Jenny Keesden
speaker
114 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Jenny Keesden’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Hi there. Yeah, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
Yeah, sure. No, so thanks for that. Yeah, I've also been getting a lot of questions about Otan's letter and I'm really glad to hear that you guys are going to do a programme on it because... Western media wants to report it in this way that's very snazzy and there's like bolts of the blue and something crazy's happening.
Really, unfortunately, it has to actually be spoken about in a kind of more long-term and intelligent way that sets the context and like, yeah, puts that and makes things a bit more clear because it is something with a background and it's connected to a lot of things.
And of course, that whole political process that Ojan's recent statement is a part of is going to affect the situation here in North and East Syria. because the situation here a lot of the time depends on the actions of the Turkish state and on expansionism and aggression from there. And so as the political situation changes, it will affect that.
What it is not is like a call or a statement that means that the SDF has to lay down their arms and say, this is for several reasons absolutely not what it is. The main one of those being that the SDF is not and never has been the BAA. And that's something that they've tried many times over the years to make very clear, but unfortunately has not always been heard and acknowledged.
And so whatever this statement means, and you guys will go into that in your program, whatever it means for the PKK, for the situation in North Kurdistan, it's a different situation here.
And so the SDF is in a moment of like a big question and a big change, but it's much more to do with what's been happening in Syria politically and to do with the government and the interim government that installed themselves here and the regime changed. and of course the ongoing war and situation of invasion that they're facing.
So there's a lot of big questions for the SDF, but I think it's important right now that we don't kind of confuse and misunderstand with this sort of parallel process that's going on.
Yeah, so obviously what's happened to North East Syria and North East Syria and to the SDF is very connected to the whole overall Syria process. And you're right, when you hear the reporting on it, I think lots of parts of it can get erased. And kind of depending who's talking and what their angle is or whatever, there are a lot of things left out, not just the Kurds in North East Syria, but...
other minority ethnic groups or like women organizing across Syria, like all of these things. It's a very complex situation, which I won't pretend I can completely lay out and summarize for everyone in five minutes. But yeah, what you did have was the,
culminates in the end of a period and a massive change when as you say there was a regime change there was a change of government and that happened with this like offensive sweeping down from idlib to damascus succeeding in taking over the government in damascus from the assad family which was the end of a 61 year reign which caused absolute jubilation, it's safe to say, all across Syria.
And that includes where I am in, not just me, Syria, because anyway, just, yeah, people were very happy and celebrating, but also there were cities here. When you look at the map and you see this, like, semi-autonomous region, what you had to understand was that there were actually, within the cities, there were neighbourhoods and sections that were still under the Assad government.
It wasn't as simple as, like, the whole city is in the autonomous administration. So here as well, there were still statues of Assad and people took to the streets and tore them down.
And really close to actually where I'm recording this today, there's a roundabout where they took down the statue of Assad and it's been replaced by pictures of the martyrs, so people who have fallen fighting for the autonomy of the region here and fighting for their political system. So, you know, it's very, very beautiful. People celebrated.
And we're happy with a qualifier, with a very big qualifier. You know, you saw the jails opened as well and the flags went off. But yeah, it was a real moment of jubilation and celebration. But unfortunately...
the force which eventually succeeded in toppling Assad and installing itself as the now, as they're saying, the interim or transitional government of Syria, we can say it was not one of the many progressive, democratic, alternative forces that originally, in the uprisings, weakened the Assad government back in 2011. Since then, things have changed. And this isn't a podcast directly about that.
I'm sure you guys speak about it as well at other times. But instead, what you have is HTS, who are a kind of conglomerate militia of these different militia groups. There's another acronym for you there as well, James, I think.
Pointing people to resources is... is always very useful. They're a kind of mixed up amalgamation of different militias who are operating in Syria. And what's crucial to say about them is that their political background and perspective, a lot of people in these organizations are like,
Really, really similar, unfortunately, and all too familiar to the people here who fought against ISIS, the Islamic State, because they're coming from similar backgrounds. And also to Al-Qaeda and the organizations who were kind of the Syrian branches of Al-Qaeda. I've played a really direct role in founding HTS.
And they want to now sort of put on a new face, put on a suit, go out and shake the world's hand and become world statesmen and become the government, which unfortunately it looks like all of our governments are all too willing to very quickly accept.
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