07/27/12 – Roy Gutman – The Scott Horton Show

For KPFK, Pacifica Radio, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Okay, everybody, welcome to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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And our guest tonight is Roy Gutmann, Middle East correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers.
Welcome to the show, Roy.
How are you doing?
Well, good, good.
It's a busy time in my part of the world.
Where are you now, exactly?
I'm in Istanbul.
In Istanbul, okay.
All right, so now, your latest piece, I believe, is Assad grants control of Kurdish region to militant group.
This is part of the chess game, or maybe it's just checkers going on over there.
With the Syrian civil war, the article focuses on the Turkish reaction.
What does this mean for Turkey?
What does it mean to the Kurds of Syria?
You know, of course, this is something that's evolving right now.
So, the long-term meaning is not yet easy to predict.
But in the very short term, what's happened is that Assad, in what is maybe driven by necessity, but also maybe by some cynicism and a desire to get back at the Turks, he has turned over significant parts of Syrian Kurdish territory to an extremist Kurdish faction connected with the PKK, which is viewed by many, many countries as terrorist.
It's the Syrian branch of the PKK, which is called the PYD.
And this is something that is very disturbing to the Turks, because they've been fighting a war with the PKK for decades now.
And I think it's not just that they've said that it's not an acceptable thing.
I think it really is not something acceptable to have an entity or a state or an autonomous district or province of Syria in the hands, not acceptable to the Turks, to have that in the hands of the PKK.
Now, is that because they fear that the Kurdish population of Turkey will outright join with the new autonomous Kurds in Syria, or newly autonomous?
Or is it just that they'll be inspired to renew their push, or I guess they're worried about a PKK safe haven on the other side of the border, that kind of thing?
All of the above.
I mean, again, because it hasn't really taken full shape.
It's hard to say exactly what the threat is going to be.
But I was just searching on the web, in fact, to see what the latest news was out of that region, and in particular whether a town known as Kemesli had been taken over by the local Kurdish militants.
I don't think it has.
I don't think it has.
But if it does, if it is taken over, then the balloon goes up or the guns start firing.
And the reason is that the PKK has been a real nuisance to Turkey.
There are incidents that go on every other day, it seems, where they attack police or army or the Turkish state in some form.
But they've been a non-state actor.
They've been confined to hiding in caves and in mountains, mostly on the Kurdish-Turkish border, but also clearly in Syria.
And if they acquire Kemesli, which is sort of the unofficial capital of the Syrian Kurds, then they have the makings of a political state.
They have a safe haven, but somebody might even recognize them.
I don't know quite who.
Maybe the Iranians would.
But in any case, it's a horse of a different color from a guerrilla band which is in hiding.
Right.
Well, but now, is this not the most drastic measure of all by Bashar al-Assad?
Because how is he ever supposed to regain this territory once he gives it up?
I mean, if this autonomy is going to be equivalent to, say, for example, the autonomy of Kurdistan in Iraq, where the central government has virtually no real on-the-ground armed authority, right?
You know, we don't know yet.
I mean, listen, in Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, there you've got an autonomous province that really, in fact, is quite autonomous now, increasingly autonomous by the day.
Quite what comes out in Syria is not clear, simply because, you know, it hasn't really manifested itself.
But put it this way, he could ask for it back.
I don't know that he'd get it back.
But the Kurds in Qamishli and the PKK—well, I should say the PKK in Qamishli has been cooperating with Assad.
They have been suppressing Kurds who wanted to protest Assad and demand the overthrow of the regime.
So they've been loyalists.
They've been like a militia supporting the regime all along.
So who knows what kind of deal—you know, exactly what's on the dotted line if there is, you know, if there really is a deal, or whether it's verbal or whether it's written.
But in any case, they—you know, most probably he'll never get it back.
Because probably what we're watching now is the beginning of the endgame of Assad's regime.
He's—here's a man who I can—you can see, you know, his plans to attack Aleppo, that he's prepared to bring the house down if he is forced out of power.
He's prepared to break up the country.
He needs to be willing to do anything to stay in power, and that doesn't—you know, and staying in power is just not a likelihood after a period of time.
So what we're— Or at least it's a very serious bluff trying to get the foreign powers to back down.
Well, you know, yes, of course.
But it's not a bluff where he can do much follow-through.
And now the only thing is he could encourage the PYD, which is, as I say, sort of the PKK affiliate there, to attack Turkey.
The border is closed around Qamishli and other places.
It's mined in places.
They have to cross the border, but there are places where they could cross.
They could do that.
I'm not sure that there's any advantage to them doing it right now.
And so I'm not sure that he can really use them as a tool at this moment, but he certainly could at a later point.
And I think he has certainly in the past.
So there's a very cynical aspect to this on Assad's part.
He's lost titular control of this region, but it's in the hands of a close ally who happens to be anathema to the Turks.
Yeah.
Well, now, so couldn't Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, have anticipated that Assad could do something like this?
After all, as you said, the PKK inside Turkey are no laughing matter.
They're a very serious problem from the point of view of the state of Turkey.
Couldn't they have anticipated this?
That's why I said checkers, not chess.
This doesn't seem like that elaborate.
It's just basic action-reaction sort of consequences.
Well, of course, you can never quite anticipate just how the cookies will crumble, because, you know, Assad's regime has been a pretty tough one, and it's been very tough against the Kurds in particular.
So there's not a lot of love lost between most Kurds and Assad, the PYD accepted.
I think they did anticipate this.
And, in fact, a few weeks ago in, I guess it was around early July, the Kurdish regional government, which is the province, you know, the Kurdish province in Iraq, hosted a meeting of the different Syrian factions, Kurdish factions in particular, but also with the Syrian National Council there, in an attempt to make clear that they felt that, you know, at a certain point Assad was going to lose control there, and the idea of Massoud Barzani was to try to get all of the Kurds, you know, united on the same line as the Syrian Sunnis and the other resistance, so that there wouldn't be a vacuum, but that it would remain part of Syria.
In other words, that this, you wouldn't have an autonomous province, you wouldn't have a breakaway state, you wouldn't have some kind of UDI, you know, unilateral declaration of independence.
And he got them all to sign a document in which the PYD, which is the armed factions as opposed to the PKK, that they agreed, you know, to share power, to have a joint kind of administration with the rest of the Kurdish parties, and there was, like, at least 15 or 16 of them.
Now, of course, that's one thing to put that on paper, but the fact, because the fact is, it is only the PYD that is really armed and able to take power, and they've been using their arms, they've been using their, that, the fact that they're an armed force to their advantage.
So, and coming back to your question about Turkey, are you there?
Oh, I'm here listening intently.
Okay.
By the way, it's Roy Gutman, Middle East correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, on the phone from Istanbul.
Please continue.
Yes, so they had this agreement in that they reached an air bill, and, you know, and I think it was a good attempt, but I think it was more of sort of trying to do something when really the horse is out of the barn, when, you know, they could see that it was out of their control.
But when Barzani did this, and here's the very interesting thing, and it's something that most people don't realize, and I didn't until I spent a fair amount of time in Kurdistan earlier this year, the relationship between the Kurdistan regional government and the Turkish government, which, you know, at one point it was really, they were almost at war with each other, has grown very close.
And so when Barzani does something of that sort, you can be sure that the Turks are delighted, and they may even have been in consultations beforehand.
So there was an attempt by the Iraqi Kurds, I think certainly with the blessings of the Turks, to try to head off the very vacuum that Assad has created, and to fill it with all Kurds rather than just simply the ultra-militant PKK.
But as I say, my hunches from everything I've been able to pick up is now just a piece of paper.
Well, yeah, who would have thought that there could be consequences from having a war, unanticipated ones.
That's, I thought, the one thing you can anticipate about a war, unanticipated consequences.
Well, to follow up on that point, look, here's what could happen, Scott.
It's quite frightening, and I'm talking worst case scenario, not the likely case, because we don't really know what the likely case is.
But it is not inconceivable that there will be a civil war in the Kurdish territory.
It could involve Kurds versus Kurds, because Barzani has sent back Kurdish army defectors from Syria that he had given refuge to.
They sent them back into Syria, and they are anti-PKK or anti-PYD.
They are not on the side of the forces who are now taking control of the cities.
The PKK actually controls the border.
They let them in.
God knows what's happened to these soldiers, some, like, 650 of them since they went in, and as I heard it last week.
So you have Kurds versus Kurds.
Secondly, you have the Syrian National Council, which is determined not to allow an autonomous province to develop in the Kurdish region.
Then you have the Turks.
And so you have three different groups there who are against the, you know, who will be against the PKK.
But the PKK, for all we know, in most of that region, maybe not the capital of Qamishli yet, are in control.
So I think that's really setting the stage for a conflict of some sort.
I'm not sure what is going to force the PKK or PYD, as they're called there, to back down, but somebody's going to have to, or otherwise they stay.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry to kind of go off on a tangent here, but there's a couple of things I want to know about Iraqi Kurdistan that I don't know who else could tell me better than you, Roy.
And that is, first of all, is the CIA crawling all around there?
Does the U.S. have a single military base left in Kurdistan?
Or are those days really over, even in Kurdistan, which is where they were most friendly to the American presence?
And then, secondly, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether this is going to have much of an effect on the Kurdish, well, the rebellion and just the Kurdish population inside Iran, too.
Well, that's another really fascinating one.
Well, on the American involvement, you know, there really never were bases in Kurdistan, because there never was anything that they really had to protect.
Because the Kurdish Peshmerga, with American help, had liberated the Kurdish region.
Well, they've been autonomous since the first Gulf War in 1991, pretty much.
Yeah, but I mean, in a real autonomy where they really have control, that's something more recent.
So, you know, the CIA guys don't wear badges.
Right.
Sometimes tell them by their haircuts.
Well, I guess the difference I'm thinking of is that our Shiite allies in Iraq said, thanks for giving us Baghdad, now you can leave.
And they kicked us out and apparently really meant it.
But then, you know, I just remember Hillary Clinton saying, well, maybe we can stay in Kurdistan.
And, you know, a few kind of things like that made me think they must at least try to keep some kind of presence.
The Kurds of Kurdistan have a great affinity and affection for the United States, because I think they feel the U.S. was really on their side in the worst of days and helped them become a semi-autonomous place.
And so I think that American officials, no matter what agency they work for, are welcome there.
That said, I don't see the Americans as having taken a lead role in any of this stuff.
In fact, when I talked to a Turkish official yesterday about whether the Americans were helping in what – listen, this could be a crisis, this could be a war, this could be not just an internal conflict, but an international conflict if the Turks feel that they've got a cross into Syria.
So this is not a minor thing.
And we're dealing with places, you know, that are neuralgic anyway, where, you know, there's a lot of blood hatred that goes back.
And, you know, you really don't want another war there.
But when I talked to Turkish officials last night, they were sort of laughing when I said, are the Americans helping you out?
I don't think so.
I think the Americans are taking – in general, during the election campaign, the administration is taking a kind of a hands-off or a very, you know, a lightly, lightly approach to some of these key foreign affairs issues.
Well, but in the CIA helping coordinate the Qataris and the Saudis from that – I don't know how to pronounce it – air base there and all that, there's been reports in the Post and the Times all about that.
No?
You know, listen, there's another report out now, I think Reuters has a report, about the Turks having set up a base where the Qataris and the Saudis are operating in Adana.
You know, and it may be – this may well all be true.
But I personally think, from everything I've – we've had two people inside of Syria, you know, seeing the situation on the ground.
Weaving your McClatchy colleagues.
The McClatchy newspaper group.
And, you know, and I've asked repeatedly, what is the evidence of weapons flowing in, money flowing in, support flowing in, you know, whatever kind of aid?
And the answer that I'm always getting is nil, or next to nil.
You know, maybe there's some new weapons, but they could have been purchased on the black market.
Maybe there's some more money flowing, but you really don't see it.
In other words, there's a – I think there's been a lot of hype about the international support for the resistance in Syria.
And the exact information I don't know, but I'm very wary of these reports that are written either from Beirut or Washington or somewhere.
It could even be from Istanbul, but that are not based – are not written from the ground.
You know, because I think, frankly, there's just been exaggeration for whatever reason there's been exaggeration.
And I think that the resistance there are fighting mostly by dint of their own risks and ingenuity and losses.
Well, I sure hope that that's right.
I always am in favor of people seceding from their state or ending its oppression if they can, if that's their thing.
But it's always unfortunate to be stuck in the conundrum where you have to, you know, in a way, for me, I kind of back down on my rooting for the rebels because rooting for the rebels seems to just be – they seem to just be pawns in all this imperial politics.
The U.S. and Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar are said to be sending all this money and weapons and coordinating.
The Americans are saying that they're trying really hard to vet the rebels and make sure that they don't give them directly to the al-Qaeda guys, even though they admit that they really don't know where their weapons are ending up.
So if you're telling me that that's all so much smoke, I guess I'm happy to hear it.
Yeah, I think it is.
And I think some of the al-Qaeda stuff is also smoke.
You know, the regime itself has been trying to promote the notion that al-Qaeda is playing a major role in the resistance, because this may win in an odd, perverse way some sympathy for the regime.
But the truth is the regime has been using al-Qaeda in Iraq for years, and so there is probably nothing that the extreme Sunni minority – the Sunnis do in Syria that the regime does not know about.
So, you know, if you really look at the relationships between the different factions in the regime there, I think you'll see that at least, listen, almost nothing has been proven about the al-Qaeda presence there.
Again, I've asked our people who've been inside what evidence have they seen of especially foreign fighters, but, you know, of al-Qaeda in any form.
And, you know, the sightings are very few and far between, if any.
Well, but there have been some suicide bombings, right?
Listen, I don't know if you've seen it, but one of the most interesting articles in recent weeks is a interview given to the London Sunday Telegraph a few weeks ago by the former Syrian ambassador to Iraq.
I haven't actually met the guy, but I certainly didn't know he was about to defect.
Anyway, after he defected, and I think he's now in Qatar, he gave this interview in which he said, you know, the regime basically has staged those suicide attacks, or they permitted them, you know, and that they cleared their personnel out, you know, at the time of the attacks to make sure that nobody was killed of any importance.
The only people killed in these attacks were passersby.
So, again, you've got a regime which, you know, we've all underestimated.
It's capable of staging things against itself in hopes of drawing sympathy.
And it's something diabolical.
And, you know, you could say that this cannot be true.
But, you know, here's the former ambassador to Iraq saying it.
And quite frankly, I have picked up indications in the same direction for months now from the Syrian opposition and also from the defectors I interviewed in northern Iraq a few months ago.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Well, you know, I'm not so sure that a former ambassador to Iraq necessarily establishes much credibility to me.
But, you know, I mean, it's not...
And I understand what you're saying, Roy.
I read Roy Gutman from McClatchy Newspapers that, well, you know, Assad had his cozy relationship with al-Qaeda in Iraq over those years and whatever.
But right now during this war, of course, which side is al-Qaeda in Iraq going to be on?
Or, you know, al-Qaeda motivated types at all?
They're going to fight for Assad and the Alawite minority against the poorer Sunni majority in the country?
I mean, if I was a jihadist, if any of the jihadists we've read about that you've reported about for the last decade are who we've all thought they were, of course they're fighting with the rebellion in Syria.
Or they would be if they could be.
No?
What am I missing?
Well, you're missing something.
And what you're missing is this.
Every one of these guys has been an agent of Syria.
You know, the ones fighting in Iraq.
And, in other words, they have their names.
They have their homes.
They have their families noted down.
They've been on the payroll.
Or it's been a controlled payroll.
So do you think that the people who have been fighting on behalf of Syria now suddenly are going to turn on Assad?
Because, you know, I think they're compromised.
I think they've been his agents for a long time.
You know, everybody knows that they've been bankrolled and they've been coming from Syria and they've had a safe haven in Syria.
So I'm saying this is unusual.
And look, the second thing is this.
As I say, you can take this bit from the former ambassador to Iraq as self-serving.
But, in fact, he says that he was running these guys.
I mean, he acknowledges that he was running them as the ambassador.
He sort of helped direct them.
Can you imagine that?
That he was running which guys?
He was running these al-Qaeda operations against Iraq.
I mean, this man, in a sense, has been taking part in a criminal enterprise.
So he acknowledges that.
Of course, he does it from the safety of Qatar.
But I'm just saying that this is something that I know it's hard to believe, Scott.
I know that this is not accepted.
I've had many debates with one of my editors about this very point.
But what you cannot underestimate is that Assad was running a total police state, that nobody did anything in the security sphere without it being under his thumb.
And that goes for the al-Qaeda operatives who were attacking inside of Iraq.
Now, I'm not saying everybody, because who knows?
Nobody's really got good information.
But my point is that I think this has been overstated, and I think that the regime has been doing some of the overstating.
Hillary Clinton was asked by CBS News, what's taking so long?
And so that was the direction the question was coming from, and she had to defend herself.
And she said, well, you know, the leaders of Hamas and al-Qaeda have endorsed this war, referring to Ayman al-Zawahiri, and I don't know the names of the guys from Hamas, who have come out and endorsed the revolution against Assad.
And she said, so are we backing Hamas in Syria?
Are we backing al-Qaeda in Syria?
And then, of course, she has continued to insist this whole time that Assad must go, that the rebels should not ever have to negotiate with him, but should have things their way and continue the thing.
Harley, you know, trying to put an end to it, at the very least, even if it's not the CIA coordinating every bit of it.
And she's right, al-Zawahiri put out a podcast from wherever he's hiding, saying, you know, hey, all good suicide bombers go to Syria.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean they have, or that they'll be welcomed, or that they can integrate.
You know, don't forget, they have to...
Well, you're saying they were kind of from there in the first place, the guys who were al-Qaeda in Iraq, right?
Well, they're on the payroll, or they're on the roster.
So, I'm not sure that you can assume that they've just changed employers, or, you know, who's paying them now?
Do you think that the Saudis are putting them on their payroll?
I don't really think so.
Or the Qataris?
No.
I mean, this is a theoretical discussion.
We really don't know a lot.
All I'm trying to give you is just a sense that what you read, and what our officials say about al-Qaeda there, is not actually necessarily backed up by facts.
And, in fact, there are a lot of contrary facts out there, which suggest that the regime has built up the al-Qaeda threat, you know, in hopes of, you know, scaring the West, for one thing, and winning some sympathy on the other.
But it is a phony operation.
You know, this is a regime which has been running these people.
So, for them to be crying wolf about al-Qaeda is highly amusing on one level, but it's also really outrageous.
All right.
Well, unfortunately, we're out of time.
I still, of course, I guess we could go around and around about that.
I got more, but I never do get a chance to ask you all about Bahrain.
And, really, I wanted to ask you about the context of the entire American-Saudi counter-revolution going on here in the region.
But we're just all out of time.
Roy, again.
Okay.
But it's been great talking to you.
I always learn something.
Same here, Scott.
Great to talk to you.
Okay.
Talk to you again soon.
Everybody, that is Roy Gutman, Middle East correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, reporting from Istanbul.
All right, y'all, and that's Anti-War Radio for this evening.
I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is the website where I keep all my interview archives.
So stop by and say hi.
I'll be back here next Friday from 630 to 7 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.