mullah Omar of the Taliban. Just tell us a little bit about him. What do you think he truly believes, if anything? And in particular, what have we learnt about him in the roughly three months since he's been in power?
I mean, it's a complicated question because he's gone through various phases in his life. Whether you take his current phase as being his true self or his past ones as his true self, it's obviously hard to know. He only knows truly what's in his heart and mind, I guess you could say. But I mean, if you want to say his political awakening really happened in the post-2000 time period with
Second Palestinian Intifada, that's what sort of mobilized him politically. But then, of course, 9-11 happened and the U.S. invasion of Iraq happened. And he joined up as many other foreign fighters and Syrians did to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Much of the time he was in Iraq, at least according to his own telling of it, he was imprisoned. He wasn't actually out on the battlefield. But I feel like there's sort of a black box on that where there's other information that we just don't know. I still find it kind of interesting that neither the U.S. nor the Iraqis have ever provided details on his time in Iraq publicly.
It's also interesting that after he broke with the predecessor group of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq,
in 2013 that ISIS never really burned him either. So there's sort of like this whole time period that we really don't have a good picture on, I feel like. But I mean, he's been very good at pivoting at the right time to understand the moment, whether it is breaking with the Islamic State back in April 2013, or breaking with Al Qaeda in July 2016.
So it's been more than 12 years since he broke with ISIS and eight and a half years since he broke from Al Qaeda. I don't think he believes any of that stuff anymore. Or if he did previously, maybe he was just using it for his own power gains, potentially. I would still consider him a conservative Islamist, but I wouldn't necessarily say that
He's somebody that's trying to force things upon a population. One of the interesting things we saw in the years leading up to the offensive that led to the overthrow of the regime was that they actually loosened things up in society instead of tightening them. Where previously in the years after their break from Al-Qaeda and building up their civilian Salvation Government apparatus, which was like a technocratic government in northwest Syria,
They did for a time still have, you know, the traditional like Hizba or moral policing. But around 2022 or so, we saw that kind of phase out because it wasn't really working. The population didn't like it.
As well as the fact that there are some internal debates related to it and pretty much looking at the cases of like Saudi, the Taliban, Iran, the Islamic State, others that whenever these societies have tried to force upon people, it's created backlash or a level of hypocrisy in society.
And so for them, they've been trying to just persuade people of their worldview instead of pushing it on people. And so since the fall of the regime, we've seen the same. They're not harassing people. They're not telling people really what to do, at least not yet. And so in many ways, it's kind of a continuation of what we've seen. And as for Shara himself, since the fall of the regime, I mean, I'm not super surprised how he's acting. He's been very statesman in the way that he's operated.
only in northwest Syria, now on the broader context of the whole country or even in international relations now. So it's kind of a continuation of this transformation that we began to see really when they broke from al-Qaeda in July 2016, which was a slow grinding gradual process that really did take a lot of time. And in many ways, them overthrowing the regime when they did was the best case scenario because it was when they were
a bit more open than say if this would have happened in like 2017 when they were still figuring things out post-global jihadi movement. And that's why I kind of say that they essentially went from global jihad to a local regime. I mean, it's a positive sign and fascinating that he appears to have learned from his previous experiences of governance on the smaller scale in the Northwest, things like moral policing and finding that wasn't, that didn't particularly work well. So he hasn't tried to replicate it on
on the grander scale of Syria as a whole. But like I said, I think it's fascinating and encouraging. I guess the big question now is, ultimately, is he in it for himself or is he in it for Syria? And how will that sort of start to direct his approach to governing and how he distributes power in the country? So talk through a little bit about where the
transition period. They are notionally in a transition period. I think there was a 1 March deadline, which you might need to explain to me. That's obviously passed now. And if so, I'm curious to know what's happened with it. They've had a national dialogue, I think, as part of this transition process to establish a constitution and so forth. But just talk through where it's up to. And in particular, people like you who are watching closely, is the pace of that transition, are you finding it reassuring or concerning in terms of how much has actually got done?
I mean, depending on what time of day, I might have a more positive or pessimistic view on things. I change my mind a lot. It's incredible how many things happen every day just because it's a new scenario. It's been a complicated process. I mean, overall, I think it's been relatively good. You told most people three months ago that there would be relative stability. Obviously, there's been some vigilantism as well as some continued attacks by remnants of the former regime.
But overall, it's been pretty stable. If you'd say that these guys would go after ISIS, provide intelligence for drone strikes against al-Qaeda, fight remnants of the regime, fight Hezbollah networks, fight IRGC networks, go after weapons smuggling, go after Captagon networks, I think most people in the West would be quite happy about this.
Obviously, they have done all of that. Yes, they have, which I think is good from a security perspective. It gets more complicated when you start talking about more the politics of it all in terms of the transition, in terms of this nebulous term that everybody throws around related to inclusivity, which I still haven't really gotten a good definition what anybody actually means when they talk about that.
Especially since the fact that a lot of the leadership in the new government kind of looks at the example of Lebanon, which has a quota system, sees it as totally dysfunctional, looks next door to Iraq. They have sort of this semi-federalist system that doesn't really work that great. And so from their perspective, they think everybody should just be within the government on a meritocratic or technocratic level.
manner on an individual basis, irrespective of sect, religion, ethnicity. Obviously, it's easier said than done. And one thing to say it in theory versus people's lived experiences. But I mean, there hasn't been any depathification processes. This isn't like Iraq. People that were in the bureaucracy of the Baptist government, they still are working for the different ministries. Same with people working at more of the local level in the district. So
You do have, you know, Alawites working in the government still. You have Christians, you have Ismailis, Druze, Kurds, as well as, of course, the majority population. But even if there's like sort of these broader positives, at least in terms of what one might foresee would have happened on December 8th until now,
The process itself hasn't been the best, and they also haven't done a good job in setting expectations with their messaging on when things might happen or how long things might occur. Like you alluded to, the whole March 1st deadline, obviously that happened and there hasn't been a government reshuffle. I mean, I've heard rumors that they're supposed to do it sometime this week or sometime next week, but at this point, it's really hard to say considering the fact that
All of a sudden, you'll wake up in the morning or in the middle of the day, you'll find some announcement like, oh, interesting. I didn't realize that was happening right now. Whether we saw this with the naming of the Preparatory Committee for the National Dialogue, which really no one understands how the seven people were selected, or the fact that the Preparatory Committee only lasted a week. And it's not as if they talked to a large grouping of people. Obviously, they talked to people from all the different governorates in the country.
But they don't control northeast Syria either, so people from Raqqa and Hasakah, they didn't go to those governorates. They only met people that were from those governors that lived in Damascus, which obviously precludes a lot of people since they likely had been living in Damascus for a while.
And then the national dialogue itself, most people only had two days notice that it was actually happening, that we're invited to it, whether locally or people in the diaspora. It's kind of hard to plan something that last minute, especially if you're like in Europe or Canada or the United States or wherever for that matter.
And then if you're talking about sort of the legacy of 50 plus years of totalitarian rule by the Assad regime, son and father, it seems that having a one day national dialogue seems a bit limited and that you're not actually having a dialogue, but kind of.
pushing things through. And so while I've spoken to people who are involved in the dialogue, they said that for what it was, it was good, but it should have just been the beginning of a dialogue, not just that as it was. So,
It's definitely complicated. So, you know, it's a mixed picture. Obviously, it also doesn't help that the U.S. has been disengaged on the issue since the change administrations from Biden to Trump. And so it's been a lot harder for there to be some movement on issues related to sanctions. I think it's important for the audience to understand that 90 percent of the country is in poverty right now.
One third of the buildings are destroyed, either completely rubble or hollowed out where people can't live in it because it's not safe. And the capital, Damascus, only gets about one hour of electricity a day. So
It's quite dire. It's a lot worse than many people recognize on the outside, I think. Plus, with the fall of the regime, the Russians stopped sending wheat and the Iranians stopped sending fuel. And so that's only made the situation worse. Obviously, the Ukrainians have stepped in a bit to help out with some of the wheat. There's been some stuff related to energy from the Gulf and Turkey, but of course, it's not ideal. And even if
The EU has lifted sanctions on a number of sectors. And we also saw today, March, Thursday, March 6th, that the UK stopped sanctions on 24 banks and companies in Syria. At the end of the day, a lot of the economic heft is coming from the US. And so long as the US doesn't move on this, it's going to create a barrier for sort of things to be moving forward that
you know, people on the ground could see that, you know, there might be some change or hope on the horizon. And if there isn't, you know, we could see more pressure from the grounds at some point in terms of protests that things are getting better. Obviously, time will tell on that front. And then in terms of, you know, the military aspect of things, obviously, there's been a lot of talk about this military integration.
We have seen that it has happened. It hasn't been perfect, though. There are still groups within the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army that haven't joined the Ministry of Defense, though some have. Similarly, the Southern Operations Room, some of those groups have joined the Ministry of Defense, others haven't.
The Druze battalions haven't joined yet. Part of it is they're kind of waiting out to see what rights might be secured in a new constitution and to make sure that that's there. And then obviously there's a lot more complications related to negotiations vis-a-vis the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is obviously the group that's been fighting ISIS now the past 10 plus years, considering the fact that they want to make sure that they can enshrine Kurdish rights since
For anybody that's a student of Syria knows that Kurdish rights have been a controversial issue within Syria because Baathist ideology is Arab supremacist. Many Kurds didn't actually have citizenship, even if they're technically Syrian. That created obviously other problems. And so they don't want that to continue under this new government. And then there's also the issue that the SDF is, at least according to their own numbers, obviously it's hard to verify specifics on this,
that the number of people in their military is a lot larger than the one in Damascus. So they feel like they kind of have some cards on this issue, as well as the fact that they're obviously backed by the US. And so it's a complicated picture, especially considering Turkey continues to push its proxies in the Syrian National Army to attack the SDF. And so, you know, I think it's this slow, gradual process, and hopefully it creates a phased approach more so, because I don't think
spinning the SDF into the new Syrian army within like a week will work out for a variety of reasons. But hopefully the fact that the government in Damascus has shown that their preferred negotiation over actually fighting them, like
The SNA has been attacking them, but the government in Damascus has not been involved in that. So I think that's important context too. So it's, you know, it's a complicated picture in many ways. That's a really, really helpful summary. Thank you. Just to be clear, and that I didn't miss here, you said the Ukrainians are helping Syria with wheat? Yes, they are. Fascinating. And I mean, there's also some rumors, though it's hard to verify, that some of the training they got on kamikaze drones came from the Ukrainians as well.
In terms of the offensive that led to the overthrow of the regime. But it's hard to know because the Ukrainians say one thing, HTS guys say another thing, the Turks say something else. So it's hard to truly know the reality of it, but you never know. Especially since obviously the Russians propped up the Assad regime. So it wouldn't necessarily be surprising if there was something that was facilitated at some point.
Yeah, those are remarkable figures that you gave a moment ago about, you know, 90% of the country being in poverty, a third of the buildings destroyed. I certainly wasn't aware that it was that bad. Let's just talk a little bit more about what life is like for ordinary Syrians right now. I mean, is it better than it was in the later period of the Assad years? Is there still a sense of, you know, optimism from carrying over from December? You mentioned the possibility of protests, but I mean, I suppose life for the ordinary Syrian, is it still a bit better than it was, say, last year?
Well, I mean, I think in terms of just quality of life, it's better. There isn't a totalitarian regime running it. So there isn't a police state trying to spy on you all the time. The new government in Damascus isn't doing anything along those lines. People have, at least for now, freedom to say whatever they want. I mean, there are comedy shows going on in Damascus that are making fun of the new government.
In terms of the economics of it all, it's still pretty dire. I mean, the currency rate's gone down a bit. I think it peaked at maybe, I don't know, anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 Syrian pounds to one US dollar, which obviously is abysmal. And it's gotten as low as, I think, 8,000 Syrian pounds to one US dollar, which still obviously isn't great. But it's been quite volatile just because of the nature of things. So on
On that front, it's gotten relatively better, still not great. But I think people have been used to just these poor situations going on for a number of years now. Of course, there isn't a government-led drug industry now either in terms of Captagon, methamphetamine. In the latter years of the Assad regime, they essentially turned into a narco state.
which hollowed out a lot of their institutions, which is one amongst a number of reasons why the regime likely fell. So at least drugs aren't being proliferated in society probably quite as much, which is probably for the best.
And so it's not ideal, but I think people are still happy that the regime is gone. I don't know if there is the same level of euphoria per se now, because I think it's three months almost since the fall. So there's a bit more reality coming into play now. Obviously, it's Ramadan now, so I don't think anybody's going to be doing anything that could cause troubles for the government.
There's also the anniversary of the Syrian uprising in mid-March. So I think a lot of people will ride that wave. And so my question is more,
What happens in April, mid-April, late April into early May if there isn't any hope that things might be getting better or they're kind of stagnant, even if the new government in Syria has been able to push its governance on the areas that it controls at least, it's been able to sort of do this military integration, though not perfectly,
There's a lot of factors at play, and that doesn't even get into external potential spoilers, whether it's related to Turkey's continued backing of the SNA against the SDF. We haven't mentioned yet, of course, Israel's actions in Syria, whether it's their incursions into Quneitra and taking over spaces to allegedly create another buffer zone, even though they already had a buffer zone in Quneitra, or the airstrikes that they've done against remaining arsenals of the Assad regime.
The new government in Syria has said that they'd follow the 1974 border agreement after the 1973 war. They don't want to start a war with Israel. I think even if they're pro-Palestinian, they also just saw what Israel did to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC the last year and a half, and also realized they just were fighting a war for 13 years. They definitely do not have the capability to do anything related to that. But they've been trying to avoid anything related to Israel, but Israel is trying to make
a bigger issue out of it for whatever reason, but it could end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then there's just terms of security related to regime remnants. We've seen more organization of these small insurgent factions and increasing violence. It's still nowhere near the levels of it was during the Civil War, the height of it, for example.
But there's probably in the last month that more people killed by remnants of the regime against the new government security forces than there were during the actual offensive that led to the fall of the regime. But of course, this is also isolated against, at least for now, just security forces at checkpoints mainly or on their caravans. They're not going after civilians, at least not yet.
And it's in like, you know, specific areas where mainly like Alawite regions for the most part, though, you know, we've seen stuff elsewhere too, but it's definitely not a good trajectory, especially considering the fact that, you know, they're like eight to 10% of the population. So they can try all they want, but they're not going to end up overthrowing this government. It's just going to create more chaos, which maybe is what they want, or maybe what
the Iranians want, but it's hard to say just because this phenomenon is kind of early to see how it might play out or if the new government's able to suppress it better than we've seen with other cases where regimes have fallen and then there's like a new insurgency that's created out of that in the post phase, I guess you could say. Is there a way to quantify some of this? I mean, how many of the various
sort of armed factions, well, militias or factions does al-Shara have on his side at the moment? I mean, does he have more than half? And is that the basis of his power? I'm kind of curious to know what's keeping him propped up at the moment. Is it the fact that he just has the support of a majority of the factions? And
Has he got their support through, you know, specific sort of promises that they will have a role in the future government? Has he been making deals and promises or is he just sort of still riding the wave of enthusiasm for, thank God we've got rid of Assad? I mean, I think he's the face of the fall of the regime. So a lot of people give him credit for that. And there really isn't anybody that's viewed as an alternative, potentially as a leader within Syria. I mean,
you know, there's some people throw around, but they don't have the widespread support. It's more like a regional support potentially. And so a lot of it's based off of that charisma of Shara in many ways. And people worry that if for whatever reason he was assassinated, that could totally derail everything because there isn't really somebody that could replace him to keep
things relatively together as they have been the last three months and that it's likely that things would atomize into different regions within the country, which, you know, I'm sure some outside or even internal actors might want. So it's complicated. It's hard to say numbers. I mean, I've heard anywhere from like 30 to 60,000 people that are at his command and control in terms of military or security. But, um,
It's always hard to know what the truth is with numbers like that. I mean, the SDF claims that they have like 110,000 soldiers. I'm a bit skeptical. That seems huge. And so it's hard to say, honestly. I mean, I think a lot of it goes into whether people buy into the system or not, and therefore...
if they do then you don't necessarily need as much security then because people aren't doing anything wrong or illegal or violence and so at least so far overall for the most part that hasn't come into play where they've seemed like overwhelmed by a security threat of anything in particular except maybe what israel is doing but obviously they're not going to do anything
against Israel. No, no. That's really fascinating. It's about the, I suppose, the confidence that one, he's going to govern competently and two, that he is actually going to be inclusive and bring some of the other parties in, that at least you can actually function, I suppose, as a leader if you give people confidence that you are going to continue to build some sort of representative government going forward.
Look, there may be people who don't want that. There might be a Salafist or a conservative Sunni element that says we're not interested in something more broadly representative. We think that this should be a conservative Sunni-led government. But anyway, just a couple of things to tick off. I mean, some of the outstanding issues obviously are
serious chemical weapons. I think I have read recently that they have undertaken to destroy those if they get international help. And also just the justice and accountability for the criminals of the former regime, all of the, I mean, I read the stories about, you know, they're still finding bodies in basements and this sort of thing. I mean, it really is, it's just horrendous, the scale of what happened under the Assad regime. So just catch us up on those two issues.
Yeah. So the foreign minister, Assad al-Shabani, actually was just in The Hague in the past day or two meeting with OPCW. They had previously been in Damascus a couple of weeks ago for the first time. So there's clearly some developments on those front in terms of building relations. I don't think that the new government necessarily has capacity or know-how to destroy chemical weapons themselves.
That's why it's important that it seems as if they're starting to engage more seriously with OPCW. During Shabani's speech at The Hague, he said that the new government wanted the weapons to be destroyed. That's promising, at least in terms of what they're saying. Obviously, action is needed to follow through on that. That's another role that if the US decided to engage on these issues, that it could help out with since OPCW
at least with some of the chemical weapons that were already destroyed from the Assad regime during the 2013 deal between the US and Russia, the US played a role in getting it out and destroying it. So hopefully,
That can happen now as well, maybe. In terms of transitional justice, I mean, yeah, there's mass graves that are found all the time now. I don't know if every single day, but definitely a few days a week at least. There was that Washington Post story you just alluded to about people finding bones in people's basements that were essentially stashed by the regime, forcing people to do it essentially illegally.
But in terms of actual progress on any transitional justice related to it, there hasn't been a ton of movement. I mean, there have been some informal meetings sponsored by the government in different places. There have also been unsponsored events that civil society has been put on related to it to better educate the population on the issue itself.
And during the National Dialogue Conference, they had six different workshops during it. And one of them was about, they called it transitional dialogue, not transitional justice, which was interesting. But in the end statement from the National Dialogue, it actually talked about transitional justice and holding people accountable for crimes and doing it through the judicial system and enacting necessary legislation and proper mechanisms, right?
But there hasn't been much progress on it. There has been some meetings here and there between the International Criminal Court and the new government in Damascus. But it seems very early stages at best. I think part of it is that those that would be involved in it would mainly come from civil society and human rights activists and experts on these issues, which aren't necessarily part of the cohort that was previously with HTS.
And so, you know, one of the things that's also been going on is these guys that overthrew the government now that they are the government is trying to feel as if they can trust other people. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest deficits now and why there's still all these questions about bringing people in and whether they can trust them with things because they aren't part of HTS previously or their Salvation Government previously in northwest Syria.
and hopefully over time that they can spin people into this. And I think, you know, even if it was imperfect, the Preparatory Committee and National Dialogue Conference did bring in more people outside of the traditional constituency of HTS or the Salvation Government, as well as the fact that day-to-day governance going on, not at sort of the executive level, but more at the governorate level or district level,
You have just average regular people involved in it. And so you see that they are consulting and reaching out to a broader swath of the population, even if much of the focus is more at the ministerial or presidential level or top committee level of things. So it's a complicated picture. Obviously, it's not perfect. And I think many people would strive for it to be better.
but it's maybe not as bad as some articulated because they're not looking at it at the local level and how governance is being done at the local level and only really looking at sort of debates at the national level. But, you know, it would be better obviously if there was more inclusivity with
within the top levels of the ministries and governorates early in terms of governors as well right okay good we'll finish off with just a bit of a chat about the the external relations that syria now has i mean you've touched on a relative low level of engagement by the united states for instance
What would you like to see the Trump administration doing at this point? I mean, just go through a few things about, I mean, are they meeting with the new government? I mean, is there foreign aid? Obviously, the USAID cuts, I presume, might have an effect or some of the State Department funding that would otherwise be flowing. Just talk me through what is happening and what you'd like to see happening from the United States.
The USAID cuts as well as the funding freeze has definitely exacerbated the problems that are already going on in the ground in terms of local NGOs being able to provide. Of course, you do see other countries like Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait picking up the slack on humanitarian aid, but still there's a number of medical centers and hospitals that
that aren't able to pay people right now, as well as questions related to how long any of these waivers will last related to the payment of different security forces in northeast Syria vis-a-vis the al-Hol camp where all the ISIS women and children are or the detention centers where the men are from ISIS.
So, you know, it's a risky endeavor. I mean, there hasn't been any engagement directly, at least publicly, between the Trump administration and the new authorities in Damascus. I know that behind the scenes, there's intel sharing going on between CENTCOM and the Global Coalition with the new government vis-a-vis threats on ISIS and al-Qaeda.
And then, of course, you did see a congressional and senatorial delegation of people meeting with Shabani during the Munich Security Forum. And even though it was bipartisan with Democrats and Republicans, my sense from discussions in D.C. is that, you know, the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and they don't want to do any policies ahead of the White House at this point. So even if I think there are some people that want to move on sanctions relief,
in a bipartisan manner. They don't want to cross any lines with Trump, I guess you could say. And so it's complicated, especially since the Syria director at the National Security Council just started this past week, from my understanding. And then the two people that will be working on Syria a lot in the State Department still haven't been brought into the State Department yet. So there's still some moving pieces. But I mean,
At this point, even if the US doesn't want to take a lead role in helping out on all this, which is understandable when you see how the new Trump administration is acting in a variety of policies, but at least it would be good to get out of the way so that the Europeans, the Gulf states, Turkey can actually maneuver more to alleviate a lot of what's going on in the grounds. For now, you
The U.S. in many ways is a barrier because many actors are worried that they'll be in a violation of sanctions if they do more than they already are. And so, you know, things related to electricity, energy, as well as the banking system,
as well as anything related to beginning reconstruction efforts. I think if people don't want to like just take it all in one fell swoop, those would be the key areas to do it right away to more or less give the space for the lights to be turned back on
for the banking system to get connected back to the international system so that more commerce and business can be done, as well as make it a lot easier for huge Syrian diaspora communities, I mean, millions, to send money back. I mean, now most people, they have to send money back just in cash when they go there, as well as beginning the process of removing all the rubble that we talked about at the beginning of the discussion.
from all the buildings that have been destroyed so that then there can be actual reconstruction. I think that at a minimum, that would be an ideal policy in my mind, even if the U.S. doesn't want to have sort of this
close relationship with the new government yet. Yeah, and presumably there's still some interest in the counterterrorism side as well. I mean, the military cooperation with the Kurds is still going on. And just quickly, I mean, I probably should have covered this before, but ISIS, I mean, how well placed are they now? Are they under more pressure than they were before or under less? Yeah, I mean, the US is obviously continuing to work within the context of the Global Coalition, working with the SDF in the campaign against ISIS.
The U.S. obviously has this other proxy force from the Tanf garrison, which is more in the central area of the country on the Jordanian-Iraqi-Syrian border, and has gone up into central Syria since the fall of the regime into the Palmyra region, the Syria Free Army, not to be confused with the Free Syrian Army. I know this is a whole Monty Python joke, but anyways, there is a difference. But yeah, it's...
One of the things that I've been looking out for is whether the Islamic State would be able to take advantage of this new Syria, I guess you could say, and they really haven't.
Two of the first things that I was looking at to see if maybe they'd be able to take advantage of some of the chaos as the regime was falling was whether they would do any attacks on Christians during Christmas. We didn't see that at all. I was also worried that maybe during New Year's celebrations that something could happen because traditionally that's more something that like secular people would do, secular Muslims or what have you.
We didn't see that either. And I think we're in the third point now, Ramadan, which traditionally ISIS views as a month of jihad and there are more rewards for it during this month. And therefore, usually you'll see a higher rate of attacks during the month of Ramadan, at least so far in the first half.
almost week now, we haven't seen any change. And the number of attacks by month have gone down from ISIS each month. It's in many ways at a historical low, going back to when they first came into Syria back in 2013, 2014. They still are active. And there is the great risk of those 9,000 male prisoners that remain in the
prisons that the SDF guards, if they're broken out, then it's pure chaos. A decade ago, they broke out maybe 1,500 to 2,000 people in Iraqi prisons and we saw what happened. Then this is at least four times the amount of that. So there are definitely risks, but at least so far, it hasn't been as bad as anybody thought.
thought it could be and you know at least one of the arrests that the new government in Damascus has made related to Isis cells at least according to the Washington Post the U.S provided the intelligence to the government in Damascus to stop it they're planning on blowing up the site is in a Shia shrine clearly to try and you know follow the Iraq methodology of getting all the sectarian angles going between Sunnis and Shia even though obviously in Syria it's
different since the shia population is only like two percent whereas in you know iraq it's the majority almost and so you know i think a lot of people are waiting to see how this evolves in many ways the greater danger related to violence thus far has been from remnants of the regime
Thankfully, they haven't gone against civilians yet like ISIS would from off the bat would if they had the capabilities and opportunity to do so. But still, it's not a good sign. But hopefully, this will continue in that the fact that we're at a point where the threat from ISIS isn't super large, that it gives more space potentially for
you know the sdf and damascus to work out some agreement and then maybe folding damascus into the global coalition and over time you know they build some level of trust and camaraderie that they fight isis together and then
Over the long haul, the SDF gets folded into the Ministry of Defense and the new Syrian military as well. And therefore, it really could provide a huge opportunity to actually strategically defeat these guys. Something that I've always been skeptical of everybody being like, ISIS is down or defeated. They're not a threat anymore. I've always been like, well, there's still a chance, but
Because the regime is gone and the fact that they are extremely weak in Iraq as well, even more weak in Iraq,
that there is this opportunity to truly do a decisive defeat of the group. Obviously, I'm sure there will still be people that believe in these extreme ideas, just like you see with other ideologies. But the whole goal, obviously, is to make sure that it's not affecting daily life of anybody anymore. It really hasn't in Iraq now for the last two years, where in Syria, it still has, at least in the northeast and eastern part of the countries. And so,
For me, even if things have not been perfect and that there's the potential for a lot of spoilers, from my perspective, I see a lot more opportunities related to the future of Syria if we're thinking about it strategically.
from a policy perspective, than as threats, even if some have taken actions that might seem otherwise. But time will tell to see how it all evolves. It's going to be, well, I'm going to take a not so reckless bet that we'll be hearing more in the next 12 months or so. But I mean, certainly, I mean, I think the picture that you're painting is broadly one of
reasonable positivity and future opportunity rather than one of despair, which is kind of a refreshing change at the moment when you look around the world. So fingers crossed that it continues to stabilize and perhaps even start to flourish and build.
But look, Aaron, it's been fantastic. It's been really helpful to be caught up on all of this. Like I say, it's just one of those fascinating situations that's been pushed a little bit off the front pages compared with where we might have expected it to be late last year. So thanks for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. That's all for today, folks. We'll be back soon. And in the meantime, enjoy your week.