All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today, wait, our first guest on the show today is Pepe Escobar.
He is a writer for the Asia Times and of course also wrote the books Globalistan and Obama Does Globalistan.
You can find the Asia Times website at atimes.com.
Welcome back Pepe, how are you doing?
Wonderful Scott, good to be with you again.
Great to have you here today, on the phone live from Italy, right?
Yeah, I'm in Milano.
There you go, yeah, see everybody, Pepe's thing is he travels around the world all day, every day writing about what in the hell is going on.
And what I'd like to ask you about first Pepe, if it's okay with you, is Syria and the state of the semi-revolution going on there.
Particularly, if you can tell us about the involvement, or the degree of involvement of the CIA and the JSOC and the British SAS and whichever Western forces are mucking around there too.
Look, this past weekend I was in a meeting of journalists in Cerrado, nearby Milano, where I am.
There were a lot of bloggers from the Middle East.
No Syrians, unfortunately, there were a lot of Egyptians, especially.
But what they were all saying is that Damascus and Aleppo are on the point of turning over to the rebellion.
This is something that we could not imagine, let's say, two months ago.
Because essentially, the middle class now is fed up because the country is paralyzed.
So while this was in scattered cities in the countryside for the past four or five months, okay, it was not reaching the big cities.
But now, because the economy is paralyzed, the people who are aligned with the Assad regime or profit from the Assad regime, now they are completely stuck as well.
And they can see that there are no allies left, especially Turkey.
Turkey now is on the side of the rebellion, practically 100%.
So we should expect, maybe in the next few weeks or so, if we have major Tahrir Square-like demonstrations in Aleppo, the second biggest city in Damascus, then the show is over.
As to the presence of JSOC, the usual suspects, of course they are there.
But, very important, Saudi Arabian agents and Jordanian agents are there as well.
Kamarads from Jordan, special forces from the Gulf, because they want one of the last republics in the Middle East to go as well, just like with Libya.
So expect, once again, another, let's say, counter-revolution, counter-insurgency with our usual American-British friends and Persian Gulf suspects, especially after the success of Libya, right?
Well now, okay, so if you take a look at Egypt, for example, you mentioned Tahrir Square.
In that case, Hosni Mubarak was America's loyal dictator for 30 years, and they really didn't even make a secret of it.
I mean, TV could have obscured the truth, perhaps, but if anyone was just reading the New York Times, it was clear that they were doing everything they could to keep Mubarak.
And then when it became obvious that he absolutely was going to leave power, then they said, well, we want, as our second runner-up, Omar Suleiman, who is the head of the secret torture police.
And they were just very clear.
They were doing everything they could to prevent regime change in Egypt.
And then once Mubarak was gone, obviously, they've been doing everything they can to try to shore up whatever relations they have.
Now, Syria, on the other hand, is a state that America never did control.
I mean, Assad would torture people for us from time to time, that kind of thing.
But if anything was keeping them from overthrowing his government, it was that they were scared who might replace him.
But I guess what I'm curious about is when you say the Saudis and the UAE and the Jordanians have their intelligence services and special forces types running around in Syria, supporting this revolution.
Are they doing so at the behest of the United States?
Is this an American-Israeli plan for regime change in Syria?
No, it's not, Scott.
In fact, it's on behalf of installing a Sunni-majority regime in Syria, because now it's an Alawite regime.
The Alawites are maximum 50 percent.
It's a Shiite folk sect.
This dates from the time of Hafez Assad for the past almost 50 years.
He peopled all the army and all the intelligence services with the Alawites, basically.
And the Sunnis are excluded.
The Sunnis are the, let's put it this way, you know, simplifying a lot.
But the urban bourgeoisie, the bazaar crowd, especially in Aleppo and in Damascus especially.
But the thing is, let's say it's the Abdul-Hakim-Bilhaj element, you know, in Syria.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is very, very hardcore.
In Egypt, I was discussing this weekend, they are saying that there are at least five different strands of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, from virtual Salafis to hardcore conservatives to even progressives, the younger generation, the Google generation.
In Syria, it's more monolithic.
And they are very, very conservative.
No wonder the Jordanians and the Saudis are there.
So expect maybe another Bilhaj situation, you know, because the big problem in the region is that nobody knows what could be next in Syria.
It's very unlikely, because there are no political parties.
So assuming that the Bashar al-Assad regime collapses after 50 years, what is going to replace it?
They're going to, you know, start organizing political parties tomorrow and then have an election in 18 months.
It's out of the question, you know.
There's lots of pressure from Turkey, because they want to start, continue doing business from southern Turkey with northern Syria.
It's a corridor now from Antioch to Aleppo.
The bourgeoisie over there wants to go back to business, start making money again.
But the Muslim Brotherhood, they don't care.
They want virtually a Salafi regime.
And that's what Saudi Arabia wants once again.
So if they don't get it in Libya, they're going to press for it in Syria.
And on top of it, they're a neighbor.
Well, so if the Muslim Brotherhood does take power in Syria, would you expect then a civil war and, you know, an abolition of the sort of secular state of freedom of religion as it exists there now?
Look, no crystal ball, Scott, really.
Nobody knows what could happen next.
The Iranians, for instance, now the Iranians, they are modulating their response.
They look at Tehran, Damascus, Ankara.
Maybe part of this will collapse.
Let's keep our relationships with the Turks.
And let's prepare for any eventuality with the Syrians.
This alliance doesn't exist anymore.
And it was becoming more and more, I wouldn't say anti-Western, but more pro-region than defending the Western interests in the region.
But the thing is, nobody knows what's going to happen, except there's lots of wishful thinking from the GCC, the Persian Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Regime.
Let's put it this way.
That's the only thing that we really know at the moment.
Well, do you have any idea what the Americans and the Israelis think about this, whether they would rather...
The Israelis are desperate because they have no clue what could be next.
It could be like, okay, I'll give you an apocalyptic example, like Hamas with lots of weapons against Israel.
There is a possibility.
It could be a regime that would strike an even closer alliance with Saudi Arabia, but against Israel in terms of defending the Palestinians.
But it's a total, absolute mess.
And in fact, I was trying to compare that to Afghanistan.
And in terms of what's going to happen next, at least it's exactly the same thing.
You know, like the past weekend I was with, I call him the Buddha of Peshawar.
Rahimullah has subsided.
This guy is, I'm sure many of your listeners know him.
He is the top authority in the world in tribal areas, in Afghanistan on both sides.
So I was very lucky to spend a lot of quality time with Rahimullah.
He was telling me...
I'm sorry, Pepe, we have to take this break right here.
The music's playing.
We've got to go out to this commercial.
We'll be right back with Pepe Escobar after this.
I want to hear what you learned recently about Pakistan.
I got some questions along those lines myself.
Pepe Escobar, 8times.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio, and I'm talking with Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times online.
That's 8times.com.
And Pepe, before the break there, you were saying you just finished talking with someone who's the world's best expert on Pakistan, something like that.
Who is that again?
Rahimullah Yusufzai.
You should try to get him on your program one day.
He lives in Peshawar.
He's very, very busy.
But I can put a word, you know, for your listeners would be absolutely priceless.
Well, listen, I just got Salim Shahzad's book.
Your former colleague at the Asia Times who was murdered by the Pakistani ISI.
Yes.
And I have to tell you, I'm only on chapter two, but already he's scaring the hell out of me, Pepe, in this thing.
Tell me about it.
But we were discussing...
I was discussing this with Rahimullah this weekend.
It's very complicated because he told me straight away, look, he was killed by the ISI because he was writing in English for a foreign publication stuff that you're simply not allowed to in Pakistan.
Out of the question.
If you write this in the Urdu press and it's read by the locals, they know most of this stuff.
But if you write for foreigners, they consider it a betrayal.
So the question is, who killed him?
Was it orders from the top of the ISI?
Was it a kind of rogue cell inside the ISI?
But there's no question it came from what the Pakistani call agencies, right?
So, but there's another problem with the book, the central thesis of the book.
I'm sure by chapter three or four, you're going to hear it.
Salim says that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, they were organized by Al-Qaeda to keep the Americans in the tribal areas while, bogged down in the tribal areas, while the guerrilla in Afghanistan was proliferating everywhere.
And Rahimullah, he disagrees with this thesis.
He says, look, Al-Qaeda is not that strong.
There are about 50 in the tribal areas, no more.
There are less than 100 in Afghanistan.
And they simply don't have the logistic and the strategic vision to organize that.
And especially with, in Afghanistan, there are, according to him, no more than 20,000 Taliban fighters, which brings another question.
How come these people are bogging down 160,000 U.S. and NATO troops?
Completely crazy, right?
And in the Waziristan, there are no more than 2,000 or 3,000 tribals.
Which are working with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
What is incredible is that U.S. and NATO are being bogged down in this double theater.
What is also incredible is that the only situation, the only way out that they see it in Washington, and he told me straight away, it's not going to work, is the GSOC and MK-9 Reaper operation.
He said, forget it.
The Pashtuns are going to fight the foreigners forever because of that.
Because basically you're killing their families.
And they know it's a war of foreign invaders against Pashtuns.
So what you read in the U.S. press as insurgency, translated into plain English, is a foreign war against a Pashtun majority.
They'll never forgive the West for this.
Never.
You know.
Well, now, yeah, it's true that I am still just at the very beginning of this book.
It's Inside Al-Qaeda, or which is first?
Yeah.
Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban by Salim Shahzad.
And I am still just at the very beginning of the book.
But basically his thesis is that, and he certainly counts more Al-Qaeda guys than you just said, but his thesis basically is that they are in charge of the strategy for all of these different groups fighting in Kashmir, fighting the Pakistani and the Afghan Taliban and everybody else, basically are all, even though they have their own separate interests, they're all basically playing along with the overarching goals of Al-Qaeda in the region.
It's true because their agenda basically is still the caliphate.
Even though all the evidence that we know and all the facts on the ground point to the rise, they still dream of the caliphate.
And they think that the, let's put it this way, the revolutionary vanguard, now it's in the Waziristan, they are in charge of these 2,000, 3,000 warriors, and they are going to expand this to Afghanistan and then to Central Asia.
I don't agree with that as well, but if you read the book, you're going to see there's some very good documentation in terms of interviews that he made with some Al-Qaeda strategists, including Ilyash Kashmiri, the guy who was killed by the US drone last year, right?
Last year.
Well, there's always a big difference between aspiration and their actual ability to do such things.
But I would point out, I left out of that summary of Shahzad's point, at least as I understand it so far, that it's only because the American war there has dragged on for 10 years that they've been anywhere near the position of being able to consolidate these gains.
Okay, well, this part of the thesis is absolutely correct, because he documents in detail, and this is fascinating, when the Taliban organized their famous 2006 offensive, because they had been asleep from 2002 to 2006.
They were reorganized.
So when they came back in 2006, it was really, really hardcore.
And from then on, they started getting more and more adherence inside Afghanistan, because people, Rahimullah was telling me that yesterday, once again, Pashtuns are like 99%.
And even some Tajiks, some Hazaras, some Uzbeks in the north, they look at Kabul.
They look at the corruption because of the government.
They look at the ministers stealing money.
They look at practically no health care, education, schools, projects all over the place.
A guy from Edsansan Frontier, from Doctors Without Borders, he was also detailing that.
They had sporadic protests.
They came back from Belgium, Doctors Without Borders Belgium, not the French, were expelled.
And they said, look, we have three or four major projects, and that's it.
We will need 100.
But the donors are afraid.
There's no money flowing.
The money that flows disappears in Kabul somewhere, in a black hole, nobody knows where.
So when people, especially the country, this is basically Pashtuns in the countryside, Afghanistan is not urban, as you know.
So when they look at Kabul, you cannot trust them.
And the only ones who give us a measure of security, they levy some taxes for transport, but they leave us alone, are the Taliban.
So that's why they are winning.
What is the basically, okay, with all the differences, of course, the Ho Chi Minh-style guerrilla war in Afghanistan.
That's what it is.
Yeah, well, and it's just as predictable as can be.
That's the funny part, is to read this book.
He says, yes, Al-Qaeda's plan was to lure America into fighting this war in Afghanistan.
You know, I was even reading in foreignpolicy.com and at Foreign Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations journal.
And they're saying, yeah, I guess the consensus among foreign policy elite types in New York and D.C. is now that we played right into their hands.
Oops.
And I'm just saying, you know, Pepe Escobar was telling you that all along.
I've been saying that since 2001, admittedly, on only 100 watts in South Austin.
But still, it was so obvious.
You know, the action is in the reaction.
How does the weak fight the strong, lure them into a sand trap, and shoot at them down from a mountaintop?
Yeah, but the problem is, Scott, just to round up our discussion.
They still believe in Washington that David's betrayal is a mix of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and Muhammad.
He won in Iraq, and he's going to win in Afghanistan all over again.
Wrong.
Just go there and look at the facts on the ground, you know.
So if this mentality doesn't change, it's Quagmire forever.
There's no question.
Yeah, well, and I think you're right, actually, that they believe, or at least partially in the, in the, you know, Orwellian, double-think kind of way that they do it, that they're lying, that the surge is what, you know, reduced, anyway, the violence in Iraq.
And they really are going with that as their policy in Afghanistan, based on what was nothing but sloganeering and propaganda that happened to coincide with the end of the civil war there.
Exactly.
And, you know, a final bit of info was fantastic.
Rahimullah told me that the Taliban sent a secret delegation to the Kremlin, and the Chinese started making direct approaches to the Taliban to sit on the table.
Beijing and the Taliban.
What does that tell us?
Tells us that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is basically ruled by Russian-China with the other stance, they want a regional solution, including the local players, Iran as well.
And certainly, this is good.
The US is going to be marginalized.
The US is still selling the dream of, okay, let's talk to the good Taliban.
There's no such thing as a good Taliban.
You know, they all think in block.
They all want the same thing.
They want the foreigners out.
So if you have an S.T.O. mediated solution where you have China, Russia, Iran as an observer, Pakistan as well because they're an observer of the S.T.O., the US is going to be totally left out of Afghanistan.
So can you imagine fighting 10 years of war for absolutely nothing?
Yeah.
And now.
Well, better than 12 or 15.
Correct.
All right.
Well, we're all out of time.
And thank you very much for your time, Pepe.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you.
All right, everybody.
That's Pepe Escobar, atimes.com.
Pentagon aims at target.
Pakistan is the latest.
