06/07/13 – Pepe Escobar – The Scott Horton Show

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And thanks.
It was never the same error twice.
But anyway, I got you on the phone.
Okay, man.
Good to talk to you, as usual.
Yes, I'm very happy to have you here.
Everybody, you know Pepe.
He writes for the Asia Times.
And he's the author of the book, Obama Does Globalistan.
Which is kind of a strange name for a book, but anyway.
Yeah, it's about the American Empire.
Okay, so, you got this thing, the last one I read anyway.
I'm sorry if this is not your latest piece.
But the latest one that I read is called Meet the Friends of Jihad, about the American War in Syria.
About the failure of the American War in Syria at this point.
Is it too soon for Assad to go like this?
Remember, Scott, we've been talking about this for almost two years now.
And every time, that was the same thing.
The whole system was relatively in place.
He's not going to fall the next day or the next week.
Like, if you read the New York Times, for instance, it will always be next day or next week.
No major defection.
Business class is still supporting him.
And then, when some gangs of the Free Syrian Army, when they actually start taking places and controlling some regions or some suburbs, or in the case of Aleppo, in fact, two suburbs, and people saw the way they were behaving, they were absolutely appalled, repelled, disgusted.
And it was obvious.
And, of course, when Syrians themselves saw that they were in the middle of the crossfire, in this absolutely ghastly proxy war, and they start to see by themselves that people on the ground, the fighters on the ground that were really doing the heavy fighting were the jihadis crossing the border from Iraq or from the multinational mercenaries paid by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
It's inevitable.
And they were fighting an organized army.
The Syrian army may not be exactly spectacular in terms of, for instance, responding to Israel, for that matter, or trying to recapture the Golan Heights.
But in terms of a well-organized army for Middle East standards, that's what they are.
And to win against this army, you would need a very well-organized guerrilla Vietnam style.
It's not going to happen.
Not with this bunch in Syria.
So, you know, the result was inevitable.
So what happened in Qusayr?
In fact, this is my last story, which was published yesterday, in fact, after the one you read, Meet the Friends of Jihad, which is, by the way, for everybody knows already, it's the NATO-GCC-Israel access.
The story in Qusayr, which is an absolutely strategic point for months, it's the chronicle of death foretold for people who are still inside Qusayr.
The Syrian army, they saw that they needed to retake Qusayr because it's very close to Homs, and it was about 10 kilometers from the Lebanese border.
So the supplies for the jihadis in that area and in the Homs-Hama corridor that goes in a highway that goes more or less three or four kilometers outside of Qusayr, going north-south from Damascus to Aleppo, they needed to retake that place.
It was absolutely strategic.
It was controlled by one really hardcore Free Syrian Army Brigade.
So what did they do?
They went there.
They more or less encircled the city.
The Free Syrian Army, they made a call for another brigade in Aleppo to go south to help them.
The Syrian army said, okay, let's make these guys go.
They crossed our, we just don't do anything for the moment.
And then we encircled both brigades inside Qusayr.
This whole thing took more or less six months, the past six months.
And the real heavy fighting started, what, three weeks ago, sort of, more or less.
And that's exactly what happened.
It was very intelligent.
They had help, of course.
We all know that from Hezbollah fighters.
Not many, 150 according to my best estimates from people I talk to in Beirut.
And Iranian, not many as well, 50 or 60, but with experience where in the Iran-Iraq War.
Come on.
So these guys know everything about urban warfare.
And meanwhile, the guys that they're fighting are going, ah, and firing their AK-47 in the air, but they don't have any idea what to do.
Exactly.
And these, okay, these two brigades, and we're talking about the two best Free Syrian Army Brigades, the Al-Faruq, which was in control of Qusayr for the past few months, over a year, in fact, and the Al-Tawid Brigade, which was in Aleppo.
And can you imagine, and these guys were overrun, can you imagine the rest of these bunch of mercenaries, you know, which are getting a lot of very good weapons, a lot of money, but most of them, they really have no fighting experience.
It's true, if you look at Somalia, for example, really believing in what you're doing counts for a lot.
Not being afraid to die on the battlefield counts for a lot, for sure.
That's why you have the Al-Nusra Front out in front, and you have the so-called moderates are hanging out back at the base, hoping everything works out for them or whatever, but it still is no match for actual professional military strategy.
Certainly not when you're talking about a government in its own country, right?
I mean, we're not talking about the American occupation of Iraq here, we're talking about the Ba'athist occupation of Syria.
Exactly.
Absolutely.
So, you know, this was the end.
It was very interesting because more or less six months ago, I started noticing something from the point of view of, you know, people in Damascus, the businessmen in Damascus, businessmen in Aleppo, average Syrians, or Syrians who managed to flee to go to Europe.
They start talking a lot about the army was pissed, the fact that they were being derided, and a lot of people were saying that they were not doing their jobs properly.
So that's when they start to get their act together, finally.
And all those defections that were being advertised in the West, they never happened anyway.
Well, a few, but we're not talking about major, you know, generals and people who really know about warfare.
They were still there.
And they said, okay, let's organize, let's see what these people are, these brigades are, let's identify their weakness, and let's organize an overall strategy.
First in Damascus, remember, they secured Damascus, and we haven't heard about car bombings in Damascus anymore.
So it's working for the past few months.
And then let's go to the Hama Homes corridor, where Qusay is, and the next step is going through Aleppo.
And this is exactly what they're doing as we speak.
So the next step is to clear the suburbs of Aleppo.
So it is a concerted military strategy.
You know, it's no joke, no joke at all.
It took a while for them to organize themselves.
And it's a matter of national pride for the Syrian army.
You know, they say, look, it's our job to protect the country.
We know what these people are doing to the country, the foreigners, of course.
Of course there are Syrians in all these Syrian brigades.
But it's more or less 50-50, in fact.
And if you look at the numbers, the overall numbers, let's say there are 20,000 fighters all over Syria against the government.
Probably not more than that.
You have at least 10,000 foreigners, which is completely absurd.
It is an army of mercenaries, a half army of mercenaries.
Well, you know, this same kind of thing happened in Iraq, too, like you mentioned, where whenever the al-Nusra Front guys or their acolytes have taken hold of an area, they make enemies out of the local population immediately with their would-be totalitarianism.
The same thing happens with al-Qaeda guys wherever they are.
People hate their guts because they're jerks.
So they don't have a future anywhere, really, unless America just keeps creating battlefields for them to fight in.
But assuming that peace breaks out anywhere, no one's going to tolerate their rule anywhere.
Caliphate nonsense.
Of course not.
It's more or less like what was happening in Iraq before the beginning of the surge.
At the time, al-Qaeda in Iraq, they took some neighborhood, entire neighborhoods like Tora in southern Baghdad, and then the local people started to organize themselves and call for help to expel those people from over there because it's the usual thing in terms of the al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Nusra.
It's the same old story.
It's Sharia law, hardcore, banning women from everywhere, beheading people, you name it.
And in that famous YouTube video of the guy eating the lungs of a Syrian soldier, that speaks for itself.
And, hey, listen, man, I was talking with our friend David Enders from McClatchy Newspaper about that, and he said, well, you know, that guy is from the Al-Farooq Brigade.
They're the moderates who won elections, right?
From the Al-Farooq Brigade, exactly.
Who are at loggerheads with the al-Nusra Front about whether they should just outright name their favorite imam dictator or whether they should vote for him first.
So, in fact, it's a mirror image, jihadi style, of the Syrian National Council.
Every week they have a leader.
The guy resigns once or twice.
Look, I'm resigning again.
So they have to appoint another one.
They have to change the name.
So they go to Doha for another meeting.
It's the same shit.
Man, well, so didn't anybody at the CIA warn Obama that this isn't going to work?
You know, it's like the Bay of Pigs, basically, right?
You send in enough guys and enough guns to lose.
What is the point?
Yes, exactly.
You know?
In fact, this is a slow motion Bay of Pigs, in fact.
That's horrible.
I mean, you know, and here's the thing, too.
And this doesn't get said enough probably in these interviews because, of course, my interest is in contradicting the rationalization for American intervention as best as possible.
But it's important to note that all good people in the world hate Assad's guts.
He runs a totalitarian police state.
And two years ago, well, two and a half years ago, when this thing started, it was a lot of regular, decent, peaceful people.
Maybe even some of the violent ones were still decent and just wanted to be free.
And the problem is it's the true believers that really keep fighting and that take the forefront and happen to turn out to be the suicide bomber, prisoner beheader, heart eater, lunatics.
And so anybody who was a well-meaning dissenter who just wanted rid of Baathism and some semblance of self-government, however you can get some in Syria, those people all had to go back inside.
And they don't have anything to do with what's going on now.
Very little anyway.
Exactly.
And it's very interesting how, especially in urbanized Syria, these past few months, the mood in terms of public opinion, how it's changed drastically against this motley crew of jihadists, opportunists, sort of defectors, mercenaries, you name it.
So this is something that I mentioned in one of these stories, probably the one you read, in fact.
There was relief organizations.
They made an informal poll with maybe 2,000 people.
They say, look, it's informal.
But the results are stark.
They are totally against the so-called opposition, Syrian National Council, whatever you mean it.
And 20% only are in favor and 10% are neutral.
They sent this report to NATO.
It was collected by relief organizations and human rights organizations, not the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights because they are not even inside Syria.
It's the one guy in London paid by the Emirati.
It's completely ridiculous.
People are actually doing relief work inside Syria.
They sent this report to NATO, and NATO obviously never publicized it.
If you go to NATO website, it's not there.
So this tells you something that was brewing for the past few months, especially there are a lot of Syrians in Brazil who have family in Syria, in Argentina as well.
So they keep getting feedback from their families in different areas of the country.
And over the past few months, you could see that the mood was changing.
People, they knew that they were in the middle of a proxy war.
They knew that the alternatives were absolutely ghastly on both sides.
So they just want the war to end.
And the only mechanism in existence is elections for next year.
Don't forget the elections in Syria in 2014, according to the Constitution.
So it would be a ceasefire now, which is something that the U.S. and the Russians should negotiate if the Geneva II talks happen.
It's not going to be in June anymore, probably in July, if they happen.
So it's a ceasefire now.
America can't really promise anything to the Russians other than we'll stop arming them, but they sure as hell can't command their shock troops to quit.
No, they can't, and they don't want it, by the way.
Because don't forget that from the point of view of Israel especially, the current status quo, which is a protracted civil war, is very good for that.
Because it pins down the Syrian army inside Syria.
Syria is weak.
The country is being devastated by the war.
So it's very good from an Israeli point of view.
From an American point of view, as long as there are no American targets, it's good for them.
They're leading from behind.
They don't care.
But this could go on for years, in fact.
The problem is that now that the Syrian army is in control of the whole thing and they could eventually, I would say, throw these bombs in the middle of the desert within the next two or three months.
Let's say if this happens, what is the solution from a Washington-Paris-London point of view?
Weaponize these guys.
This is already what they're saying.
This is what the Brits got out of the European Union, in fact.
That bunch of coward European Union nations, apart from the Brits, they just let the ban against arming the rebels expire.
So now the Brits, this is what they're doing.
You mean heavy weapons.
Starting this summer.
You mean real explosives.
Exactly.
As opposed to just machine guns.
It's essentially British-French operation inside the European Union.
It's absolutely ghastly.
If they start re-weaponizing the rebels, then we have a Lebanese 1970s situation.
This thing will go on forever.
Well, that's the quote from McCain from just the other day, is that Assad is winning and we've got to prevent him from winning.
He's not really saying we've got to make sure that al-Nusra wins.
We've just got to prevent Assad from winning, basically.
Absolutely.
This is the McCain way of saying we want civil war for as long as it takes.
Here's the thing, too, though.
I'm sure you probably saw this thing.
It's the ultimate Patrick Coburn treatment of this subject in the London Review of Books, where he basically says the same thing as you on so much of this stuff.
One of the things that he emphasizes is that the so-called Free Syrian Army and the different kinds of jihadists, they're real good with the YouTube, and the Ba'athists are not.
In other words, a bunch of know-nothing, know-it-alls in D.C. go, wow, look, another officer defected or something.
But they don't see the footage of all the officers who stayed loyal because the Ba'athists don't have their act together enough to make a YouTube of that and put that out there.
Exactly.
They kind of believe their own B.S.
In other words, I guess my question is, you really think that's possible?
It sounds plausible to me that the Ba'athists could actually just simply win this thing and wrap this thing up.
As you said, what percentage of the fighters are actually not even from Syria?
Half of them?
Half of them, at least.
Half of them, at least.
This means that there is a hardcore nucleus of jihadists, which is debatable.
It could be 300, 500, or 1,000.
And let's say the regular militias, which we call them the Free Syrians, maybe the Not-So-Free Syrian Army or the Free Syrian Army because they're paid by somebody, right?
It's about 10,000.
Half of all these are foreigners.
A lot of Iraqis, there are Saudis, Kuwaitis, you name it.
There are even Chechens among the jihadists.
Let's say the Syrian Arab Army, the official army, the government army, if they manage to clear the major cities within the next two or three months, and these people, where will they go?
They will go to the middle of the desert, the Sunni area.
There's nowhere to go.
Or they'll have to cross the border back to Iraq in the case of many of the jihadists.
Another problem, what Patrick said about, let's say, the YouTube question, exactly, it's the lost in translation problem, which is essential for a lot of Arabs and for the Iranians as well.
This is something I discussed in Iran, in fact, a few years ago.
I was trying to convince them, look, you have to do your PR in English.
You always have a problem.
If you want to sell your story, you have to sell it in English.
So, you know, press TV is their way of doing it, but it's not enough.
They have to do it on an everyday basis.
And, you know, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, with one guy in London, they managed to, you know, infest the planet with YouTube videos, with communications.
It's more than enough.
And you're right, the Ba'athists, they don't have that.
Yeah, but what they do have is reality on the ground, though, in the country.
They have reality on the ground, exactly.
But they don't have the footage to prove it.
Remember when there are pro-regime or pro-Assad demonstrations in Damascus?
A few months ago there was a huge demonstration, 200,000 people in Damascus.
But you wouldn't see it in the New York Times.
Well, and there were cameras there.
Not even the Ba'athists could screw up that, but the BBC and the Washington Post and CNN could, yeah.
Exactly.
And this goes to something, and boy, we're running short on time.
I'll try to be quick.
You mentioned toward the beginning about who all is in what coalition and that kind of thing.
And this goes right to that, which is, and I'm going to oversimplify it and get it wrong.
You set us all straight to wrap it up here.
But basically you've got a 50-50 split in the country.
Sunnis on one side, everybody else on the other.
All the different kinds of Shiites and Christians and Druze and Kurds and Yazidis and God knows who else, right?
And they're all mostly pretty much politically, not individually, but politically they're all in the Ba'athist camp.
Except for the poorer Sunnis, because the richer Sunnis, the business class ones that you mentioned, they're still part of the governing coalition, and they're apparently not leaving after two years of this.
So all you have is less than half that even could be the supporters of the revolution.
And then, as you said, they've disgusted everyone they're supposedly fighting for with their brutality to the point where they don't even have them.
And so really the only thing that could prolong it, it sounds like, just as a matter of mathematics, looking at it from far away here in Texas anyway, is CIA delivering crates full of guns.
But other than that, this thing is doomed to fail soon.
Exactly.
And heavy, heavy weapons.
This is something that, you know, the only reason why the fragmented opposition, I'm trying to be very benign here, is not going to Geneva, they already said they're not going to Geneva too, is that the only thing that they can say is, we want more weapons.
They have been saying this for one year.
And the Americans, for obvious reasons, they are reluctant because they, OK, at least some people remember what happened in Afghanistan in 1980.
They don't want a replay now in Syria.
Only crackpots of the Lindsey Graham variety want more guns for these people.
Yes, the same reason they're not arming the Afghan army right now.
They're afraid to give even them anything more than an AK.
At least they can learn a lesson.
We should congratulate them for that.
A lesson learned.
One.
Support Al-Qaeda, fine, but don't give them better than an AK-47, all right.
AK-47 replicas, exactly.
Oh, and sharp swords for beheading their prisoners with.
And swords, exactly.
Now, the sword they get from the Saudis, in fact.
Machetes from Home Depot.
Don't forget the Saudi-Qatar agenda in all this.
Right.
I'm sorry, we're going to have to pick it up there next time around.
Thanks.
Next time, man.
Atimes.com, y'all.
Pepe Escobar.
Friends of Jihad.
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