Radio War Nerd EP #150 — Idlib & the Syria Endgame, with Joshua Landis
Guest: Joshua Landis, Director of Center for Middle East Studies & blogger
Recorded: September 23, 2018
From his new digs in Sicily, the War Nerd interviews Syria expert Joshua Landis (EP #118) to break down the situation in Idlib: the Russia-Turkey agreement, who the main rebel/jihadi groups are in Idlib, what are Israel's and the US's designs on Syria, and where do we go from here?
At 1:29:00 the Nerd and Ames discuss other war news around the world: Erdogan's media propagandists . . . Israel's idiotic downing of Russian spy plane; separatist terror attack in Khuzestan, Iran, and attribution snafus . . . Trump regime's Raytheon lobbyist decides Yemen weapons policy . . . Saudi Arabia plans to expel millions of Egyptian workers . . . Islamist rebels in northeast Mozambique linking up with Al Shabab? . . .
Joshua Landis is director at the Center for Middle East Studies and professor at U Oklahoma. Read his excellent blog Syria Comment and follow him on twitter: @joshua_landis.
* Maps
* Map of Syria with Idlib
* Map of Al Qaeda (HTS/Nusra) control in Idlib
* Map of Russia-Turkey Idlib agreement
Total time: 2:19:46
Comments (14)
Mark 2:03 or so, silicon wadi was right there I was shouting at my radio
Landis definitely lost me when he said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was the "best we have". He kind of contradicted his sentiment when he said the guy was "not transparent in any way", so I really don't understand where Landis was coming from. Journalists who were actually in Syria like Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, or even Syrian citizen Kevork Almassian of Syriana Analysis always say that the SOHR is a fraud. Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal on Moderate Rebels talked about how the guy has not been to Syria in two decades and just makes phone calls to Syria and those are the figures he uses. Nothing like Seymour Hersh and the two Turkish MPs Eren Erdem and Ali Şeker did to expose the Turkish government's role in giving the terrorists chemical weapons for the 2013 attack. I know I already messaged you about this but I think it would be awesome if you had Kevork Almassian on to talk about Syria's domestic and war policies. <a href="https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels/syria-regime-change-gang-trotskyists-episode-19" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels/syria-regime-change-gang-trotskyists-episode-19</a>
I think what Landis means is that there's no consensus source of statistics on casualties of the Syrian war. I don't think Eva Bartlett can really be considered a neutral observer at this point. She did a good job pushing back against the regime-change agenda but, speaking as someone who has been called an 'Assadist', I have to say that she actually is an Assadist.
Regarding your comment about Romania playing both sides in the cold war, I remember in the 70's or 80's reading two-page spreads in the Sunday Telegraph extolling the virtues of Ceausecu and his brave resistance to the Soviets. One got the impression that he was a secret freedom fighter, trapped by geography and history and that Romania would be just like western europe if only given half a chance. I think that at the time, people were beginning to go to Romania for their summer holidays. It was the new Spain.
Yup. But like a lot of much-hyped freedom fighters, he ended up blowing the national budget on gold bathroom fixtures. It's weird how they do that. Does it make the bath hotter or something?
Congratulations on becoming big enough fish that famous musicians tell you they're fans. (And social prison companies target you.) John, you meant "non-ethnic-Persians" - Iran the country, Persian the majority (maybe like 50%, according to some - it does make sense that their fertility fell the most) ethnicity. I don't understand - what's absurd about Al-Qaeda and the US coordinating false flag attacks? Also, it's weird: Landis marries an Alawite - then publishes Aron Lund. "Rojavahead" may be a good name for a 50% female metal band.
AQ/US false flag coordination doesn't even mean direct communication; we make noise about how the next gas attack won't be tolerated and that gives them the heads-up. Of course that theory is pretty much unprovable but hey, even the UN concluded that some of these attacks were done by rebel forces.
Absolutely fantastic episode. Landis is such a good guest. Though, Mark, the mental image of "[Erdogan] can straddle Trump and Putin for ages" was not what I needed this morning.
MC5 1970 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74jS3dW0DtE" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74jS3dW0DtE</a>
Regarding the MC5; “Mansion on the Hill” is a great book that details how radical politics in 1960s rock n roll got subsumed by the corporate mainstream music industry.
Landis is great, but no need to give Aron Lund a shout out - he's trash.
Lund spent years hanging out with Jaish al Islam and wrote a long feature about them, somehow avoided noticing the women in cages. Lund even worse than Lister in a lot of ways, because he's a genuinely smart guy who knows these first-hand, unlike Lister who's a dumb propagandist and doesn't speak Arabic.
Joshua Landis is a great guest, bring him back as a regular.
He has good insights. But once agajn, he winks at the US imperial narrative. He said that the main reason why the Idlib offensive by Russia and Syria didnt happen bc it would be a humanitarian disaster. This is flatly untrue. The US did not want its proxy assets completely snuffed out. That is the ONLY reason why there was pressure. Landis even refers to Trumps tweet. Common man.. Both sides have flattened cities in this war. This would have been no worse than Aleppo.