12/03/12 – David Enders – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Next up, we've got David Enders, great reporter from McClatchy Newspapers, covering Syria for us.
Welcome back to the show, David.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me.
I meant to say on the line from Lebanon today, correct?
Correct.
Okay, now, so here's the piece at McClatchyDC.com.
Al-Qaeda-linked group, Syria rebels once denied, now key to anti-Assad victories.
Take us through this here.
What does that mean, once denied?
Well, initially, when the group in the article, Jabhat al-Nusra, appeared, a number of rebel factions disavowed it and said that it didn't exist, that it was a creation of the Syrian government.
And essentially disavowed its tactics and its ideology.
And the evolution of the group has basically been to become sort of one of the essential parts of the military operations against Assad's government.
Well, first of all, can you tell me what Jabhat, well, first of all, tell me how to say it, and then tell me what does it mean?
Jabhat al-Nusra means the victorious front.
And that's literally how it translates.
And basically, they're a group that the U.S. government and other governments have sort of, well, linked to Al-Qaeda.
And my own experience is that there are militants who fought with Al-Qaeda in Iraq who are among their ranks in Syria.
Okay, so that sounds like a little bit more than just a smear then.
No, it's a fact of the conflict in Syria.
Basically, you have, you know, if you look at the larger narrative, you have demonstrations that were begun by a wide range of peaceful activists.
And also Islamic activists who have been present, obviously, in the country since long before any of this started.
And who have, to some extent, had a history of uprising against the Assad government.
So what we're seeing now is that this group, which is, you know, and others that are very similar to it, are gaining prominence amongst the rebel groups that are fighting because they're effective.
They're getting a lot of support, and they're the ones on the front lines doing a lot of the fighting.
And it's just another complexity of what we're dealing with in Syria.
And I think it goes a long way toward explaining.
We've seen some reticence on the part of the American administration recently in recognizing the body that is intended to represent the rebels politically.
And part of the reason is links to groups like Jabhat al-Nusra.
So, now, you did a lot of reporting back in the day from Iraq.
And would you make the comparison, then, that this is sort of the same kind of thing, where you didn't really have such a thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But once we invaded, the craziest of the fighting-age males end up being the vanguard of the fighting-age males.
They're the ones who are willing to get the dirty work done.
Well, yes.
There's a large group of fighters now in Syria.
The rebels now are kind of split into two camps.
There are the mujahideen, which include groups like Jabhat al-Nusra.
And there are the revolutionaries, the thawar, who tend to be more vocal in their calls for democracy.
Whereas these groups explicitly call for a Syrian state based on Islamic law if the Assad government falls.
And I don't know.
I'd say that this didn't exist at all before the current uprising.
I mean, just as in Iraq, there were sort of elements in support for groups like this that preexisted the American invasion.
And so that's, I mean, what we're seeing basically develop.
There are a lot of Syrians who are very supportive of this.
I mean, it's a minority of Syrians, of course, but it's a very vocal minority, and they're doing a lot of the fighting.
So it's, and I think you say this in the article, too, it's Syrian veterans of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Iraqi veterans of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, too, doing the fighting in Syria.
Now, but, you know, I've seen other reports that say that there are even Afghan Mujahideen who are traveling to Syria, I guess fleeing one war where the Americans are hunting them to another war where the Americans are supporting them, huh?
I haven't seen reports of Afghan Mujahideen, but there are fighters from a number of countries that have entered Syria.
Yeah, it's ironic to say the least.
Perhaps that's a bit of understatement.
But it's really just, it speaks to the complexity of, you know, a complexity that normally isn't discussed when we talk about American policies in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East.
What about Saudis and Qataris?
Because it seems like they, you know, all the reports are that they're bankrolling this thing.
And I guess there was that one thing in The Guardian saying that Prince Bandar was rounding up some crazies from the south of Saudi Arabia or something like that, right?
I haven't seen any Saudi fighters or Qatari fighters specifically inside.
I don't know to what extent.
I mean, there are a lot of Libyan fighters, I think is probably the largest sort of subgroup of non-Syrians.
Or Lebanese, based on, you know, proximity in the border.
And there are a number of Lebanese who are very supportive of what, you know, the rebellion in Syria.
What about European Special Forces guys, David?
Because, you know, Eric Margulies was here reminding us that he's been reporting for about a year or something that at least the French Special Forces or foreign legions and their agents are running around there in Syria helping all of this.
I haven't met anyone.
I've heard rumors.
But, you know, a lot of what I see on the front line is Syrians, you know, guys who I think in one sense are battle-hardened over fighting for the last year.
The weapons I still see are, you know, almost 100% weapons that they've bought or captured, not stuff that seems to be coming in directly from any foreign source.
So, yes, there may be some involvement.
I know there's been some intelligence sharing on some levels.
But as far as direct support, I know there were rumors that it must have been, you know, American training that allowed them to down those planes last week.
They shot down a couple of planes with anti-aircraft rockets.
But there are also a number of people in the Syrian military, which is where they captured most of the rockets from, who know how to use those.
And the rebels claim they had defectors teaching them how.
So I think maybe we underestimate Syrians a little bit when we talk about the significance of this stuff.
Yeah, that's a great point.
I mean, it seems like if they're real hardcore al-Qaeda-type Mujahideen, they're not going to want to discredit themselves by palling around with the CIA.
They don't need the CIA, right?
And, in fact, go ahead and let the FSA discredit themselves while they sit around on their piles of cash while the al-Qaeda guys get the work done and get the credit for it.
Yeah.
I mean, because that's what the FSA guys are doing, right?
Sitting around on their piles of cash.
I don't see much cash going around.
I mean, the fighters told me they were using their salaries.
They had gotten paid salaries for the first time ever, some of them in November.
And they told me they used it to buy bullets.
I guess I'm thinking of the FSA guys that never leave Turkey, then, or what?
Right.
I mean, somebody's getting bankrolled by the CIA here.
Where's the money going?
The jihadi element is still a subset of the greater number of fighters.
But it should definitely be noted that it's gaining importance.
But, I mean, as far as the total number of rebels, it's still a minority.
I mean, I think the vast majority of rebels just fall into the category of guys who feel like they're defending the place where they're from, regardless of whether or not they pray.
The initial resistance still remains.
The core of it is people who very much were defending the people and the places where they come from.
And that's how they viewed taking up arms.
Right.
Well, and, you know, I wonder about the waxing and the waning of the public support for the rebellion, at least among the Sunni Arab masses.
Do you have a way to measure that at all?
There are anecdotal examples of people asking the FSA to leave places to avoid getting the crap shelled out of them.
You know, civilian populations don't like to be bombed, and frequently when the FSA enters a place, there are people who ask them to leave.
Sometimes they comply.
Sometimes they don't.
They're also doing a lot in some places to support the civilian population.
I mean, they're essentially the only security they have.
They need them to get fuel and flour for bread.
They're helping a lot of refugees.
It may not be a lot of help, but that's, you know, what they're doing.
They're helping people get out of the country.
So in the places where they operate, there still is a lot of support.
Of course, there are people who are, you know, dissatisfied by what's happening, people who regret the decision to take up arms.
But I think most people who have consigned themselves to fighting have consigned themselves to the idea that this is a fight to the death, that they don't put down the weapons until Assad is gone, and maybe not even then after that.
So really, I mean, there is dissatisfaction, but I wouldn't call it widespread in most places the rebels hold.
All right, now, I don't know the first thing about Syria, David, really, but I guess what I thought I knew before all of this happened was that if there was any power separate from the state that was organized at all, it was the Muslim Brotherhood, officially illegal but tolerated, you know, since the last huge massacre against them by Assad's father, and that they would be the natural inheritors of the country after any regime change.
I mean, this is a conversation.
You and I might even have this back during the days of George Bush in the Iraq war, that, well, who's to take power after Assad if they were to be so crazy as to go after Assad next?
And so what role do they play in any of this at this point?
Well, they were not officially tolerated after the uprising in the 80s.
They were very much cracked down upon and went underground and left the country, which is why they don't have a particularly strong network in comparison to other groups.
They have groups fighting inside now, and they do have a structure, but they're hardly the only structure vying for support and power.
So I guess maybe I just, maybe someone had described Egypt to me more that way, and I just sort of transposed that same kind of idea, that they were more or less the only other organized, you know, so-called civil society, is what Hillary Clinton calls them when she's on their side in any of these cases, you know?
Anybody else?
No, not to that extent, not like Egypt.
Okay.
And then now, are these guys winning?
Because, you know, from time to time, and it's been like this for a while now, though, we read about battles, you know, in Damascus and now recently at the airport, this kind of thing.
Are Assad's days really numbered here?
I think it's certainly possible.
They're definitely closer than they were six months ago.
It's hard to put a timeline on the government failing, but we're seeing indicators, inflation is up, you know, that they're being more stressed and that they're just losing more and more of a hold on a lot of territory.
And the rebels are capturing more weapons, and that's a momentum that might be really hard to change.
You know, and I was out in places where they had effectively laid siege to military bases and the military couldn't resupply the soldiers on the road and was basically leaving them stranded.
I saw a couple places where they had been overrun.
And that does seem to be happening a lot more often.
You wonder about just the willingness of some of these guys in the military to keep fighting at this point, and that's got to be a serious stress.
You know, defectors I talked to in the last two weeks hadn't been home for 14 months, 16 months, and these guys, you know, you've got these guys fighting in places in the middle of nowhere against rebels who are from the towns they're fighting for, and one wonders how long they can keep this up.
So I think you're going to see the military just continue to sort of wear down.
Well, and I think that's the real worry about the suicide bomber types, right, is that after they win, they're the least likely to stop fighting.
They're the most likely to keep going and punishing their enemies severely, right?
That tends to be the fear, certainly.
I mean, you try to be optimistic in a situation like this, but there are plenty of historical examples, and there are plenty of Syrians themselves talking about the war that follows this war.
It may well be between moderate and conservative groups inside Syria.
Now, you know, I fear actually, well, and partially it's due to the nature of radio and conversation instead of the written word.
Things just get oversimplified.
Just because somebody wants Islamic law doesn't mean they're a friend of Ayman al-Zawahiri.
It doesn't mean they don't have the right, like I'm all pro-dictatorship against the rebellion here or what have you.
My only point is, you know, America in bed with it seems like the only real enemy we have in the world, al-Qaeda, in this case.
And even if it's not, you know, directly, hey, it's our allies that are sending money.
And I guess you're reporting that these guys do seem pretty independent of the foreign intervention here.
But, you know, certainly it's a mission that America's involved in on the same side as them in a general way anyway.
The guys who, as you're reporting here, were our enemies in Iraq just a few years ago.
Guys who are our allies in Libya just last year, too.
And it's really something else to me, you know.
Yeah, no, that's how it's shaping up.
All right, now, so what can you report about the other factions in the country like the, I guess, whoever, other than the Alawites, there are other kinds of Shiites and Druze and Christians and whatever.
Are they behind the Ba'athists at all?
Or if so, is it just out of fear for what comes next?
Yeah, I mean, lots of minority groups have sided with the government when they see some of the statements from the rebels, which are very sectarian.
There is a very sectarian element to the rebels, Sunni Muslim.
The Kurds, which make up about 10% of the population, and they're situated mostly in the northeastern part of the country, have a militia, which is the militia of a single Kurdish party.
But it's gaining increasing prominence as there are tensions between the Kurdish minority and the rebels.
Last month, when the rebels began fighting in some of the Kurdish areas, the Kurdish citizens asked them very bluntly to leave, and they didn't.
And there were clashes between Kurdish fighters who are sort of aligned with the government and with the rebels.
So that adds another layer of complexity to the larger picture.
And it seems that Christians, who make up I think about 5% of the population, if I actually have to look up that statistic, have mostly sided with the government or at least trying to remain as neutral as possible.
That said, at a demonstration I was at last week, there were Christians there in the demonstration.
I mean, there still is a lot of support.
I think your ability to express it largely depends on the area you live in.
Right.
I don't know.
It's sort of besides the point.
Both sides, though, it seems, at least from the reporting I'm seeing, are pretty guilty of atrocities.
Although I have to say I'm kind of surprised by the rebels videotaping themselves killing unarmed people and then giving it out to the British press bragging about it and whatever.
It seems like that's pretty counterproductive to their goals, but they keep doing it, right?
Yeah, there have been.
There's one where you can actually hear the two rebels off camera discussing whether they should be filming it, which is just kind of like, huh, yeah, you thought about it and then you did it.
Okay, culpability.
And then even their British friends are like, yeah, hey, everybody, look at what tough guys we are.
Like, really?
It's a nasty, nasty war.
And obviously, you know, the way some groups of fighters explain things like that are like, hey, you've got people like that in your society, too.
If you had a war, some people would be executing people.
Yes, and both sides are guilty of atrocities, although I think you have to look at the government in a slightly, certainly different light, methodically employing the Air Force against targets that are very much in civilian areas or sometimes, I think, worse civilian areas.
And now they're using incendiary cluster bombs, it seems, which are a very nasty, nasty weapon.
And I've seen cluster bomb use on residential neighborhoods, you know, in the past month, and just more of the sort of aimless artillery shelling that kills civilians as well.
You know, if you're shelling a whole city because there's a rebel in it, is that a rebel target?
Or are you just shelling aimlessly an entire city?
It's like American policy, right?
Collective punishment for allowing this to happen in your neighborhood.
Yes, please get rid of the terrorists, or we'll shell your whole city.
Not an uncommon military tactic, don't get me wrong, amongst many nations.
But I think, yeah, I don't know.
Still, I think the level of the government's use, and it certainly could be much worse, aerial bombardment against populated areas is pretty severe.
Now, what do you think, well, and I don't think there's any doubt about that either.
It's pretty horrible.
I guess you're reporting firsthand, you know this.
But what do you think about the totals that they're saying, 30,000 and 40,000 people killed?
Do you believe that?
I think it's probably pretty accurate.
And you're a veteran reporter of the Iraq War, so you know a little bit of something, what it's like to be in a war-torn country, and how many people are getting killed.
Well, yeah, and I've talked to, and you see the displacement, and people don't run away from, people don't leave their homes because people are dying.
They leave their homes because people are.
And you see some of the massive displacement across the country too, and I think that tells you a lot.
And I've also, with some of these, some of the groups that do the reporting, I've sort of, I haven't done this in a while, but about four months ago with both groups that are doing most of the reporting, I talked to some of their people on the ground and found that if anything they were maybe undercounting.
And other anecdotal reports are similar.
Now, is this fighters or is this the civilians?
Now, is this fighters or this is civilians, or this is total?
It varies from month to month.
Two months ago there were twice as many civilians killed as fighters.
This month it was much closer, more fighters, still more civilians.
I mean, the majority of people dying are civilians.
That has been the pattern throughout.
But in past months I think if you see people leaving areas where fighting is occurring, the civilian death toll has maybe dropped slightly.
And, you know, a higher percentage of fighters, but still actually according to the numbers that I looked at just from November, still more civilians being killed.
You know what?
It just occurred to me that sort of the unsaid premise of this whole conversation is that there will be no negotiations.
This is a fight to the death here over who controls Damascus and the state of Syria.
Correct?
Yeah.
At this time, most certainly, until one side truly feels like they've lost, nobody's going to negotiate.
All right.
Now, I don't know if you've been there in forever, David, but I was just wondering if you could, if you know of the recent news, maybe you've talked to some other reporters, if you could give us any context of the conflict between Barzani and Maliki right now, in other words, the leadership of the Kurds in northern Iraq and the government in Baghdad.
It's closer to Kirkuk.
I haven't been paying close attention to the news.
But, I mean, basically it's over land rights and oil rights.
And now, is it about Kirkuk or it's just the outskirts, at least, maybe?
There are certainly areas around Kirkuk.
I'm not sure to what extent about the city itself.
Do you have any kind of feeling about whether you think it's going to get worse or better?
That's a situation that's kind of maintained itself for years.
Right.
So this could just be another round.
Like a pile of oily rags that never quite bursts into flames.
Yeah.
I mean, this predates occupation, runs through entirety of occupation, and now we're still there.
So it's one of those, yeah, it's hard to say that it's more dramatic at this moment than a year ago or two years ago.
All right, David, you're a hell of a reporter.
Thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
No problem.
Thank you.
Everybody, that's David Enders from McClatchy Newspapers, McClatchyDC.com, talking to us from Lebanon about his recent reporting in Syria.
This one is called Al-Qaeda Linked Group, Syria Rebels Once Denied, Now Key to Anti-Assad Victories.
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