05/28/13 – David Enders – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
This is Scott Horton Show.
I'm Scott Horton.
The website is scotthorton.org.
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And our next guest on the show is David Enders from McClatchy Newspapers, McClatchy's man in Syria.
Welcome back, David.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
Now, I guess I was about to say safe and sound back in Lebanon, but then I keep hearing about terrible violence spreading over from Syria into Lebanon.
Can we start with that?
Yeah.
In the past couple of days, there have been, well, there were rockets fired into southern Beirut, into an area under Hezbollah control, presumably in response to a speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, about his group's involvement in the fighting in Syria.
I mean, can you describe what's been going on and how bad it is, or does it look like it's going to get worse?
I guess one thing I'll add to the question is, I read something a few months ago about how Lebanese were really determined to not let this thing fall apart like last time.
Well, yeah, Hezbollah essentially controls a lot of the Lebanese state, and their involvement in the war in Syria obviously increases the likelihood that Lebanon will be dragged into the conflict.
At the moment, there does seem to be a lot of support from the Hezbollah base for what's happening, although at the moment, militarily, no one can really challenge them inside Lebanon.
So it would be somewhat of a suicidal battle, potentially, for some of the people who might like to fight it.
That said, there is the potential for more revenge attacks.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I guess, can you tell us, when you make these trips into Syria, you're basically, your beat is just covering Jabhat al-Nusra, right?
You're not really trying to meddle with the Syrian army or something like that.
You're covering the rebel side of the story, right?
It's very difficult for me to get a visa to cover things from the government side.
Although when I'm in, I'm with the rebels, not with Nusra, generally.
They're a faction within the rebel movement.
Right.
And now, can you help break down the percentages here?
Because John McCain has, as you know, I'm sure, has gone to Syria to meet with the rebels.
And of course, the slogans have always been, from the Republicans and the Democrats, that we're trying to help the non-Nusra rebels, so that the Nusra rebels don't win, basically.
And yet, at the same time, as you've written, the money in the arms tend to end up in the hands of the Nusra guys, because they're the ones doing most and the best of the fighting.
Well, not entirely the Nusra guys.
There are other groups that are also doing a lot of fighting.
The promises, the idea that the American government would arm moderate groups of rebels, and that some of that support wouldn't find its way to extremist groups, is far-fetched.
That said, creating the Supreme Military Council, which is led by a defected general named Mohammed Idris, which is who McCain met with when he went in a couple days ago, doesn't have much leverage at the moment.
Rebel groups are willing to work with it, to the extent that it can provide weapons.
And so you really need a significant flow of weapons for them to have any real leverage.
And I just don't see that happening at this point, let alone the fact that the group's structure is coordination at best.
It's not a top-down military that's taking orders across large parts of the country.
The rebels are very, very localized.
And now, so what are we to make of the announced merger of the al-Nusra front with al-Qaeda in Iraq?
And there are reports, of course, you cover this in the article here, about infighting over whether their loyalty is supposed to be to the Iraqis first, or to Zawahiri in his auntie's basement in Pakistan, wherever he's hiding, or whatever.
This kind of thing.
I think that split is probably negligible.
Either way, at the end of the day, both groups are affiliated with al-Qaeda, whether or not one is a subgroup of the other one.
Basically, they've stated their intent is to do much the same thing, which is create an Islamic state in the case of Nusra, while in the case of both groups, in the greater Middle East, not just in Syria and Iraq.
So I think the amount of infighting has probably been misrepresented.
It doesn't seem Nusra has particularly lost strength or removed itself from a number of fronts as a result of this.
Well, so I guess, is it fair to say, then, that those who are most interested in having regime, in the West, I mean, in the halls of power in America and in other Western capitals, those who would be rid of Assad, they really don't have anyone but the Nusra Front to turn to, basically.
It sounds like what you're saying.
That's not exactly true.
There's a wide rebel movement, but a lot of the fighting is being done by groups like Nusra, radical groups like Nusra.
There's also a large, more Syrian-oriented group called the Ra'ar al-Sham, which is also calling for an Islamic state in Syria.
At the moment, though, those are the groups that have the best command and control structure on the ground.
And you've written also about the Farouk brigades, and you say they actually are determined to have elections, and that's their big beef with the Nusra guys, is that they don't want elections.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
Although I think probably their bigger beef with the Nusra guys is over turf and over resources, as opposed to particularly over ideology.
And a lot of people probably heard about or saw that horrific YouTube video of the rebel commander cutting out a Syrian soldier's lung and taking a bite of it.
That guy's a Farouk commander.
Really?
That's not even the al-Nusra Front.
That's the guys who want to hold an election.
You have a serious problem with preventing atrocities by any rebel group.
Wow.
Those are the moderates.
I mean, that guy's lost a plot a little bit, but as an example.
Right.
So this gets to the whole question of what really is al-Qaeda, too.
Like in Iraq, it was always in America's interest to pretend like Zarqawi represented all of the insurgency, because they like the idea that no Iraqi had any reason to insurge other than they're part of this monster's group of terrorist nutcases or whatever.
But virtually none of these people were friends with Osama on September 10th, or were one of his couple of dozen friends who got bombed and barely escaped at Tora Bora or whatever.
So what is it exactly that makes these guys al-Qaeda?
The fact that they say they like Zawahiri?
Or the fact that they use suicide bombing tactics?
Officially, it's their pledge to Zawahiri and their calls for an Islamic state in the Middle East.
This notion of sort of pan-Arab or pan-Muslim jihadism creating an Islamic caliphate.
That's sort of what officially defines them.
But I mean, what used to define them was that America was their designated enemy, as opposed to the local dictator here, there, or the other Middle Eastern country, right?
That was what made them unique among Mujahideen who existed all over the place.
Well, what made them unique was bin Laden's attack on the U.S.
Other than that, I mean, even with bin Laden, their stated goal was to create this caliphate.
Yeah, which apparently the American war in Iraq has really helped them do.
You know, there's an article by Patrick Coburn and by Patrick Buchanan today at Antiwar.com, both of them asking if this is the end of the Sykes-Picot agreement.
Basically, that means, is this the end of that European-drawn line between Syria and Iraq?
Well, to some extent, yes.
Those are the dynamics that are playing out.
You have lots of regional conflicts that are occurring within these borders that were drawn, you know, considering minority and majority communities whose animosities towards one another were often increased by one side or the other, leveraging the colonial power.
For instance, the Sunnis in Iraq becoming essentially British proxies in the face of a Shiite uprising in the 20s and remaining in power in Iraq until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
So, in many ways, this does look like sort of the de facto partition of Syria and perhaps not officially redrawing the borders, but effectively redrawing borders.
Iraq is more or less three countries now.
And Syria is moving much along the same lines.
Yeah, it's amazing how the war, the Republicans' war in Iraq, was fought, at least partially, according to the neoconservatives, to check the power of the so-called Shiite crescent.
But they were the ones who really made it.
And, of course, we can read articles in the press this week about Iraqi Shiite militias traveling to Syria to fight on the side of the Shiite Baathists there, against Obama and the Mujahideen.
And at the same time, as you're saying here, they've really gotten a start on that Islamo-fascist caliphate that only ever existed in Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush's fevered dreams.
This was a manufactured, ridiculous threat when Bush was citing it in 2005 when he was in the middle of creating it.
In many ways.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, the invasion of Iraq certainly enabled Iran greatly.
Well, yeah, and this whole Al-Qaeda in Iraq never existed before.
No.
Man, that's something else.
All right, well, to finish up here, I'm sorry, I know you've got to go real quick here, but can you give us your best estimate, from what you can tell on the ground there, of the American government's position?
How much intervention from the West, the Saudis, et cetera?
It doesn't seem that there's going to be direct American intervention or arms being sent any time soon.
I certainly don't get that impression from anyone I'm talking to.
And largely because they feel like that command and control structure just doesn't exist and there is no one to take over if Assad falls.
So I don't see us getting involved in the near term any more than we already are.
So what do you think is the point then of, I mean, because really the Saudis and the Qataris, if Obama told them knock it off, they would have knocked it off.
I mean, that's basically just plausible deniability for America back in the rebels all along.
Well, you have.
To what end?
You have a lot of regional actors who are willing to fuel this for a long time, regardless of whether the U.S. is involved.
Certainly, you know, there's a long history of covert U.S. ops and duplicity.
But I think the CIA really got involved with the Qatari weapons shipments more in an attempt to be involved because something was going to happen anyway.
Whether that will be true of the Saudis sending arms from Jordan, quite possibly the U.S. will be more involved in that.
But I still think there's going to be pressure on those governments to send less arms and not more.
Well, yeah, I mean, it does seem like, doesn't it, like the politics has sort of shifted where the Israelis, I don't know if you read this the same way, but I thought the Israeli bombings of the missile stocks in Syria was to keep them out of the hands of the Syrian rebels, not to keep them out of the hands of Hezbollah.
That was just the cover story.
That was what they were really scared of, right?
Yes, they're scared of all sides.
Right.
And then Obama has finally gone, I don't know what good it's done, really, but he's gone to Vladimir Putin and said, hey, let's solve this thing, apparently in a way that would keep the current regime in power to some degree, which is sort of, you know, I don't know exactly what's going on here other than, do you think there's really been a change, like they're backing down, they want to keep Assad now?
I think it's just been fumbled from the get-go.
I don't think the policy is that well articulated.
Yeah, they haven't even decided at all what to do.
There does seem, to some extent, there does seem to have been a backing off of the rhetoric of Assad must go, which was sort of the, you know, Hillary Clinton.
That was kind of the line until, I don't know exactly, a few months ago.
That rhetoric does seem to have been dropped lately.
All right, well, listen, man, I sure appreciate your journalism and your time on the show as always, David.
It's great to talk to you again.
Thank you.
Anytime.
All right, everybody, that is the great David Enders, heroic, investigative, well, not just investigative, geez, what do you call him?
On the ground reporter in the midst of a horrifying civil war in Syria.
Despite word of split over Al-Qaeda, Nusra Front still key in Syria fighting is the headline of his latest at McClatchyDC.com.
And we'll be right back after this.
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