07/20/12 – Pepe Escobar – The Scott Horton Show

All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, keep all the interview archives at scotthortonshow.com, Fundrive is still going on there too if you want to stop by.
We now got Google Wallet and WePay and monthly PayPal subscriptions and all kinds of options if you want to help out, scotthortonshow.com/donate.
All right, now to our next guest, Pepe Escobar, the roving eye for the Asia Times.
Welcome back to the show, Pepe, which country are you in today?
Still in Hong Kong.
Still in Hong Kong, okay, right on.
Good times.
I'd like to go to Hong Kong someday.
You should.
China's future is here.
Yeah, well, I hope so.
That means corruption as well.
Well, yeah, but still, it's better than tens of millions of people all starving to death.
So we'll take it.
Now, listen, of course, I want to know all about everything that you know about Syria.
Begin.
Wow.
Holy shit.
Okay.
Okay, no, here, let me help you out.
How about this?
The news is claiming, and this may very well be a damned lie, I'm not saying it's true, but the news says that Assad has fled Damascus.
We don't know for sure, in fact, because he was on Syrian state TV today, introducing the new defense minister.
So this could be in Damascus, or this could be in his presidential palace in Latakia.
They have an enormous presidential palace, very well guarded in Latakia.
This is an area where mostly Alawites, his Shiite folk sect, you know, which is crazy, because in the West, we always say Alawite sect.
So if this was a Christian, the government would say this is a Christian government.
No, we wouldn't.
But we have to say sect to discriminate a little bit more.
Okay.
Anyway, we don't know.
In fact, every theory I'm talking to from difference, the whole spectrum, practically, you know, diaspora, people who live in Aleppo, people who live near the borders, people who live in Damascus.
Nobody knows for sure what happened in this silent explosion in Damascus, because most people, they never heard the boom to start with.
Nobody really knows how many people were inside of this security meeting.
Like the four heads of the four intelligence agencies, apparently they were not there, which is very, very, very crazy.
It doesn't make sense, because if this was, they were coordinating the security response to the fighting in the suburbs of Damascus, especially this past few days, these four guys had to be there.
Now to the people who were actually killed.
Ministry of Defense, but most important, Shaquat, brother-in-law of Bashar.
He was the protector.
He was the mentor figure.
He was the guy that Hafez Assad, the godfather, put in charge to prepare Bashar to become president in the late 90s.
Even when he was still alive, in his last days, he died in 2000, then Bashar became president in 2000.
So the mentor is gone.
So without Shaquat, Bashar, he is not exactly very brilliant to start with.
He's probably completely lost nowadays.
And very important, another guy who died today, because of the wounds sustained in the silent bombing, is his chief of security.
He's the guy who would explain to Bashar the security situation in Syria.
This guy is also dead.
So that leaves these very important four heads of military intelligence.
So there is, of course, at the moment, there is a lot of speculation, but the most probable scenario is that this was an inside job.
Why?
Number one, they're seeing that, you know, maybe this is the end for Assad himself.
Maybe for people who are very close to the Klan.
But this is a collective military leadership.
They know that their top connection, international connection, is Russia.
I'm sure Putin and Lavrov, who, in terms of hardcore diplomacy and politics, are practically unequal in the world nowadays, they already made their calculations.
They saw that if they were backing Bashar as a horse itself, they were betting the wrong horse.
They would have to, you know, spread their bets among the collective leadership.
So we could say that at least one, if not all four of these chiefs of military intelligence, they're already on a Russian boat.
Or the Russian boat is already there for them.
So this would mean a white coup inside.
Bashar can go.
Today we had one Russian ambassador already saying on the record that maybe it's time for him to go, but he wants to go in a civilized way.
I'm quoting the ambassador.
So the Russians themselves are already putting it on the record, something that until a few hours ago was unimaginable.
They were just concentrating their efforts to once again block a UN Security Council resolution, which they did yesterday.
And everybody knew that they would do it for the third time alongside the Chinese.
Because what they were trying to do at the UN was a pretext for another humanitarian intervention.
So the situation at the moment, more or less, is that Russia is calculating who they're going to back or if they don't already have all these guys who really ruled in their pockets, and maybe organize for the Bashar family, the Assad family, to leave Syria in a dignified way.
But the whole thing, the system stays in place like a Mubarak-Scah solution in Egypt.
This is very, very possible.
But we don't know because nobody knows what's going on upstairs in Damascus or in Latakia.
Nobody.
Not even Syrians who have people inside the palace.
Because every person you talk to, you have a completely different understanding and manipulation, of course, of what's going on.
All right.
So bottom line, though, is that you don't think this was a suicide bomber attack or a rebel attack.
This was an attempt to stave off a coup.
No, it was not a suicide.
Everybody knows it was not a suicide bomber, number one.
Even the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, they say it was a bomb.
And the problem is, you know, very good Lebanese sources, probably via Hezbollah, they say it was a 40-kilogram bomb.
The problem is nobody heard this bloody bomb explode.
So there was no crime scene.
Nothing was shown on TV.
So it's really, really mysterious, you know.
It could have been if it was planted by the Free Syrian Army.
And at the same time, we had a small Islamist group say, no, we did it.
So considering that the Free Syrian Army has been lying all the time, non-stop for the past few months, we cannot trust them.
We cannot totally trust this very, very small, obscure Islamist group as well.
They, in fact, it was a message in code, practically.
We destroyed the cell at the heart of the power, something like this.
Possibly, if there was an infiltration, what kind of actor could have top intel to penetrate, disrupt, and destroy an ultra-high-level security meeting inside a Nuclear Fortified Palace in Damascus?
The Turks don't have that.
The Qataris and the Saudis don't have that.
The CIA definitely doesn't have that.
So, you know, that would leave, in fact, the only possibility would be Sunnis inside the government.
Maybe not top-level, but mid-level commanders or colonels or lieutenant generals or whatever, you know.
All right, I'm sorry, Pepe, I got to interrupt you.
We got to take this hard break.
You know how it goes.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back.
I'm Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times.
The last one is called Suicide Bombers of the World Unite.
And, of course, whatever happened, they at least got Rumsfeldian to endorse suicide bombing publicly, and that's good.
All right, Shell, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times.
Now, he doesn't think it really was suicide bombing that killed the military commander and some other cabinet people, military cabinet people there in Syria the other day.
But the story was that it was a suicide bomber for the first little bit there, and that was long enough for Pepe to catch him.
Greenwald had a couple more like this, but this is the best one.
Donald Rumsfeld's former chief of staff at the Pentagon, Keith Urban, tweeted, For once, we should call a suicide bomber, the one that took out a major fraction of Assad's cabinet, a martyr.
There you go.
So the leaders of the Great Terror War.
Exactly.
So if you do it against, remember when this was being done against the Green Zone a few years ago, almost on a daily basis, they were terrorists.
But if they do against not one of our bastards, they are martyrs.
You know, they should be commended.
And the coincidence of that bombing in Bulgaria with Israeli tourists, you know, a few hours ago, I was comparing the headlines.
Syria disappeared.
And at least in the West, mostly people are only talking about Bulgaria, about what happened over there.
So look, everybody knows about the double standards.
Everybody knows about the enormous hypocrisy.
And this is a proxy, which is not only about Syria.
Of course, the Syrian civilians are caught in a crossfire, and now they're caught in a crossfire in the capital itself, which proves how crazy is this weaponizing by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, especially that in the especially in these past two months, we've been talking about this for months.
Scott, this past two months, this past four or five weeks, especially, there was an influx of weapons so huge across these porous borders that this, you know, they they could go to Damascus and set, you know, organized cells in many, at least three or four suburbs of Damascus and even near downtown Damascus, which is completely crazy.
And they are getting RPGs, very good RPGs, by the way, because they are destroying tanks at the border.
They destroyed three tanks at the Syrian-Turkish border two days ago.
These are new weapons.
They didn't have this until four or five weeks ago.
So this proves that once again, follow the money.
Where's the money coming from?
Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Unlimited funds.
So in terms of light weapons, very good light weapons, the best in the market, like Russian RPGs that you can buy in the open market.
If you're Saudi or Qatar, you can buy these by the thousands if you want.
They are all in Syria now.
And can you imagine what's going to happen to these weapons when this whole thing is over?
They will be trafficked where?
To Iraq, for instance.
Where there is a low-level war between the government in Baghdad and Sunnis as well.
And Donald Rumsfeld would say the remnants of the Sunni-Iraqi guerrillas of the 2004, 2005, 2006, they're still there.
And they want to bring down the government in Baghdad.
So the unintended consequences and the regional blowback of all this is going to be something absolutely horrifying.
I think it would be great if the Americans switch sides, finally, like Khalilzad wanted to do, and just go ahead and outright back the Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq and have a whole new civil war for Baghdad.
We'll kill another million people and put the Sunnis back in charge and undo the whole Bush era.
It'll be a great make-work project.
We'll start the draft and bring down the unemployment rate, and then at least we'll have some consistency in our policy between Iraq and Syria, you know?
Yes, exactly, Scott.
Exactly.
Because this will confirm for good, graphically and tragically, the whole idea, the whole neocon idea which divide and rule the Middle East forever, beat Sunnis against Shiites in every latitude in the Middle East, creative destruction non-stop.
And if this thing in Syria goes on like this, this is only the beginning, because it will destabilize Jordan as well.
It will create a sort of Muslim Brotherhood axis from Egypt, where they are already, okay, not in power because the power is scoffed, of course, but at least they already have a president over there.
They are very strong in Syria.
Probably a post-Assad Syria would be a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime.
They could easily control Jordan, because a king's PlayStation, the only thing that he has is his security services.
But there were talks, they have been talking underground with the Muslim Brotherhood, and I'm sure the Muslim Brotherhood already imposed something to them, and said, look, depending on what happens in Syria, they're going to help us here, so let's try to cut the deal.
Otherwise, after Bashar, you are going to be next.
So can you imagine this Muslim Brotherhood axis, which, of course, American allies are going to say, oh, this is horrible.
We're going to have Islamists in power in the Middle East.
Of course.
You are putting them in power.
Hey, I heard that there's a jihadist did something radical over there in Mali.
Maybe we should begin to intervene in the Sahara Desert.
Exactly.
And of course, you know, to finish it off, this is all stopovers on the way to Tehran.
Obviously, if they have a post-Assad within the next few weeks, or even with the next, which is something that until a few weeks ago, nobody was contemplating.
Now it's very real.
Even the Russians themselves are saying it's possible.
So let's try to find a way out of it.
They will never admit to a Western humanitarian or not revolution.
Let's put it this way.
But they can organize with the leadership in Damascus a way out for the Assad clan and at least preserve their interests, which are basically arms sales of weapons to Syria and keep the naval base in Tartus in the Mediterranean.
The Russians will do anything to that.
In fact, this is what Putin...
Well, it's not really up to them, though, right?
I mean, if the rebels can force Assad out of power, why are they going to accept the remnants of his government?
They're just going to keep fighting until the whole regime's gone and then do something else.
It's not like Egypt, right?
Exactly, because we talked about this before.
And, you know, in fact, I've heard this a few different places where nobody seemed to think that the regime could survive the fall of Assad, basically, that if he goes, the game's up.
Maybe that's not right.
I don't know.
No, no, no, that's not.
That's not true, because the regime, the regime was constituted and solidified by Hafez 50 years ago.
The regime is modern Syria, let's put it this way.
It will not crumble like this, you know, because unless all the leadership was totally exterminated, which I don't think is going to happen, I see it more or less like an Egyptian solution.
The head of the snake, the head of the snake is gone, but we're still here and we control the whole thing.
And maybe we share some of the leadership with a few other Sunnis.
Well, this is what just happened down in Yemen, right?
Is you just put the guy's brother-in-law in there or whatever.
Exactly, exactly.
And I'm sure the Americans and the Russians are discussing this in the background, because if you are, I'm talking in terms of the Obama administration.
But wait a minute, so if Obama and Putin cut a deal, that means the rebellion's going to stop?
No, no, no, no, no.
The civil war's going to end?
No, no, no.
No, the deal that they cut in Geneva over two weeks ago, more or less, was, OK, the Russians told the Americans, look, give us a breather here, three months or so, we're going to try to organize a transition.
If it doesn't work, then we discuss this after the elections in November in the US.
And the Americans said, OK, but what do we get in return?
The Russians said, OK, we're going to make life easier for you in Afpak.
Including with Pakistan, because Pakistan and Russia are getting closer and closer, especially these past few months.
So this was the deal in Geneva, basically.
Now, nobody knows what's going to happen to the deal, because nobody could imagine what happened two days ago, this bombing, even though nobody still knows the real story.
If it was an inside job, or if it was really very good Sunni intel at the top of the regime, if that's the case, this means that some Sunnis are already there.
And they, OK, they are trying to organize how the spoils, let's put it this way, after Assad, even if they don't control the whole thing.
So, you know, this is a new variable, which didn't exist until two days ago.
Putin met Erdogan yesterday.
We still don't know what they discussed.
I'm sure Putin told Erdogan, look, don't start getting ideas over here.
First of all, because you depend on Gazprom for your gas.
So let's try to organize something, and everybody will be happy.
Everybody means US, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
This is going to be very, very difficult.
And it proves, once again, that this is not essentially about Syria.
This is a proxy war, with so many actors with different agendas.
And they're fighting this thing inside Syria.
And obviously the losers, who else?
The Syrian people, you know.
Right, yeah, it's really not fair.
I mean, you got a lot of regular folk here who, I remember Nir Rosen's pieces that he wrote for Al Jazeera when the real fighting started.
And he said, you know, a lot of these guys are just the neighborhood militia.
They really are the guys from the neighborhood who see this as their chance to finally, once and for all, rise up and overthrow this evil police state dictatorship.
And yet, they just happen to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
And like you say, it comes down to the powers outside of Syria are so big, and what's at stake is so large that they amount to nothing in it.
But, you know, the proxies, the sock puppets of outside powers.
And it sucks for them, but that's just part of being from Syria, I guess.
No, it's horrible, because, you know, there are two different strands.
These people that Nir Rosen were hanging out with, which are basically the guerrillas, let's put it this way.
And there's also the secular, urban, Google generation, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, in the big cities.
And these people have been totally marginalized.
They never wanted a civil war for the end of the regime.
They wanted, you know, some peaceful protests.
They wanted it probably at the rear square in Damascus in the long run.
But they never wanted to see their country.
Now it's going to be destroyed.
This thing, if it doesn't stop in the next few days, it could be Lebanonized in a sense that it would go for 10 years.
First of all, both sides, they cannot win.
Even if the army, they have 5,000, the only way for them to win would be if they unleash the chemical weapons.
If they do that, then there's going to be an intervention, obviously.
And obviously, the different guerrillas in the so-called Free Syrian Army, which is a collection of guerrilla groups, probably almost 100 guerrilla groups, if not more, they also cannot win.
In fact, for instance, today they were expelled from one of the neighborhoods in Damascus.
So this is going to be this back and forth.
And meanwhile, more and more neighborhoods are destroyed, more and more internal displacement, more and more of a refugee crisis going, especially to Jordan.
Hey, wait a minute.
What about all the Iraqi refugees that are living in Syria in camps?
Exactly.
And it's fantastic that I spent a lot of time with these people a few years ago.
There are many Iraqs in Damascus itself.
But the thing is, they are middle class and upper middle class.
A lot of them Sunnis, but they're also Shiites as well.
There are two different Iraqi towns in Damascus.
One is Sunni and another one, very big one as well, is Shiite.
They are, you know, like five or six kilometers apart.
But it's so I would say in Damascus itself, it's at least 300,000 Iraqi refugees, if not more.
So now they're saying, wow, what are you going to do here?
Maybe we should go back to Iraq.
In fact, at least the Shiites are probably coming back to Iraq.
The Sunnis, they're supposed to, we're going to the Persian Gulf?
No way.
Because most of these, they are Sunnis, but they are secularized.
They would never live comfortably in Saudi Arabia.
Forget it.
Maybe in Qatar or in the Emirates.
But they can afford it.
Over 300,000 Iraqis, exactly.
It's too many people.
And they're very good merchants as well.
So this would create problems with the local merchant classes in the Persian Gulf as well.
So, you know, everywhere you look, Scott, you see the possible reverberations and accumulated blowbacks, right?
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I think out of all the very important things you said, one of the most, anyway, one that certainly bears highlighting here at the end of the interview is the part about this is all about Iran.
And there are 100 different sources for that if people want to go Googling around and see what they can find.
But the most, well, the easiest one is the president himself in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic.
Goldberg said, this would be a great way to undermine Iran, right?
And Obama said, yeah.
And neither of them said anything about, oh, boo hoo, I care so much about the human rights of the average schmuck that lives in Syria who suffers under some tyranny.
They don't care about that.
And in front of Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama certainly didn't feel the need to pretend that.
And in fact, probably otherwise, right?
He just went ahead and and admitted the plain truth that, you know, as far as the Democrats are concerned, if more people die, fine, as long as it helps weaken Iran.
Exactly.
As long as, you know, it's still the holy grail.
It's still Iran.
And in fact, Obama's reaction is, it doesn't surprise me at all, because what the sanctions that they are applying alongside with the Europeans, who's paying for this?
The Iranian population, the regime, they weather sanctions.
They weathered a war against Iraq.
They had more than one million people dead and they weathered that.
They have been weathering sanctions for years.
They can do it.
They have reserves.
They have commerce with the Silk Road, with the Central Asian countries, with China, with Russia as well, even with Turkey and with Pakistan.
They're building a pipeline with Pakistan.
Even the Americans say, no, you can't.
So they can't.
They can weather that.
The regime can weather all that.
But the population, it's so sad.
You know, I have friends in Iran, middle-class friends, and nowadays they are desperate because they cannot live there anymore.
They don't have the money to leave to Europe or to any civilized place or to South America, even if they wanted to.
They're stuck over there.
They used to be middle class.
Now they are, you know, sub-proletarian, let's put it this way.
And it's horrible.
Millions of average Iranians are paying the price for these lofty sanctions that the Americans and Europeans think are going to make the Ayatollah Khamenei start thinking twice about his nuclear program.
It's absurd.
First of all, because he already said there's no bomb.
I forbid it.
We're not building a bomb.
What they have is what everybody knows.
The IAEA knows.
The NAE is a show.
They could start a latency period if they wanted to have a bomb.
But during this latency period, which lasts months, it will be detected easily that they are building a bomb.
And of course, there will be a strike before they actually have a product to deliver.
So, you know, the sanctions don't make, everybody knows they don't make sense.
The best American independent journalists and analysts know that.
The Europeans, the same thing.
Not to mention the Russians and the Chinese.
But it doesn't matter.
How are you going to explain this to the American public?
That's the only way to solve the Iranian problem is to sit down and talk.
Like grown-up diplomats.
It's impossible.
Yeah.
So this is why we have it.
I'm sorry, we got to go.
We're way over time.
Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times, everybody.
Suicide bombers of the world.
Thanks very much.
Talk to you soon.
Thanks very much, Scott.
Always a pleasure.