All right, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times Online.
Welcome back to the show.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
The new article is called Why the Syrian Regime Won't Fall.
Why won't the Syrian regime fall?
It will fall when we have a conflagration in Damascus and Aleppo.
The conflagration hasn't started yet.
It might, in fact.
There's some movement in Aleppo already, you know, but these are the cities that are totally controlled by Assad's security apparatus.
And this means that the urban middle class, some of them have a stake in the regime.
Some are professionals who actually have a job, but it's connected to state industries, for instance.
These people have a stake in the regime and they're not rebelling.
But if we get people in Damascus and Aleppo starting to actually demonstrate in the streets square style, then the writing will be on the wall.
We're not there yet.
And also there's involvement, the regional involvement, especially Turkey.
So last week something very important happened.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, spent six hours talking to Bashar al-Assad face to face in Damascus.
Before he went there, there was a perception that he would be carrying like an ultimatum by Prime Minister Erdogan from Turkey.
And in fact, when he arrived at the airport, that was the impression even among the Syrian officials.
After the talks and after his press conference was more or less a mediation.
Davutoglu is a very good diplomat.
He's an academic.
And he's the guy who created Turkish foreign policy for the past 10 years.
The policy that, you know, to sum it all up, it's zero problems with our neighbors, as they call it.
And obviously one of the most important neighbors is Syria.
They have border problems.
They have ethnic problems.
Turkey's majority is Sunni.
There is a sub-Shiite sect in power in Syria, the Yellow Lights.
So obviously Turkish is more pro-Syrian Sunnis.
But this doesn't mean that they can simply interfere inside what's going on in Syria.
And this was the impression that people were getting from what Erdogan had been saying for the past, I would say, two months or so, last month especially.
But after the Davutoglu visit, you know, the game changed on the ground, I would say.
So Turkey's willing to give the Assad regime some leeway, okay, let's see about your reforms, let's see about your actions.
And the Syrian government said, okay, these things take time.
And especially stop killing people in your streets.
This was the key message by Davutoglu.
But still they're killing people in the streets, as we have been seeing for the past 48 hours, you know.
Instead of a 10, 50, 60, it may be 405, but still it's the same thing, because this is an extremely nasty security apparatus.
It is a police state.
And they have no idea in terms of, for instance, crowd control techniques, which in the West and the US and Europe is absolutely normal.
They have no clue.
They just shoot.
So I wonder if this dynamic is going to change within the next few weeks.
Let's say that the Assad regime bought some time with Turkey.
At the same time, there's a problem with Saudi Arabia.
Not only do they want the Assad regime over, they want Sunnis in power.
And they're also financing a strand of the protestors.
Some might call it resistance, some might call it protestors.
But basically, the nasty Salafi, almost Salafi-jihadi component of the protestors, or the Muslim Brotherhood factions that are more hardcore, they're being financed directly by Saudi Arabia, by wealthy individuals in Yemen, by Kuwaitis, you know.
And they want a Sunni regime in Syria, but it's not that easy.
Because most Syrians, in fact, they're still asking the key question, I would say.
What happens after the Assad?
We're going to have a Sunni Islamist government, or are we going to have chaos?
They cannot see a third option, which is a Sunni secular government.
And that's why we are in an impasse at the moment.
Well, can you see that third option, a Sunni secularist government that protected minorities and so forth?
I wonder, Scott, really, at the moment, we don't have enough information about what's really going on, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, in terms of mobilizing secular Sunnis.
At the moment, they are either on the fence, or they're quiet, or they're not busy, they're not doing anything, they're just watching what the government's going to do.
So I think it's too early to answer that question.
I would say, we'll start answering this question the moment there is a major demonstration either in Aleppo or in Damascus.
And that's because those are, as you say in your article, the upper-middle class secularist Sunnis.
If they join in with the majority Sunnis, then the game is up, basically, for the minority Alawite dictatorship, is that it?
Exactly, because they will see that the regime is over, if they see that the regime has no more leeway.
For instance, what happened last week, the meeting, the Davutoglu-Assad meeting, like I told you, brought the regime, let's say, a few weeks.
But if they don't change their tactics, and they're still heavy-handed, and if there was a minor demonstration in Aleppo, I think it was yesterday or the day before yesterday, if this thing snowballs, and they start killing people in the second-largest city in Syria, then they will be in deep, deep trouble.
Because of the reaction to that?
Of course, and then they're going to have parts of the regime against them, they're going to have Sunni businessmen against them, and they're going to have secular Sunnis making the conclusion that, look, it's better to get rid of this nasty regime, and if we go for free and fair elections, Egypt-style, let's put it this way, maybe we'll have a chance of electing secular politicians.
And we're not going to have a Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Salafi-jihadist faction monopolizing the whole game.
But still, at the moment, nobody knows.
And that's the problem with Syria, because it is really a stalemate at the moment.
Well, but even...
Just like in Yemen, because in Yemen nobody knows who the next Saleh is going to be.
In Saudi Arabia, speaking, the next Saleh, behind closed doors.
And the next Saleh, pro-Saudi, obviously is not what the protesters in Sana'a and the rest of Yemen are wanting.
So it's amazing, because when you see the stalemate, they're everywhere.
It's in Syria, it's in Bahrain as well, because the major Shiite parties decided not to...
Well, wait a minute, now let's talk about some of those other revolutions in a minute here.
I want to stay on Syria for a second.
Okay.
Because I was reading in your article here that the police state that you mentioned there, the military and all of the security services and whatever euphemisms they go by, they're on the side of the regime.
So I wonder if, even if these two major towns, Aleppo, and I forgot the other one you said, if they go toward the insurgency against the regime, could that just lead to a real bloody kind of conflict?
It won't be, because...
I mean, it doesn't sound like a state, it doesn't sound like Egypt, where the military might say, okay, we switch sides.
Exactly.
It could happen.
We could have an Egypt situation, where most of the top generals in the Syrian army, they are Hafez Assad-appointed, or they are Bashar Assad-appointed as well.
So they are totally faithful to the regime, they profit from it as well.
It's very similar to the Egyptian situation.
But they may turn out against it, even if they see that their faith is sealed, because we have major demonstrations in the streets.
So we're still very far away from a Tahrir Square scenario in Syria.
But if it happens, I would say that the regime could fall in a few weeks, you know.
And then, I guess, so at this point, then, the coalition behind the government is everybody but the Sunnis, and then those upper-middle-class secular Sunnis that you mentioned?
No, I wouldn't say they are behind the government.
The secular Sunnis are basically businessmen.
And a lot of them, they do very good business in Saudi Arabia, for that matter.
It's a wait-and-see position at the moment.
The security apparatus, which is enormous, you know, the Muqabarat, military intelligence, these kinds of people, obviously, we don't see any fissures, at least for the moment.
And the Shiites, which are, let's say, around 20%, almost 20% of the population, they, at the moment, they are also in a wait-and-see position.
All right, we'll be right there.
We're going to have to wait and see after this break.
It's Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times, everybody.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times, and he's got a piece today that's in the viewpoint section at Antiwar.com, why the Syrian regime won't fall.
And now, Pepe, it sounds like you were saying before the break that really the only people who support the state in Syria right now are members of the state, that even the 20% Shiite minority is sitting back waiting rather than, you know, in full support of him.
Is that about right?
Yes.
Yeah.
And very important, secular Sunni businessmen, because for the moment, you know, they have contracts with other countries in the oil and gas industry as well, people who have contracts with car factories, for instance, from Asia.
So these are linked to the regime.
They profited from concessions by the regime.
They are secular, most of them, but they are...
It's also a waiting seat.
They want to see if the regime is going to contain this rebellion in the provinces or almost in the borders of Syria.
But when this migrates to the big urban centers, then it's the real thing, and it hasn't happened yet.
And I wonder if it will happen, considering that the firepower that they deployed, especially in Hama, was something absolutely horrendous.
So this was an intimidation tactic as well.
I wonder if it's going to work.
And we also cannot discount the possibility of, okay, just an example, let's say a suicide bombing in Damascus or in Aleppo by this Salafist fringe of the rebels, let's put it this way.
Supported by Persian Gulf money.
This could destabilize the whole thing as well.
But the regime could also use it to say, look, I told you before, this is a rebellion organized by Salafi jihadis, this is a terrorist operation, they want to destabilize the secular republic.
And they can point their fingers towards Saudi Arabia, in fact.
So it can go both ways.
And we still don't know which way it's going.
Yeah, well, and as you say, in the article, and I guess, as you mentioned earlier, you have the Saudis denouncing Assad for using violence against the protesters, you know, when they just finished, or maybe they're still using Saudi troops to help the king of Bahrain put down the majority rebellion against Israel.
Now, this is the, you know, it's the hypocrisy trophy of the early to 21st century, in fact, you cannot get more hypocritical than that, you know, and especially because at the same time they are, there's a draft law I mentioned in some of my previous articles, there's a draft law that's going to be voted soon, I would say, maybe within the next few weeks, their new anti terrorism law means that if you even criticize the House of Saud in a cafe or in front of your Nargileh with your friends, you go to jail for 10 years with no appeal.
So this is how they view reforms in Saudi Arabia itself.
And when King Abdullah was deriding Assad or criticizing him for the bloody repression, he talked, now you need reforms in your country.
So this is not even Monty Python could write a sketch about that, you know, it's completely not.
Yeah, it's like George Bush invading Iraq for freedom or something.
Exactly, it's on the same level.
All right.
So now, basically, the revolution's over in Bahrain, the Saudis effectively put that rebellion down or what?
It's, look, you know, I've been trying to write an article about Bahrain for the past few days, almost 10 days, and I'm so sad about all the reports that I get from Bahrain bloggers, journalists, and all that.
Yes, they basically quashed, this was a real indigenous, spontaneous rebellion against the Minister of Interior, against the fact that they have no job opportunities, the fact there are no free and fair elections, against immense corruption by the Al-Khalifas.
And yes, it was quashed by the Al-Khalifas, not even by the Al-Khalifa Jordanian advisers or, you know, people like that, by that invasion with Saudi troops and a few Iraqi and Kuwaiti troops as well, the GCC troops, when they called that thing called Peninsula Shield, which is a kind of like the NATO mechanism, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
But the attack in Bahrain was an internal, democratic attack on a dictatorship.
It's also completely absurd, the whole thing.
And the Al-Khalifas started advertising that they're going to hold conciliation talks with everybody, including the opposition.
But the major Shiite party, Al-Wasq, they just pulled out a few days ago, this week in fact, saying that, look, this is absurd, because they are, according to their rules, it's basically we submit, and then we talk about something else.
It's no open talks, like, you know, the major, what the opposition basically wanted, which is let's have free and fair elections and proportional elections, like, when we are voted by the majority, we are in Parliament, instead of having quotas, like the current system.
So nothing like this will be on the table.
So it's a sham.
And the problem is, the West bought this whole thing, because Saudi Arabia, not only did they develop a counter-revolution in the Persian Gulf, but a counter-revolution in terms of PR selling the way they were handling the whole situation to the West, and the major European capitals, and Washington, of course, they bought the whole thing.
Well, you know, in the New York Times, I'm sure you saw, they had a whole spin where, oh, well, you know, there's a big split between the King Al-Khalifa and somebody else Al-Khalifa, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of something or other, and he's a really reasonable guy, and he wouldn't do this, he's trying to stop the King, and he's the one that we like, and that kind of thing.
Who's that again?
The Crown Prince, in fact, he is, well, compared to the King, the Crown Prince is a relatively moderate figure, and emphasis on the relative, you know.
But this doesn't mean that the whole dynasty agreed to smash the whole thing, the Pearl Roundabout protests, in the bud.
And they called Saudi Arabia, in fact.
In fact, they had a meeting, Saudi Arabia more or less, okay, what do you want us to do?
And they said, come here, save us.
In fact, they are cousins, they are Sunni cousins, more distant cousins, but they're still more or less family.
And the fact that most of the protests in Bahrain are Shiite, for Saudi Arabia, clinched.
For them, it's their typical paranoia vision that Iran is masterminding all their profits in the Persian Gulf and beyond to destabilize Sunni regimes, you know, the same old stupid Shiite-Crescent thing, you know.
And it's still valid for the House of Saud.
And for them, it works, especially because the West doesn't say anything.
And this is the key.
If the West didn't have the fifth fleet in Bahrain, or if Bahrain was not a financial center with, you know, one formula, one race every year, that kind of stuff that appeals to the West, maybe we'll have a different outcome.
Right.
Well, and that brings us back to Yemen.
You tried to bring it up in the last segment there.
Can you give us a couple of minutes on the status of their dictator in exile?
There were some WikiLeaks last week that said that the Americans want him out because they want to build a pipeline bypassing the whole Persian Gulf and exit at the port of Yemen.
And they want the new guy, not the old guy.
Exactly.
Exactly.
That's one of the possible reasons, of course.
And especially the key reason is Saudi Arabia wants to control the next regime.
So they discreetly or not so discreetly told Saleh, which is their luxury guest, look, you're not coming back.
You're staying here with us.
You're going to have as many palaces as you want.
But this is it.
We're going to finish our days here in Saudi.
And they are behind the scenes.
They are trying to sell the region and the world, in fact, a sort of roadmap where the next ruler will be more or less picked by Saudi Arabia, and they won't going to listen to what the protesters in Sana'a and the rest of Yemen are, you know, what they really want, which is, once again, less corruption, free and fair elections, you know, you know, the beginnings of democracy, at least.
So forget it.
It's not going to happen in Yemen.
And obviously, everybody's going to be invoking the specter of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is basically 50 or 60 fighters holed up in the mountains in the southeast.
You know, that's it.
As if these guys had enough firepower or connections to destabilize the whole country.
This is ridiculous.
Totally ridiculous.
Right.
Right.
They can't overthrow the government there, but they can kill all of us back here in North America, apparently.
No.
That's why we have to bomb them all the time.
No, Scott, look.
To keep those couple of dozen guys at bay.
No.
Look, they may be, they could send maybe another underwear bomber to Times Square or, you know, that kind of stuff.
But, you know, in terms of a real threat to America, it's zero from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
All right.
Well, we'll see if we can make one.
You just give us a few more years of bombing all the time.
We'll get there eventually.
All right.
We'll get there again, I guess I should say.
It's been 10 years.
All right.
Thanks very much for your time, Pepe.
We're all out of it.
Thank you, Scott.
Take care.
Appreciate you joining us.
All right, everybody.
That's Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times.
Check him out today on Antiwar.com and The Viewpoint.
See you all tomorrow.
Bye-bye.
