For Pacifica Radio, January 7th, 2018.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Alright you guys, welcome to the show, it is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the author of the book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I'm the opinion editor of Antiwar.com.
I'm here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
You can find my full interview archive at scotthorton.org, and you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Alright you guys, introducing Elijah Magnier, he's been a great reporter on the Syria war, writes for Al-Rai Media Group, Al-Rai Chief International Veteran War Correspondent there, and you can follow him on Twitter at E-J-M-A-L-R-A-I.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing Elijah?
Hi Scott, thank you for having me.
Very happy to have you on the show here.
So there's so much going on in Syria, and I almost don't know where to begin, but I guess I'll start with the Marine Corps, and whichever other American forces are embedded with, allied with, the Kurdish YPG, and then their, I guess, alliance with some Arab militias, they call it the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces, of course, there.
And the Americans have carved out this position there among the Kurds in northeastern Syria, and they've announced that they're staying, and they're building bases, and that's all I know.
So please take it from there if you could.
Well actually I was in the region until three days ago, in the exact area where the Americans are deployed, but that was on the other side of the oil freight, in the area of Al-Mayadeen until the Syrian-Iraqi borders.
So I've been an eyewitness of the ongoing operation against ISIS, or ISIL, whatever you like to call it.
And the presence of the American forces is really confined to the northeast of Syria in the province of al-Hasakah on the Syrian-Iraqi borders, and then in another part quite below on al-Tanf where there is one American base in the middle of an area surrounded by, on the east, the Iraqi forces and the PMU, and on the west, the Syrian army with its allies, and it's completely surrounded and quite isolated.
So the Americans are not going to leave the area because they're saying, we want to stay there until we ensure there is a political transition and that the political negotiation will start with the President Bashar al-Assad and all the other Syrian rebels and the Kurds and the Turks and Al-Qaeda and the Russians and Turkey.
All that is very unclear yet, but what is certain for now is that the Americans are preventing any force from crossing the Euphrates, they're preventing the Syrian army from going to eliminate and attack and finish off ISIS in the northeast, and they are preventing also Russia to cross the area according to the agreement between the Russian and the Americans where no one can cross the river.
The Americans can't cross the river south of the Euphrates, and the Russian can't go north of the Euphrates.
So this is the dilemma today because ISIS has a pocket in the American side and has another pocket on the Russian, Syrian, and its ally side.
Now we see the Americans are quite isolated at Tanaf base, and they have 30,000, 40,000 civilians, Syrians, and there are thousands of other Syrians who are trained by the Americans.
It's obvious that the Americans haven't learned the lesson that the Syrians are very happy to be trained by the Americans to take their weapons and then sell it or give it back to al-Qaeda or join al-Qaeda or other groups, or even give up on fighting the Syrian government and join the Syrian government because the course of the war in Syria is pretty much clear now.
The area where the Syrian government is not controlling is also very defined, and we see more or less the war coming to an end, but there are countries who are welcome and others who are unwelcome on the Syrian land.
Yeah.
Oh, man, what a complicated mess.
I mean, my first just kind of impression is when you talk, when you list all the different factions that America is there to check the power of, it sounds like really just getting us into another mess.
They're putting us in front of so many different sides and so much different crossfire in order, I guess, to give themselves an excuse to stay longer.
But just on the face of it, it doesn't seem to make sense to stay.
If I understand you right, I mean, obviously, we all know the excuse to be there in the first place is to fight the Islamic State.
Well, the Islamic State is destroyed.
You say the ISIS group still exists somewhere.
It's no longer a place.
Now it's a group again.
And you say at least, I don't want to put words in your mouth here, but you say that at least in effect protecting them because they're not finishing them off in their last strongholds, but they're not allowing the Syrian forces and their Russian friends to finish them off either.
But now politically, Elijah, here in America, they're already talking about the official reason for staying, changing from fighting ISIS to limiting the influence of Iran and these kinds of things, not directly fighting Iran, I guess, but breaking up, trying to break up Syria in order to lessen Iran's influence over Syria since it's grown, since America's policy has backfired there so badly.
But it sounds like you're saying that the fight against ISIS really isn't over yet anyway.
But so are they deliberately protecting these fighters at this point or they just haven't gotten around to finishing them off where the SAA would prefer to right now?
This is a very good question.
Actually, what's happening is the American forces have stopped bombing ISIS area of control in the northeast of Syria and they prevent others from going and attacking them.
Therefore, it's an undeclared protection of a very nasty terrorist group like the Islamic State or what is called the Islamic State.
It's no longer a state.
It's even a very, very tiny small group, but that still can harm people in Syria, in Iraq and promote its hate speech and killing throughout the world.
And they can still harm the whole world.
And yet the American forces came to Syria under the title of fighting terrorism, which is quite legitimate according to United Nations Resolution Council.
Therefore, if they declare the end of the war on ISIS, they have to pull out.
If they keep pockets of ISIS in the area under the control of the Americans, then they have the legitimacy to stay and keep ISIS alive to give the Americans a reason to stay, which is quite not understandable from any angle because the Americans can't allow a terrorist group to survive and stay in an area under their control just to give them the reason to stay.
Today, the American forces are on a foreign soil against the will of a sovereign government in Damascus without any interest to the national security of the United States of America.
And without any reason, they can justify one day if these forces are attacked by Syrian groups or Syrian resistance and Americans are killed on the Syrian territory without any reason and without any excuse to give to the parents of those who would be killed in Syria.
There is no reason to stay and occupy a part of the country because Bashar al-Assad, even when he was in control of a very tiny area of Syria in 2013, didn't give up on the power.
And today Assad is much stronger.
And today Assad controls a large part, the largest part of the country, and he's not going to give up on the area under the control of the American forces and the Turkish forces.
Therefore, the Americans are only looking for trouble for the future and only looking to have more casualties, unnecessary and unjustified casualties on a foreign soil.
And now, so what's really their purpose there?
Because even the so-called Rojava state there of the Syrian Kurds, which, you know, as far as I'm concerned, all other things being equal, I don't care when people declare independence from states anywhere, that's fine.
But of course, my interest is the American empire's interest in causing this trouble.
And I think throughout the war, the Kurds have stayed at least on a more or less friendly basis with Damascus.
They've sort of declared independence, but they sure haven't gone to war against the Syrian state in any sense.
They've been, as we've been talking about, fighting against the Islamic State this whole time and have fought against the Nusra Front in the past as well.
Even when the CIA was back in the Nusra Front, the military-backed Kurds were whooping them.
This happened a few different times over the last couple of years.
But so, what's the point really from the American military's point of view of, you know, even if they can keep these bases and stay in Syrian Kurdistan for now, it's still only kind of up in the north.
It doesn't really block that so-called land bridge, you know, a road, a pathway from Iran through Iraq through southern Syria to Damascus.
I mean, would the Americans want to camp out in Syrian Kurdistan just so that they can bomb Iranian trucks driving through someday or something?
I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right?
Correct.
So, let me explain something that everybody's dwelling upon regarding Iran and its influence in Syria.
In 1982, when Hezbollah went to Iran asking the help of Imam Khomeini after the Iranian revolution, there was an agreement between President Hafez Assad, the father of Bashar, and Imam Khomeini to allow Iranians to fly there, to send men and weapons to come to Lebanon to be based in the area of Zabadani on the Lebanese-Syrian borders on the Syrian side.
And this is when the Iranian influence in the area of Syria and Lebanon, the Levant, started.
So, we don't have really anything new for Iran to be present in Syria.
It's not because of the Syrian war in 2011 or 2013 that Iran landed in Syria.
Iran has been in Syria also with Hezbollah since 1982.
So now, about the road between Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut.
For the first time, there's a road that is established on land between Tehran and Beirut that is already open, that is already functioning, that is already established for commercial use because I will explain to you what is the military aspect of it.
And this road is already there with or without the American presence in the northeast Syria, as you rightly stated.
So being present in the Kurdish side in an area that would take us to the other side of the topic.
So we have Kurds who are pro-Americans.
We have Kurds who are pro-Israeli.
We have Kurds who are pro-Iranians.
We have Kurds who are pro-Syrian.
We have Kurds who are pro-Hezbollah.
And they all operate in al-Hasakah.
So the Americans are walking into a minefield in al-Hasakah where today, until today, there is a big base of the Syrian army in al-Hasakah where there are Iranians and Hezbollah operating in their base.
And that I share with you.
And they have many friends, Kurds, who are in the area.
And there are many Kurds who support the Syrian government who are already all very available to attack the American forces in due course.
At the moment, there is no need to attack the American forces because the Iranians and the Syrian government don't operate like this.
So they go by priority.
And the priority today is to fight al-Qaeda.
And the second priority is to make sure that ISIS is completely defeated and eliminated in the area under the Syrian government control.
They can't do much about the area under the American control because they have no access to it and they're not allowed to cross to that area.
So the Americans are in a friendly, hostile environment in both terms in the area of the north of Syria.
And they can't do anything about the Iranian influence in Syria that dates back to 1982.
Now, the Kurds in Syria don't want a state.
They, yes, they would like to work for a federation.
And the Syrian government was the first to stand against Turkey when they asked from the Russian to include the Kurds of Syria in the peace talk because the Kurds of Syria are part of Syria and they are part of the Syrian population because they are Syrians.
And the Kurds have been helping the inhabitant of the foreign cities, our Shia cities surrounded by al-Qaeda and their allies.
And the Kurds in the north of Syria were helping these Shia.
And they were the only people who were helping the Shia to provide food and medicine as much as was permitted and possible.
So for these not to starve to death and be eliminated, there are other Kurds who are also living with the Syrian government, under the Syrian government control in Aleppo.
And today these respond to the Syrian government control.
So if we talk about the geography of what you call the Rojava, Rojava doesn't exist anymore because Turkey walked in and divided what is called Rojava into, and prevented the Kurds from having access to the sea from the Iraqi borders to the Mediterranean.
That has been done.
Nothing can be done about it.
Turkey will never allow a Kurdish state on its border.
And therefore the Americans have no choice with the Kurds but to use them as much as possible only to put pressure on the president, Bashar al-Assad, that is not going to respond to this pressure, that is not going to accept it, that is not going to be affected by this pressure because Assad has been under greater pressure when al-Qaeda was in the heart of Damascus, in al-Abbasiyin Square, and he was not flexible and he was not ready to stand down or to give up the command of the country.
So he's not going to give up on the northeast of Syria to the Americans, and he's not going to respond to the Americans' demand.
So I think the Americans are just not ready to accept that their influence in Syria is over and they can't do much about it, and they have lost the war that they have supported where everything that was against any logic was carried out by the Americans and the Europeans and some Gulf states where the support of terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda was permitted.
Yeah, well, that's sure true.
I can't go back over that whole history now, but I want to ask you about what's left of the al-Nusra Front.
And first of all, is it really true, I have to keep asking this, I want to really know for sure, is it really true that Donald Trump called off the CIA support for the mythical moderates and the Free Syrian Army and basically the front groups for the al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham?
Well, actually, the CIA support to al-Nusra is ending now because there is no point in supporting a group that is not going to make any difference, really.
Today al-Qaeda main control of the city of Idlib is also under the control of Turkey.
So it's up to Turkey to regulate this, the presence of al-Qaeda that is still omnipresent in Syria.
And it is also present in other pockets around Damascus, in Harasta, they are present in the south of Damascus, in Al-Yarmouk camp, and they are present in the south of Syria on the Israeli borders where also Israel supported al-Qaeda.
So Donald Trump is not the only one who supported al-Qaeda and he would declare that Israel also said we are supporting al-Qaeda, we are supporting jihadists, and we'd rather have the jihadists on our borders than to have Iran or Hezbollah on our borders.
So if Donald Trump has halted the support of al-Qaeda, I think this would be one of the rare intelligence steps he made because supporting al-Qaeda is supporting a lost horse.
Al-Qaeda can't make any difference but can only create more devastating killing and more attacks because al-Qaeda, to tell you honestly, according to my experience and the testimony that I have collected from the ground in the last, let's say, six years in Syria, they are the most ferocious, the most intelligent, the most wicked, and the most courageous fighters that have rendered the life of every single other group or regular army extremely difficult, including Hezbollah and Iran.
Al-Qaeda militants are formidable fighters.
They're not easy to defeat and they have enjoyed the full support of Saudi Arabia, of Qatar, of Turkey, of the United States, and of the rest of Europe.
So many of them were even trained in Jordan by the Americans and promised to be moderate and went and joined, you know, they got trained up by our Green Berets, you know, the best we got.
But they still control the Idlib province or how much of it?
Jolani still lives and still declares his fealty to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York City, correct?
Yeah, that is correct.
But we, I think there's a lot of hope in Jolani, because Jolani is someone who changes the rifle from one shoulder to another very easily.
So he came to Syria, and he wasn't al-Qaeda, he was ISIS.
And he was an ISIS emir, was sent by Baghdadi.
So he turned against his boss.
And then he declared the loyalty to al-Zawahiri.
And then later on, we saw just less than a few months ago, he started arresting and putting in jail the hardliners of al-Qaeda.
Now he has released them again, because he's a kind of a survival.
And he can't get away with it because he's too much involved with al-Qaeda.
So yes, al-Qaeda is present in Idlib, is extremely strong.
We're talking about over 10,000 fighters of al-Qaeda.
We are talking about most al-Qaeda co-group that came from all over the Islamic world, and joined Syria and joined Jolani, and they are present in Syria.
And they are fighting under al-Qaeda command and under Jolani command.
And they are ready to swallow what Jolani is doing to them, as long as they can keep their presence and wait for better days.
And they think they can wait for better days and they can enjoy the future, as long as Turkey is not determined to end al-Qaeda.
And it obviously is not looking to end al-Qaeda, because Turkey can't fight al-Qaeda.
We saw how Turkey was fighting the Islamic State and was struggling a lot to defeat small groups, few hundreds of the Islamic State group in the area that had divided the Rojava into.
So if you imagine the Turkish army is going to defeat al-Qaeda in Idlib, I think that is quite impossible to defeat al-Qaeda in Idlib in one or two or three years of war.
And I don't think Turkey wants to be involved in a direct war with al-Qaeda.
Wait, but you're saying that you're saying that the Syrian Arab army also has no hope of rousting them out of Idlib?
Oh, I just want to tell you something.
According to my experience in Syria and the witness of many battles that I've seen in the first hand, the Russian air bombing can never win a battle.
The battle has been won by the Russian air force, by the Syrian army on the ground, by Iran and its allies, all together.
Nobody, I mean, al-Qaeda has, I mean, now you're taking a big part of my forthcoming book on Syria and on Hezbollah.
But I can tell you something.
Al-Qaeda learned to adapt to the Russian bombardments and to the Russian air force bombing.
And they have created cities under the ground where I have visited many and where the militants go under the ground waiting because they have learned exactly the lesson of how a classical army would move when they want to occupy or liberate a city.
So what they, what the traditional move is starting with air bombing, starting with artillery, and then the ground force would move in.
Well, al-Qaeda have learned that.
They're extremely intelligent, and this is why I said they are a formidable non-regular army.
And what they do is they just keep a few people in, visible in a few main points, and then the rest of their militants hide under the ground until the end of the bombardment.
And when the ground troops move in, they come out.
Yeah, man, I'm so sorry that I cannot continue this conversation.
I have got to go.
But I really appreciate you coming back on the show, Elijah, to talk about this stuff.
And I hope we can do this again soon.
Okay, no problem.
Thank you very much.
All right, you guys, that is Elijah Magnier.
He writes at ALRAI Media Group, ALRAIMediaGroup.com.
And you can follow him on Twitter as well.
It's at E-J-M-A-L-R-A-I.
Thank you again, sir.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right, you guys, and that's it for Anti-War Radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I'm the opinion editor of AntiWar.com.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 4,500 interviews now, going back to 2003, at ScottHorton.org.
And you can follow me on Twitter, at Scott Horton Show.
See you next week.
