Okay, welcome back to the show.
This is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your guest host, Zoe Greif, and I've got on the line Joe Lauria.
He's got a great article co-written about the massacre in Syria in Hula.
Joe, are you there?
I'm here.
How are you doing?
Okay, it's great to talk to you.
Thank you for being with the show.
I'm here.
Can you hear me?
Yes, sir, I can.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
Okay, great.
Joe Lauria has covered international affairs in the Middle East for more than 20 years.
He is the Wall Street Journal's United Nations correspondent, and he's got this great article co-written called Security Council Blames Syria for Attack, and I wanted to interview you about it.
So I guess the first question is this massacre in Hula, who committed it?
Joe, do we know?
Was it the regime?
Was it the rebels?
Is there any way to tell?
There is an investigation going on.
The UN is conducting an investigation.
Security Council wants to know for sure, but that condemnation on...
Our witnesses came down the day after the massacre and saw 108 people killed.
They weren't able to gather a lot of forensic evidence because many of the people were already buried under Muslim law.
You bury a dead within one day, and others were wrapped in burial shrouds, so they could not get a lot of forensic evidence.
But they made eyewitness interviews, and this is what they based it on.
However, there is a story in the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, which did an investigation in the area, which claimed that the victims were actually Alawites or Shiites, that they were killed by Sunni rebels, and made to look like the government actually committed the massacre.
So we've got to wait for the investigation to be completed.
I don't know whether they'll take into account this newspaper article.
It's extremely explosive, if that's true, that this was in fact rebels who did it, Sunnis, and not the government, which has been widely blamed for all these killings.
And if it does emerge that it was not what the spy witnesses said, and that it was in fact the Sunnis rebels who committed this massacre, it would really disrupt even further the narrative of Western governments, particularly the United States, about what's happening here.
The U.S. and its allies in the West tend to blame the entire conflict on the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and hold the opposition blameless for any kind of crimes like this.
But we're seeing really a very complex situation developing in Syria.
In particular, the emergence of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists blowing up buildings in Damascus and Aleppo, in particular, and killing scores of people has disturbed this narrative, this black-and-white Manichaean view of the war.
And I think I should point out right away that I believe President al-Assad is a butcher, there's no question about that, and he holds primary responsibility for this conflict, because he had an opportunity five years ago, for example, to make a deal with liberal parties to have genuine reforms and elections.
As you know, his father and he have now been in power for over 40 years without any kind of semblance of democracy, and ruling a police state.
If he had made a deal and saw that it was time to change Syria fundamentally and have genuine elections, we wouldn't probably be in the bloodshed we're in right now.
But instead, he built up the Muslim Brotherhood as a counterweight to the liberals, and no change was made.
And now it's that very Muslim Brotherhood, with the backing of Gulf Arab states, particularly the Saudis and the Qataris, who are leading this revolt.
Unfortunately, it came to a revolt because there was no democratic reforms.
But what is really happening on the ground is totally complicated and unknown, and Hoola is a very good example.
We don't really know what happened there.
We do see the emergence of a sectarian conflict between the majority Sunnis, which is about 80 percent of the Syrian population, and the minority Alawite clan that really runs the country, the Assad's Alawites, they're only about 13 percent.
They also, still Assad, has still a lot of support in the country, pretty broad, amongst Christians who fear a Muslim Brotherhood government, Islamist government, and some, of course, the Alawites, and even some Sunni businessmen who've prospered under Assad's economic reforms over the last few years.
So he's not without support.
But again, what is going on in Hoola, what is going on across the country, seems to be more and more like a sectarian conflict, like we saw in Bosnia.
And to separate fact from fiction is extremely difficult.
You're relying too much on YouTube videos of explosions, which we have seen time and time again, were from a different time, a different place, weren't from yesterday.
In Hoola, that's not to say that some of them aren't accurate.
There are also, for example, YouTube videos of beheaded Alawites that Sunnis have killed that never get reported on by Western media, because they are, I feel, too often taking the U.S. and Western government black-and-white position, blaming this entire conflict on the ground, even though I said Assad, I think, is ultimately responsible for not making reforms.
But the reporting of what's happening on the ground is too, I think, anti-government and not taking into account the fact that this might be a lot more complicated and that there are, in fact, a lot of violence being perpetrated by the Sunni majority led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Well, that leads me to my next question, which is, of course, it seems, at least in the Western media, if you watch the news around here or BBC or whatever, that the Assad regime is the purest, blackest form of evil and that these rebels are the cream of human goodness.
And of course, that can't possibly be true.
But my question is, why are they trying to paint it in such black-and-white terms?
What is the purpose here?
And is it ultimately to take over Syria or to regime change?
My point is, is the point Iran?
Is the point to hurt Iran?
Is that what they think they're doing here with all this propaganda?
Yeah, absolutely.
Iran is central to this conflict.
There's no question about that.
Iran supplies weapons to Syrians and across Syria into southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, and then on to Hamas as well.
So from the US point of view and Israeli point of view, weakening Syria, getting rid of that link would box in the Iranians.
It's also in the interest of the Gulf Arab countries to weaken Iran that way and take away its influence, which has reached the Mediterranean through Syria.
And they know, the Arab governments know in the Gulf that a head-on war against Iran would not be necessarily the best way to deal with Iranian influence.
But to get rid of the leadership in Damascus and put in a Sunni Muslim government would be in fact fatal to Iran's influence in the region.
But the problem is, as you pointed out, we don't really know the makeup of the opposition very well.
What kind of a government would they bring?
Would it really be democratic?
Would it be an Islamist government?
Of what stripe?
I mean, there are different types of Islamist governments.
The more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, there are Salafists as well, who are much more intolerant.
And then, of course, there are extremists like al-Qaeda that are playing a role right now.
And I think that the Gulf Arab countries, particularly the Saudis and the Qataris, would like to see an Islamic government that's more in their image as they have.
Of course, I don't think they can get away with a monarchy.
It's not a monarchy.
But they would like to see a friendly government there.
And in the short term, the U.S. interest is certainly to get rid of Assad.
There's no question about it.
President Obama has made clear that he wants Assad to go.
So have British, German, French governments.
So they want regime change.
There's no doubt about that.
And that is really what Russia is most concerned about.
They don't want to lose their ally in Syria.
They have a lot of arms sales there.
They have access to a port.
But most importantly, they've been fighting a 30-year war against Islamic encroachment on their sphere of influence, starting with Afghanistan in the 1980s, backed by the United States and the Gulf countries, and in that conflict, Pakistan.
So I think the Russians are very concerned.
They fought that, again, in the northern Caucasus and into Bosnia.
And now they see this war against Islamism in Syria as well.
And America, usually, in their foreign policy is very short term.
They might reap benefits at the beginning to get rid of Assad.
The way they think they did in getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Joe, but we've got a hard break here.
We've just got to take this break.
I'm so sorry.
I will let you continue on the other side.
We're talking with Joe Loria on Antiwar Radio about Syria, massacres, what's going on, etc.
More on the other side with Joe Loria, Antiwar Radio.
Okay, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm your guest host, Zoe Greif.
I have the pleasure of speaking with Joe Loria about Syria.
And I didn't even introduce you properly.
Please forgive me.
I'm going to go back and take the time to do that.
I mentioned that Joe is the Wall Street Journal's United Nations correspondent, but I didn't mention that his work has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Telegraph, BBC, the Sunday Business of London, and more publications and TV stations than I can even bother to read off in this segment.
We're talking about Syria.
And Joe, here's a question I have.
Obviously, the West, the US, Hillary Clinton, everybody else wants to get rid of the Assad regime.
What in the world do they think is going to replace it that's going to be so much better?
You talked about the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the Islamists, and all these other possibilities that seems like from the West point of view would be even worse.
So what are they thinking, Joe?
Yeah, that's a good point.
As I was saying before the break, the United States often has a very short-term view of their foreign policy.
They may get rid of Assad, and they may have an Islamist-dominated government in which liberals, secular liberals who could have made a deal with Assad five years ago will be in the minority.
And while Assad may go, and in fact, the Islamic government might at first be amenable to US interests, because let's face it, if you're an Islamist, you're in the Muslim Brotherhood, you want to come to power, and the Americans come to you and the Gulf Arabs and say, here's a lot of money, and here are weapons, you know, you're going to agree with them.
But once you get into power, your own agenda will surface.
We've seen this happen before with Saddam Hussein, for example, in Iraq, where the US backed him against Iran.
And then, of course, Iraqis had their own agenda, and they invaded Kuwait.
So you never know what's going to happen in the future.
And it's very risky.
But I think downplaying the opposition right now is very dangerous, because I think the public should know what it is, who it is we're backing, and who might replace Assad.
As bad as Assad is, we don't really know what the future would bring, what kind of a government that would be, and what kind of policies it would have.
Even in Israel, the establishment is split about whether to continue to want Assad to stay in power or to get rid of him.
Getting rid of him, as we said before, would weaken Iran, which is certainly in Israel's interest.
But bringing an Islamic government to power in Syria might in the long term hurt Israel, even if they choke off Hezbollah, which is Shiite, so that a Sunni-dominated government in Syria would not necessarily want to help Hezbollah.
That would help Israel.
But we don't know what the long-term objectives of an Islamic government in Syria would be, or how much the US and other Western countries could co-opt them for how long.
We just need to know more about the opposition right now.
And that was the same problem in Libya.
There was really not a lot of knowledge about who was fighting against Gaddafi.
As we see now, it's a complete total chaos.
And there were, in fact, al-Qaeda elements there, as Gaddafi said.
We all laughed at him.
I did, too.
But there were al-Qaeda there, and there were even Qatari soldiers on the ground.
And some of these Libyans are going to fight in Syria right now.
They're showing up.
So I think the big question is about intervention, military intervention, whether the West will do this, whether they should do this.
And I think...
Yeah.
Oh, I was just going to say, Hillary Clinton herself was talking about, I'm not sure if it was Libya or Syria or both, when she said, wow, you know, Ayman al-Zawahiri wants the same foreign policy outcome that the United States government wants.
Is that such a good idea?
Hmm.
She even said it out loud, Joe.
Yeah, it's kind of funny that there are unlikely allies here in Syria.
No question about it.
And it just goes to show the uncertainty of the whole thing.
I mean, you know, who knows if Assad falls, who's going to replace him and what kind of unintended consequences may or may not occur?
My head spins at the very thought of even trying to think of all that, you know?
Yeah, well, Assad's government for 40 years pretty much has had a stable border with Israel.
The conflict shifted to Lebanon, Syria-backed Lebanese governments and Hezbollah.
But as far as Syria under Assad goes, that's been a stable relationship with the Israelis.
And even with the West, the U.S. and Hillary Clinton, you mentioned her a few years ago, was touting the great reformer Bashar al-Assad.
So this is, you know, this is the big question.
Will there be intervention?
Should there be intervention?
Just yesterday, the German foreign minister blamed coffeehouse intellectuals for wanting to intervene.
Will the West intervene in Syria?
You know, what happens if in two days, two airstrikes make Assad leave in a Yemen model, where he goes off and a deputy takes over, and then there are elections within a year?
You know, that would be a good intervention, but that's highly unlikely.
It's more likely that military intervention by the West would lead to an extremely escalated bloody conflict.
And I think many more people would die.
And we still wouldn't know what kind of government we'd have, even if Assad were overthrown violently with NATO intervention.
Kofi Annan, who is the special envoy of the UN and the Arab League trying to put together a peace deal here, said the other day at the UN that an Arab foreign minister had told him that Syria is not Libya.
Libya imploded, but Syria will explode.
So intervention by NATO could very well lead to a larger conflict that would spill over into neighboring countries, particularly Lebanon.
And I think that that, where they have very much kind of also a very complex sectarian makeup that, as we know, had a long civil war during the 1970s.
So I think military intervention is probably a very risky move, because it wouldn't bring immediate success.
It wouldn't necessarily bring a democracy to the point of a gun, as we saw in Iraq, how difficult that was.
And I even, there's an Arab journalist I know at the UN, a Lebanese, who told me that he thinks the West will not intervene because they'd rather see the Syrians destroy themselves and weaken themselves, and then there could be a failed state.
I don't know if that's a good idea either.
But this is the really open question now about where it leads to next, and whether NATO or any Western coalition of some sort uses airstrikes and openly arms the rebels.
We know now they have anti-tank weapons, and these have to be coming from the Gulf states.
So again, the conflict is certainly increasing.
The opposition is divided.
They chose a new leader yesterday in Istanbul, a Kurd, so that neither the Sunnis and the Muslim Brotherhood, which dominates the opposition, nor the liberals, would have one of theirs leading it.
So they have a weak guy now, who's a Kurd.
But again, that is really, we have to look, what is the organization of the opposition?
That would be the government that would replace Assad.
It's divided, it's dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and it's not a very rosy picture for the future of Syria, I could say that.
Well, I got another question, Joe.
In your article in the Wall Street Journal, co-written by Noor Malas, entitled Security Council Blames Syria for Attack, you mentioned these UN observers, or are they NATO observers?
But they're unarmed, and I'm just thinking, what in the world are they doing, wandering around unarmed, observing what, and for what purpose?
Well, Kofi Annan created a six-point peace plan, in which there should be a ceasefire, political prisoners released, access to media and humanitarian aid, and the beginning of a political dialogue.
And together with that plan that was approved by the Security Council, they deployed 300 unarmed UN observers.
And the purpose of these observers is to now stay positioned in some of the more violent places, like Homs and Hamas, Hama, rather, and Aleppo, and try to prevent violence.
Because when they're present, generally there isn't a lot of fighting or not.
They are there to observe and report on violations of the ceasefire by both sides.
That's their role.
There just aren't enough of them.
And they're also coming under attack.
They're shot at almost every day, the head of UN peacekeeping told us.
A week ago, they were shot at when they tried to go into Khober, this new site of a massacre the other day.
So they're largely, you would say, ineffective, if you want to say, if you want to think that the purpose of these monitors is to bring the ceasefire.
They are not bringing about a ceasefire.
There aren't enough of them.
They're being shot at.
And they can't be everywhere at all times.
So where they're not, there's generally a lot of violence going on.
And I said, they're very close to the violence themselves.
They're being attacked.
None of them have been killed yet.
If one of them is killed, we're very likely to see them withdraw.
But the purpose of the unarmed observers is simply to report on ceasefire violations, and hopefully by their presence, to deter violence.
But unfortunately, it isn't working.
Speaking of not working, Kofi Annan's peace plan doesn't seem to be working at all.
What does it involve?
Trying to get people to negotiate at a table, but they won't even do that?
Or what's the status of that?
Yeah, it's close to collapse, if not collapse.
And that's a real shame, because that would be a way to try to get us out of this mess.
As I said, the ultimate purpose is to create a political dialogue between the opposition, who isn't united, as I pointed out, and the government of Assad, and to bring about elections within a year, which even Assad could take part in if he wanted to, but very unlikely would win, since it's only a minority of Syrians who support him.
So he's not going to be interested in that plan, let's face it.
He doesn't want to go from power.
He should have tried to do this years ago, and he didn't.
So now, not only is it his political power that he wants to maintain, but it's the survival of his people, of the Alawites.
There is so much hatred for them by the majority, as soon as going back to a massacre his father committed in 1980 in Homs against the Muslim Brotherhood, wiping out a tiny neighborhood, killing as many as 20,000 people, that their survival and revenge attacks on them could very likely follow if the rebels get too strong and come to power.
If they came to power, the fear of the Alawites would be vulnerable to revenge attacks on a huge scale.
So they're fighting for their lives, not just their political lives, but their actual lives.
And this is what's so dangerous here.
And throw into the mix, Syria is said to have one of the largest, if not the largest, stock of chemical weapons anywhere on the planet.
Oh dear, I wish you wouldn't have said that, Joe.
Yes, a very strong, if the rebels are built up by Western and Gulf weapons, and we see now they're having anti-tank weapons, which I never had before, it was only small arms from the very beginning.
And if there's NATO intervention, if they feel threatened to the point, as I said, of the survival of their sect, they could use chemical weapons.
And this is, you know, there is no easy solution here.
And I really don't know, I can't offer one.
I think that military intervention by NATO is not a magic bullet and will not solve this thing, I think will probably make it worse.
And in the meantime, there has to be better reporting about what's going on to show the complexities of this.
And I think that that's a real problem right now, that there's too much blame being put on one side.
And if we had a more realistic view of that, I don't know whether that would, how much that would do, but at least people would be informed about whether our government should get involved in another conflict.
Well, Joe, we're running, we're over time as it is.
Thank you very much for yours on the show.
The article is at the Wall Street Journal, Security Council blames Syria for attack, written by our guest, Joe Lauria, and co-written by Noor Malas.
Thank you very much for your time and your expertise.
I certainly hope they don't stir up that hornet's nest any worse.
But it sounds like that's exactly what everybody's trying to do.
Have a great day, Joe.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you very much.
Nice to talk.
