04/17/13 – David Enders – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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Thank you.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
And next up is David Enders, great reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, McClatchyDC.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Jeez, I'm kind of scared to interview you, I'm afraid I jinxed you last time when I said good luck and be careful out there.
You went to Syria and you got kidnapped by al-Qaeda.
That had already happened.
That happened a month ago.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
Oh.
Why did it take you so long to write about it?
Um, just figuring out the best way to use it.
Yeah.
Really.
Man, oh man.
Well, this is some story, man.
Please tell us.
And waiting to make sure it isn't blown over entirely.
Oh, okay.
I can see that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In any case, yeah, I was briefly kidnapped by Jabhat al-Nusra, which is essentially allied with al-Qaeda in Iraq in March when I was working in Syria, suspected of being an American spy.
And so what happened?
They just snuck up on you and put a gun to your head and took off with you or what?
Tell us the story.
Um, sort of.
Yeah.
They cut the road with a group of fighters, you know, stopped us, basically blocked the road, stopped us, and got us out of the car at some point and, yeah, tossed a couple of us into a trunk, blindfolded everyone, and then held us in a barn for six hours.
Man.
And then, so, wow, these guys were the Jabhat al-Nusra guys, and these are the ones who put on YouTube videos of themselves cutting off prisoners' heads, right?
You got really lucky?
Or you just found a real nice group of them, or is it a different group, or what's up with that?
Um, well, it was a misunderstanding.
We were supposed to be meeting with someone who knew some of the people I was with.
He wasn't there, and a different leader from the group became suspicious and had us abducted, and apparently when the guy who we were supposed to meet with returned, he said, you know, let him go.
I know who these people are.
You know, people know he's a journalist, and then they also asked us who we knew, and, you know, obviously, to work in parts of Syria that are controlled by rebels, it helps to be known as a journalist and not something else to, you know, various rebel groups and commanders.
Right.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, and you are a reporter.
You're not an opinion columnist.
You do the straight facts, and so, I guess, hopefully, or I guess it seems like they appreciated that fact themselves, right?
They asked you your opinion.
Some, though, I think you say in this piece.
Um, yes.
To some extent, I think it much more had to do with people from the area being able to vouch for us, that we had been working around for months who are also part of this group.
Right, as opposed to the possibility that you were really just working for the CIA or something like that, you mean?
Right.
That was sort of a suspicion.
Right.
All right, and then, so now, well, thank goodness you're safe, man.
That's about as scary as things can happen.
I guess, was it pretty clear that they were just going to wait and check your story before anything too bad happened, or were you really afraid?
They didn't really tell us anything.
Would you believe me if I said I wasn't afraid?
You're brave as hell if they asked me, man.
They did say at the outset that they wouldn't hurt us and they didn't abuse us, but basically they didn't tell us anything and we were just, you know, cuffed and blindfolded the whole time.
Oh, wow.
So, but after they didn't, you know, shoot us in the first half an hour, you know, figured we at least had a relatively good chance.
That's good.
I'm sorry for asking such a stupid question.
Just, you're Superman to me.
You're crazy.
You're, or not crazy, but crazy brave.
You're incredibly brave to be out there reporting this story the way you do, and so.
Appreciate that.
All right.
So, tell us about this job at Al-Nusra.
It seemed like what you've been telling us for a while, that this more or less is the same thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq and that this is the vanguard of the revolution such as it is in Syria right now, that there's been some big kind of controversy lately as to who's loyal to who and who ranks higher than who and all this stuff.
Do you want to comment on that?
Well, they are one faction of the rebel groups that are fighting the Syrian government, and they've repeatedly demonstrated their ability to fight much better than other groups.
They have a lot of funding.
That's one of their strengths, and lately, you know, we've seen them take over a lot of infrastructure, start programs where they are handing out water and aid and, you know, things local people need.
And they are increasingly calling for the implementation of Islamic law in the places they control.
Al-Nusra, in particular, includes non-Syrians who've come to fight, mostly non-Syrian Arabs and some other non-Syrian Muslims who have joined the battle.
And there's increasing tension between Al-Nusra and other rebel groups who are more moderate religiously and who envision elections after the fall of the Syrian government as opposed to Al-Nusra and certain other groups which are sometimes allied with Al-Nusra, sometimes at odds with them, that also don't necessarily call for elections.
Well, and I guess if Iraq is a lesson, the moderates have in their favor, even if they're not the most effective fighters, they have the fact that the al-Qaeda guys tend to make enemies wherever they go because they get carried away and boss the people around and that kind of thing and kill the innocents, right?
I mean, that's definitely what happened in Iraq.
Nusra does seem to be more tempered than al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Note that they let me, an American journalist, leave.
Had I been captured by al-Qaeda in Iraq, I probably wouldn't have been okay.
So there is a demonstration on the part of Nusra.
I mean, I was quite relieved when I realized there were Syrians in the group that captured us.
At first, I could hear non-Syrian Arabic accents, which left me very concerned because Syrians do often, at least in this case, rightly claim to often be the more moderate people in the room, especially when we're talking about some of these jihadi groups.
And also that there is a lot of blowback from Nusra declaring its affiliation with al-Qaeda already.
And so Nusra seems to be taking pains to start programs to build support, like distributing water and distributing aid.
They've captured a hydroelectric dam in eastern Syria.
They're distributing electricity in that area.
And so actually, in ways, are probably growing larger and have more support than al-Qaeda certainly had in Iraq.
Now when it comes to populism...
It's a slightly softer sell.
Yeah, I mean, and that comes through in your article too, that, hey, I lived to write about this thing.
And that means that maybe they're beginning to understand their public relations problem there.
I don't know whether that means that people will ultimately accept them or not.
But that kind of goes to the larger question of popular support for the rebellion in the country.
Is it just a sectarian split at this point after two years of war?
Or you know...
Not entirely.
There are still Sunnis fighting with the government, which codes as aligned with Shiite countries in the area.
Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Alawi sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'ism.
But you have lots of moderate Sunnis still in the army, or just people who maybe aren't necessarily terribly politicized, but were conscripted and have been fighting and perhaps can't leave.
No, in some places it is very sectarian.
But there are certainly people across the various lines.
In other words, you're saying people of the various sectarian differences across the board or across different lines are supporting the government and or the rebellion too?
In some cases, yeah.
The Alawis too.
I mean, by and large, if we're talking sort of broadly, it does fall along these sectarian lines.
But there are Alawis who support the rebellion, there are some who support the government.
But like, is it still fair if you're saying it in an oversimplified way, that you have all the sects except for the Sunni Arabs, and then even some of the Sunni Arabs who support the state, but mostly it's maybe a good portion of the Sunni Arabs, but they're really the ones behind the rebellion?
Or there are enough different groups involved in the rebellion that you really do have to include them?
No, I mean, it really is largely the Sunnis who are supporting the rebellion, although you now have some of the Druze, which is another minority in the country, supporting it.
And also now, you know, you have various Kurdish factions are also supporting the rebellion, but largely it is, you know, led by the Sunni majority.
Right.
Yeah, I think you told me before that the Kurds are kind of split on this.
Yeah.
Man, well, and then so now what about strength?
How many towns, or are there any major cities controlled by the rebellion at this point?
Yeah, Raqqa, which is a provincial capital, about a quarter million, the largest city controlled by the rebels, it's very much controlled by conservative rebel groups.
And that's been under rebel control, there must be people fled for about a month now.
I'm sorry, you know, I just remembered that I promised to keep this to 15 minutes, and I've already kept you over time, I completely forgot about it, David, but I really do appreciate your time on the show and all your brave reporting from Syria there.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Talk soon.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Be careful out there.
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
Everybody, that is the great David Enders reporting for McClatchy Newspapers at McClatchyDC.com.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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