07/03/15 – Kamal Alam – The Scott Horton Show

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All right you guys welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show the Scott Horton Show.
Libertarian foreign policy mostly.
Our next guest is Kamal Alam.
He is a Syria military analyst and fellow for Syrian Affairs at the Institute for Statecraft and Brad Hoff over at Levant Report pointed him out to me in this great article a very interesting piece here Pax Syriana neither vanquished nor all conquering and you write here about how despite all the predictions for now four years running the Assad regime is in fact not on the verge of collapse and you attempt to explain why that is.
If it's okay I guess I'll start with is it because of Hezbollah and Russia and Iran helping or it's because of more internal factors and that's more of a side issue or how do you balance out the foreign intervention on Assad's behalf versus internal factors?
The conventional wisdom talks about foreign intervention helping the Assad government and the army surviving but I believe that if it wasn't for the internal structure of the army in the state there is no way the Syrian army or Assad would have survived for now more than four years.
There's only so much external actors can do because if you actually look at the Russian and Iranian and Hezbollah support for Assad it's not even half of what the Americans and the Gulf Arab states are throwing behind the opposition.
So if you balance the two supporting cast members here i.e.
America the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council their support to all the different rebel groups half of them that are terrorists far outweigh what the Russians Iranians and Hezbollah are doing to the Syrians.
The bulk of the fighting is being done by the Syrian Arab army and you know an army marches on his stomach and there is no way in any military combat history that the army is able to fight in its own land for so long with foreign support.
You need some local support and people just seem to ignore the fact that Assad has support in his own country.
Well now so here's the thing about it and and I don't want anybody get the idea that me or this show that we're any friends of Assad here I don't know exactly what you think about him personally here but this isn't really about that we're just talking about the news and the politics and the reality of the situation and I don't think I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that Assad is anything other than a fascist dictator.
If anybody is saying yeah but what they're saying is yeah but his opposition are a bunch of bin Ladenite headchoppers and so no wonder even large percentages of the Sunni population of the country actually support the Alawite dictatorship.
Is that really right?
That is right.
Let me give you two big names who obviously you'd know who they are Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
These two as you know the godfathers of US foreign policy post-cold war and just in the last year both Brzezinski and Kissinger are on record you can find their testimony on C-SPAN congressional Senate hearings saying actually we must acknowledge Assad has support.
Now what that means is yes he's a dictator because that's the norm in that region you know everyone's a dictator but you know whether he's a dictator that's ever threatened Western security or regional security that's another thing and yes he's a dictator it's a one-party state but how many people were actually against him in the initial uprisings and how this turned into a brutal brutal barbaric civil war so yes it's it's not about Assad the man himself because it's not about one man you know there is no way one man can be in power for that long it's a system it's the state and yes you're right a lot of the Sunnis support an Alawite leader that's because he's married into one of the important Sunni families his brother's married to a Sunni it's not an Alawite government it's just an Alawite president.
Okay now just for oversimplicity's sake if it's all right with you I'm just a white guy in Texas here what the hell do I know about this stuff but if we could go back to the Libya war it seemed there things were much more clear-cut everybody was a Sunni I believe basically it wasn't so much ethnic or sectarian but it was more the Bin Ladenites in the east versus the commies in the west and America took the side of the Bin Ladenites and they had the airpower and all the NATO behind him and it was really just a matter of time even though they didn't have too many fighters on the ground it just took you know I guess enough nine months or so of NATO planes and special forces on the ground to finally just get the job done Qaddafi didn't have much of a state really in the first place or much of an army he just had you know his own personal Gestapo I guess but was afraid to create enough of an army that they could depose him right so that one was it was so kind of clear-cut just it was just a March West and is just a matter of time as horrible as it was and even though it took a lot longer than they said it was going to take it seemed pretty inevitable was at the same time the Syrian war was breaking out and I remember Pepe Escobar especially broke it down like this where he said you know it's a super majority Sunni country but a huge percentage of the Sunnis support the dictatorship because the revolution there is made up almost entirely of you know suicide bomber headchopper crazies and you know there's it so it's not the kind of thing we're like the Iraqi Civil War where the lines were very clear cut and that kind of deal and that it was basically just the poor and the working-class Sunnis out from the countryside who were even susceptible to joining up this revolution and that virtually every other ethnic and sectarian group in the country including all of the merchant class Sunnis I guess is how he characterized them that they were all the coalition for the current state as fascist as it is is that is that accurate for 2011 and is that pretty much an accurate comparison to Libya situation do you think and and is that does it hold true today if it's right at all it was it's it's definitely accurate in 2011 and to most of the current conflict and you this is again just like Pepe Escobar the Britain and Europe's and I would say the world's top Syrian expert was a man called Patrick Seale who passed away a couple years ago Patrick Seale who's an award-winning best-selling academic in office said exactly the same thing Pepe Escobar says that yes it might be an authoritarian fascist state but he has the support of the majority of the country including the Sunni elites yes it was not a perfect state things were happening behind closed doors but at the same time there were no major calls for regime change there were calls for reform so so let's not forget that the the initial protests were definitely genuine people genuinely came out on the streets looking for reform but it got hijacked very quickly by as you say head-chopping terrorists going back to Libya wait hold it right there I'm sorry to interrupt but we got to take this break but we'll pick it right up with the Libya metaphor and all that or analogy right on the other side of this break it's Kamal Alam you can find this article at opendemocracy.net Pax Syriana back in just a minute hey I'll Scott Horton here it's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings and precious metals as a hedge against inflation if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet since 1977 Roberts and Roberts brokerage Inc has been helping people buy and sell gold silver platinum and palladium and they do it well they're fast reliable and trusted for more than 35 years and they take Bitcoin call Robertson Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co all right guys welcome back to the show talking with Kamal Alam he's got this article called Pax Syriana neither vanquished nor all conquering that's for sure he's at opendemocracy.net so you can find this article and he is a military analyst and fellow for Syrian affairs at the Institute for statecraft which I don't know anything about but anyway very interesting article here and I'm sorry because I ask a big long involved questions and then sometimes they don't even have a question at the end of them but you were gonna respond to my rambling about trying to compare in a you know understand you know my best understanding of the differences really between the more or less ease of the regime change in Libya in 2011 versus America and its allies very stalled attempt to overthrow Assad in Syria ever since then the thing that happened in Libya was obviously there was heavy American firepower use whilst in Syria American firepower has not been used on assets that are being used by Assad yet so there is a key difference there that obviously if American bombs start falling on Assad's military and air force you know then maybe the story could have been different whilst in Libya actually American coordinates and ordinance were actually dropping on Qaddafi's forces but obviously the other big difference is Qaddafi never had an army you know as you just mentioned he he had a few private militias and Libya had never really fought any war in its 40-50 year history that Qaddafi ruled Libya while Syria actually was the main force that stabilized the Lebanese civil war and at the same time Syria had a proper army that took part in the first Gulf War coalition it was a proper army trained by the Soviets and the Russians so it knew what it was doing and also it's a very much more sophisticated civilized state whilst Libya is basically barren desert with all these tribes who hate each other they might all be Sunnis but they hate each other and if you look what's happened in Libya now is Libya is full of terrorists at least 12 different designated terrorist groups ruling Libya all kinds of you saw what happened recently in France and Tunisia and both those attackers were apparently trained in Libya so we're actually seeing the you know the amazing success of the Libyan revolution which is basically born nothing but terrorism.
Of course it spread the word to Mali and and I thought that this would have just been propaganda but there's actually some pretty credible journalism about the jihadists in the Mali war hooking up with Boko Haram and help making them worse they were already existed but now they got RPGs and training and a little bit more indoctrination in the dogma of the Islamic State which they declare their allegiance to another consequence of the Libya war there yeah.
I'll give you another example someone I used you know I've done some work for General David Richards who's the former British chief of defense staff the equivalent of the chairman joint chiefs in America he actually came on TV during the Libyan war saying we are not actually trying to do regime change in Libya he was rebuked within two hours by the British Prime Minister and the Defense Secretary Liam Fox and there was a big rift in the British Army against the civilian government in Britain because basically the British Army said we can't take Qaddafi out if we take Qaddafi out there'll be a whole shitstorm on Europe's doorstep and that's exactly what happened so even within the military like I said establishment of NATO no one really wanted to go after Qaddafi all they want to do was create a no-fly zone and protect Libyan civilians that were being killed by Qaddafi and actually what happened later was a complete mess and today almost all the so-called experts who were wrong in Libya and Syria are basically the same kind of charlatans who are calling for military intervention in Syria when there is no credible opposition to replace Assad you know it's just a bunch of terrorists right and in fact you know what I probably overdo this but let me play this clip for you real quick it's a couple of clips of Hillary Clinton when she was still the Secretary of State in 2012 and she's on CBS News it's the very end of February 2012 and she's being asked why aren't we doing more to help the rebels against Assad because of course that's been the narrative all along here is that the the the rebels are the good guys and Assad of course the evil dictator and so here's you know she's in a position of she was really the the hawk on this but here she's explaining Obama's position basically defending from that accusation and she says we know al-qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria are we supporting al-qaeda in Syria Hamas is now supporting the opposition are we supporting Hamas in Syria so I think Wyatt you know despite the great pleas that we hear from those people who are being ruthlessly assaulted by Assad if you're a military planner or if you're a Secretary of State and you're trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable we don't see that and so and that was at the beginning of 2012 before I don't know really before but right when Jabhat al-Nusra was really becoming a thing way back then though you know three and a half years ago and yet that's really the policy that she continued to advocate for backing de facto at least backing al-qaeda in Syria more and more we hear calls even in foreign affairs on the front page of foreign affairs they're not even afraid to say it's time to work with al-qaeda to bring them in from the cold the guys that did the 9-11 attacks and and 10 attacks before that and make friends with them because hey they're fighting Assad what do you make of that in fact let me ask you this because everybody knows that that America's allies Saudi Qatar Turkey and now even Israel have been maybe all along Israel have been on the side of the bin Laden nights there but I wonder whether you think that there's some kind of real level of frustration by the Americans that geez all our allies are doing this or is this really all just plausible deniability for what's a clear American NATO policy to outsource to our Middle Eastern friends the care and feeding of the suicide bombers of Syria as the Israelis put it in the New York Times unashamedly if their goal isn't regime change now it's let's keep the war going as long as we can and bleed everybody to death they said do you think there's much of a contradiction because some say geez we just can't control the Saudis but I'm thinking really because I thought that was kind of the deal is that we can you see so it's quite common knowledge that Saudis obviously use checkbooks and money diplomacy they don't have much intellectual capacity to do good in the world so they replace that with the oil money that they have and you know this is a repeat of Afghanistan in the 1980s where you know where the war in Afghanistan was portrayed as a brutal Russian invasion of Afghanistan but actually it completely forgot that a lot of Afghans actually supported communism and there was a massive indigenous communist movement in Afghanistan and even so very similarly here what you have is the Saudis and the Gulf allies are basically repeating what they did in Afghanistan 30 years ago and Turkey's doing the same thing Pakistan did so just like Pakistan was the kind of frontline person that ran the American war with Saudi money in the 80s now it's the Turks running that war and it's gonna hit Turkey as well that's why Erdogan's lost his election because all the major opposition parties of Turkey have come out and said we don't support Turkish policy in Syria much more so MHP and CHP the two opposition parties have actually gone and met Assad in Damascus which goes to show you what the Turkish opposition think of the whole war and that's why Erdogan's lost the war lost the election but yes in some aspects you're right the Americans have basically outsourced some parts of the war to to the Gulf allies but you know I mean they portray this situation as though well the Americans they're willing to train and arm the moderates just a few of them the CIA some here and the military some there and and boy yeah it's a it's a little bit frustrating as I said they're now kind of spinning the the alliance with al-qaeda a little bit more rehabilitating them but the the narrative at least has been as as Joe Biden put it in his famous comments at Harvard that geez our allies have just gone and done something crazy here and I wonder if you think that that's just cynical cover or if the Americans really have been trying to get them to stop backing these guys since it's become clear that you know the Americans the State Department Hillary put al-nusra on the terrorist list as soon as they call themselves al-nusra so but anyway I I don't mean to be too conspiratorial about it but then again it's kind of hard to ignore that you know they still to this day are backing some rebels and seems like all the money and weapons end up in the hands of the guys who are really not afraid to die which would be al-nusra and Isis I think there is I think there's a confusion of policy as well so for again some for my own work with the military and what I've noticed the confusion in all NATO countries not just America is that this initial idea to support democracy and human rights so that's how it all started and there are a lot of lobbyists in London and Washington that are paid by the Saudis in the and the Qataris and and also the UAE who who basically these are Libyan exiles these are Syrian exiles who claim to be democratic and claim to be moderate these are the people who kept telling the Americans don't worry we look after everything you know but actually it took America maybe a couple years to realize that these exiles are all frauds so what you have is a dual track policy of still trying to find and equip a moderate rebel force but even last month General Mike Nagata head of the US Special Forces who's in charge of all this said we don't even have 200 guys who are actually being vetted properly and it's going to and I think Martin Dempsey said yesterday it's going to take a long time to vet well I don't know how long you need when the war has gone on for four years 300,000 dead you know there is just the vetting process is flawed the exiles in Washington and London are all Islamic radicals with without beards they're all clean-shaven and pretend to be moderates and the charm State Department officials and they cry about human rights abuses and genocides and all that and yes of course human rights abuses are taking place but the way these guys portray themselves is as if they are the good guys and they start making comparisons to World War two and concentration camps and etc well it's actually there's nothing even close to compare this war to what happened in World War two all right now forgive me for keeping you over just a little bit here but can I ask you whether you think anybody in London or DC is finally coming around to the idea that maybe they can negotiate an end to this thing instead of just bleeding everybody to death forever the way they're doing and if so is there anybody to negotiate with as Obama himself said hey the idea there are a bunch of and that Hillary Clinton clip we don't see that the the moderates to the moderate leaders to negotiate with Obama said the same thing it's you know a fantasy that you had a bunch of moderate leaders doctors and lawyers and pharmacists I don't know where they got that line from that's what they say on Fox News to it was all a bunch of moderate doctors and pharmacists who were the moderates leading the rebellion until the terrible until Obama didn't do enough to help them in the terrible jihadis came etc but is so is there anybody to negotiate if anybody like say they wanted to bring in I don't know some third party from some country nobody ever heard of to host the negotiation from a disinterested view is there even a settlement available here at this point we see so far both the Geneva meetings failed as you know and the Moscow the last meeting that Moscow held between the rebels and Assad it's looking extremely difficult in terms of finding a new country to host it it has to be a country with clout and that's either Russia America itself or Switzerland being the kind of classic neutral country but actually the end to this war is not that difficult people keep saying oh this is a terribly complicated conflict no it's not because at the end of the day if you know what the problem is it's easy to everyone in America knows Turkey's letting terrorists across the border everyone knows the money is coming from the Gulf countries and if if if the United States and its allies want to put an end to the bloodshed the first thing they need to do is stop their allies letting in letting in the terrorists and at the same time then put pressure on Iran and say listen we've stopped Arshad if you don't stop backing the guys from your end we're gonna come after you so so for me you know it's the simplest way of putting it that the diagnosis is there you know if the prognosis is wrong all the money being wasted on the rebel groups it's not gonna lead anything the terrorists are taking more and more territory every day there there no everyone you know even the so-called moderate rebels executed you know about two or three dozen people two days ago so it just doesn't make sense yeah the FSA has been head-shopping and suicide bombing all along too maybe not as bad as the but I don't know to one of your also in answer to one of your questions there are people in America and Britain who like I said believe that it is time to stop the craziness and as I said Henry Kissinger Bezinski might be in the late 80s and early 90s these guys you know still the people who everyone looks up to they've openly called for that we need to go talk to Assad to former heads of the British Army Richard Danitz and David Richards has said well we must talk to Syria and Assad themselves to bring an end to this conflict otherwise nothing is happening all right so that's Kamal Alam he's at open democracy net this article is called Pax Syriana neither vanquished nor all-conquering and you can find him also at Levant report and he is a military analyst and fellow for Syrian affairs at the Institute for statecraft appreciate your time on the show today all right so thanks thank you thanks you hate government one of them libertarian types maybe you just can't stand the president gun grabbers or warmongers me too that's why I invented liberty stickers calm well Rick owns it now and I didn't make up all of 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