Brian Carter
speaker
98 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Brian Carter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
our policy has been, what our assumptions have been. And I think it's leading to a lot of risk around China.
Thanks for having me.
I don't know how badly this will impact the region yet, but Assad is definitely in big trouble. And I think one of the things that we have to look at as we watch the regime sort of collapse and crumble is what other groups are going to take advantage of this situation and exploit it to their own ends. So for me, the big one to watch is going to be ISIS.
which has really grown in strength in some of the regime areas, such as the central Syrian desert, in the past couple of years. And I think that will have big impacts for the main U.S. priority in Syria for the past 10 years now, which has been the defeat of ISIS.
So I'll start with the big one, Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham, which is the main opposition group that is conducting the offensive in kind of the north and western areas of Syria right now. So it was created by a man named Abu Muhammad Jolani.
Jolani grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq as an al-Qaeda guy, and he eventually took over the branch in Syria as al-Qaeda in Iraq began to transition in the Islamic State. He broke away from the Islamic State and pledged baya, or allegiance, to Zohiri, al-Qaeda's leader at the time.
However, over the years, he's kind of tried to moderate himself and has begun to present himself less as a Salafi jihadi like Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State and more of what we call a political jihadist. He's not interested or he says he's not interested in external attacks outside of Syria. And instead, in recent years, has put a lot of effort into fighting
rehabilitating his image, working with minorities in the northwest of Syria.
And this is one of the things actually that has made his offensive, his group's offensive, so successful is he's actually, when he liberates towns from the regime, he's doing it oftentimes without fighting because he will negotiate with local Shia or Christian notables and say, hey, if you join me, we're not going to have any problems.
Possibly, but I think he's also learned a lot over his career. He kind of seems to have evolved through the years. And so he started in that very Salafi jihadi, very sectarian mindset. And I think one of the things that we're seeing now and what he is doing, especially in engaging with the Shia and the Iraqis diplomatically, is...
He says things in a way that signals to me that he has learned some lessons. He knows the Shia fear these Sunni militant groups breathing down their necks. And he knows that's one of the reasons that Assad was able to convince so many people to fight for him back in the early 2010s. And I think that's really notable. Now, granted...
Jelani is operating from a position of, I mean, he's getting stronger every day, but a weaker position. So when he gains power, does he maintain this sort of mindset? I don't know.
Yeah, sure. So I kind of walk through. I'll walk through the regime and I'll walk through who the U.S. is backing and all that sort of stuff. So the regime, Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite from the sort of western coast of Syria.
One of the reasons that this area was so hard for the opposition to gain any ground in back in the early 2010s was because there was a fear among the Alawite minority that were Assad to fall, the Sunni would retaliate against them. So that is one of the reasons Assad is able to build up such support there.
Now, the Iranians back Assad and the Iranian-backed Shia groups in the region back Assad because they see him as critical to their regional aspirations. So they see him as a way, as a conduit to get weapons to Hezbollah, for example, and to kind of strengthen themselves at the expense of the Gulf states and other Sunni powers in the region. Now, U.S.
is backing a Kurdish group called the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria. Now, that group has begun also taking some territory from the Assad regime. We actually just saw them take Deir ez-Zor city this morning, which is a very big development. Deir ez-Zor city has been under regime control for many years. It's on the western bank of the Euphrates River.
The Syrian Democratic Forces were the U.S. partner chosen to destroy or defeat ISIS during the campaign that the United States kind of led in northeastern Syria. It contains a large contingent of Kurdish groups that were built out of a cadre of a Kurdish organization called the YPG, which is affiliated with the PKK, so Turkey YPG. has big problems with the PKK.
The United States sees the PKK as a terrorist organization, so it gets very, very complex. Nonetheless, the Kurds have also incorporated some Arab elements, which is why I think you see those Arab elements agitating to liberate some of their homes on the western side of the Euphrates River.
Yeah, the Russians, for their part, haven't been able to actually help Assad during this round of fighting because they're running into a situation where they have to prioritize Ukraine. And so they can't send him the sort of forces that he needs to be able to turn the tide. The Russians were the critical target. actor that turned the tide in 2015.
The Iranians realized they couldn't do it alone and asked the Russians to help provide air power. The Russians provided that air power and Assad started to kind of turn the tide on his opposition. The Russians back Assad because they like having access to the ports along the Western Syrian coast. And again, Assad's kind of home country.
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